Technology refers to all different information on the material resources of a particular culture or people that can be used to satisfy and meet human wants. Evolution of Technology theories tries to explain the radical transformation of society through technological development. This article focuses on three different views from different authors on the change of technology. Gerhard Lenski mainly viewed the technology of a society and focused on information. The volume of information a society has and how it implements it. Leslie White focused on the control of energy involved in culture while Alvin Toffler gave a constraint view on the effect that people are undergoing mind-boggling social and technological structural change. Let’s look at them independently.
According to Gerhard the more technical information a society has, the faster it advances. In his view, new technology has a great impact on a society’s way of life. Gerhard stated that as the technology advances, we change from pre-industrial to an industrial and at the end post-industrial society. He broke down the levels of societies into six types. Note that this was done in 1960’s.
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Hunting and gathering society; it was at the beginning of human life, males were the hunters while the females and children gathered plants, vegetation and other simple edible food and fibers.
Horticultural and pastoral society; they practiced small-scale farming and were more settled.
Agrarian society; they increased crop yields and settlements.
Industrial society; they mainly relied on mechanical power and had formal education.
Post-industrial/modern society; they established industry service that encouraged the information-based economy.
Postmodern; they have high technology and perform the cross-cultural integration.
Leslie White viewed culture as an ordered and integrated system which is divided into three subsystems namely: - technological, sociological and ideological. Further, he explained that technological system performs the basic and primary role in culture. He said that the primary work of culture is to harness and control energy so that it may be put into practice in man’s service. He derived a law named as white’s basic law of cultural evolution. The law states that culture evolves as the amount of energy harnessed per capita per year is increased or as the efficiency of the instrumental means of putting energy to work is increased.
Mathematically expressed as E x T = C where C is the extent of the cultural evolution, E is the amount of energy attached per capita in a year and T is the eminence or effectiveness of tools engaged in the disbursement of energy.
Alvin Toffler gives the third perspective of the evolution of technology. Toffler identified the phases of human progress by analyzing the variations and the potential forces that made these variations and their role in human life. He argues that these changes are part and parcel of the innovatory process in establishing a new civilization that tackles the old way of life. In explaining the process of social change that human civilization undergoes, Alvin reasons that each society has its identifiable atmospheres; These are; (a) Technosphere: an energy base – production– distribution scheme; (b) Socio-sphere: inter-related social institutions; (c) info-sphere – passage of communication; (d) Power-sphere, including interactions with outside world; (e) Super ideology- powerful cultural adopt that plans its perspective of real and just operations. Toffler then divided the human societies into three distinct categories namely; Agrarian revolution, Industrial society, and New breed society.
In conclusion Gerhard, White and Toffler all had a similar view on the evolution of the technology. On the other hand, Gerhard discovered six societies as an effect of technology change, White focused on cultural evolution and Toffler made theories on stages in human development. Out of the three perspectives, White gives the most useful discovery on the evolution of the technology by leaving us with a formula to calculate the cultural evolution as an effect of technology.
