Society & Technology: Adaptation

Photo by Sean Benesh on Unsplash

In two recent posts I looked at the first and second phases of a revolutionary technology entering society from an anthropological perspective. Awareness and then evaluation. In this third and final article in this series, I look at the final phase; adaptation.

This is probably the most interesting phase of how technology becomes embedded in sociocultural systems. There’s what we might call a fourth phase, but that happens after the three primary phases and in some ways, that’s when things get even more interesting because the technologies become more interesting as they become invisible.

In the awareness phase, a society and culture, become aware of the technology, but doesn’t really know how it will change society. In the second phase, evaluation, a sociocultural system is beginning to see the implications, good and bad. This is when a society starts to take some initial actions towards how it wants to adapt the technology.

Which gets us to the adaptation phase. These phases don’t have a fixed timeline, no start and end date. Usually, some form of significant cultural process acting on the technology on behalf of society signals the transition to another phase. These aren’t always momentous and can be quite subtle. They can range from a technology fizzling out, like the Gestetner press being replaced by cheaper photocopiers in…