Waves of Technology

Waves?
• “Waves front analysis” history as succession of wave of change.
Where will “leading edge” take us?
• Waves as characterized by technology.
• Technology as a driving force for social change.
The first wave: agriculture revolution
 The first wave: agricultural revolution
• Domestication – process of taming cultivating or controlling
plants or animals that were originally wild, e.g. by selective
breeding.
• Farming and Irrigation – more productive than hunting
• Use of “living batteries” and renewable resources.
• What was the significance of the invention and improvement
of farming implements?
• Who are the producers and consumers?
• How did these changes affect the structure of society?
• What are the impacts of agriculture on the environment?
Domestication Food Security

Population Formation of
growth settlements

Waste, disease,
issues
• Land – basis of:
economy, Elite
(Feudal Lord)
• life
• Culture
• family structure
• politics
Peasants, slaves, workers
(Landless, uneducated,
unhealthy
The second wave: the industrial revolution
• 18th to 19 th Centuries
• What caused it? Confluence of factors…
• Discovery of “new worlds”
• Population growth
• Pressure on timber forests
• More use of coal
• Invention of the engine
Industrial revolution (Toffler 1980, 22).
• It was a rich, many-sided social system that touched every aspect
of human life and attacked every feature of the First Wave past... it
put:
• the tractor on the farm,
• the typewriter in the office
• the refrigerator in the kitchen.
• It produced the daily newspaper and the cinema,
• the railway
• universalized the wristwatch and the ballot box"
• The Civil War was fought over who would rule the continent: farmers
or industrialists.
• “First wave societies live off widely dispersed sources of energy.
Second Wave societies became almost totally dependent on highly
concentrated deposits of fossil fuel” (Toffler, 1980)
• The factory = model of efficiency
Mass Production
Mass Media
Mass Consumption
Mass Education
The second wave: the industrial revolution
• How did the Industrial revolution change the environment?
 Scale of resource use and pollution generation
 Concentration of people
• How did the Industrial revolution change production and consumption?
 Differentiation (jobs, producers vs consumers)
 Mass production
• How did the Industrial revolution change education?
 In the West, raised the needs for basic education: literacy and numeracy
“Overt Curriculum” (basic reading, writing, arithmetic, history and others
“Covert Curriculum” (punctuality, obedience, rote repetitive work)
Gap between owners of technology and laborers
CONTTON INDUSTRY IN UK AND US
• Cotton was labor intensive: in picking and removing seeds
 In US: African slaves
 In UK: Child labor
• Cotton Gin mechanized the seed removal >>> transformed industry
into technology mechanized spinning
• Change: In the US, civil war killed 620,000
• In the UK, social reform brought about by social legislation
The second wave: the industrial revolution
• How did the Industrial Revolution change families?
 Factories needed workers, especially those willing to move from place to place when needed
 Thus, key functions of the family were relegated to institutions: (education and care for elderly)
• Streamline nuclear family
Beliefs of the second wave
• Nature as a resource to be exploited: man in opposition with nature and dominating it
• Humans as principle of evolution; industrialized societies as superior
• The Progress Principle: history flows irreversibly towards a better life.
• Biosphere cannot assimilate all wastes
• End of cheap energy
• End of cheap materials
• Disintegrative pressure within the system
THE CODE OF SECOND WAVE
• Standardization
• Specialization
• Synchronization
• Concentration of energy, money, and power.
• Maximization
• Centralization
THE HIDDEN POLITICAL STRUCTURE
• On the surface the political systems of different countries look unique. Underneath, their
structures are the same.
• Land is central to every system (a holdover from the First Wave).
• All elections are based on a geographic division, not on social class, occupation, or ethnic group.
• In every country, there is a universal set of components:
• Individuals armed with the vote.
• Parties for collecting the votes.
• Candidates who, when they win, become representatives of the voters.
• Legislatures (parliaments, diets, assemblies) in which representative manufacture laws by voting.
• Executives (presidents, prime ministers, party secretaries) who feed policies into the lawmaking
machine, and then enforce the resulting laws.
THE IMPERIAL DRIVE
 the drive for empire, for control over distant lands.
 the racist attitudes and prejudices which justified the domination of foreign lands--"the white man's
burden"
 The third wave: the information/knowledge age
• How has technology evolved?
• How has this affected our relationships with each other and with the environment?

Transitions in the third wave

• Integration of more functions into fewer parts
• Massification, standardization (2nd wave) vs Differentiation, customization (3rd Wave)
• For products as well as means of work (e.g. flexibility in terms of work arrangements)
• Value placed on multiple intelligences and competencies (and higher educational
attainment)
The new technologies of the Third Wave will bring:
• Diversified, renewable, energy sources. (Ex. -- bio-electronics, piezo-electronics, new computer
systems which shut everything down for nano-seconds between actual activity.)
• Methods of production which make factories and assembly lines obsolete.
 Third wave will be driven by two factors:
• the rise of dynamic new industries based on scientific breakthroughs: quantum
electronics, information theory, molecular biology, oceanic, nucleonics, ecology,
and the space sciences
• Enhanced manipulative abilities via computers, data processing, aerospace,
sophisticated petrochemicals, semiconductors, advanced communications, solid-
state physics, systems engineering, artificial intelligence, fuzzy logic, polymer
chemistry.
Transitions in the third wave
• “Prosumers” (producers are consumers and vice versa)
• Prosumers -“professional consumer” to meaning “product and brand advocate.”
• Do it yourselfers
How far have we come?
• “There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his
home.” Ken Olsen, President, DEC. 1977
• “640 KB ought to be enough for everybody” Bill gates, 1981
We have extended our capabilities and minimized our limitations
• The Third Wave brings with it a genuinely new way of life, based on diversified, renewable
energy sources; on methods of production that make most factory assembly lines
obsolete; on non-nuclear families… on radically changed schools and corporations of the
future.
• The emergent civilization write a new code of behavior for us and carries beyond
standardization, synchronization and centralization, beyond the concentration of energy,
money and power
This is what happening today…
• This new civilization … will topple bureaucracies, reduce the role of
the nation – state and give rise to semiautonomous economies in a
post imperialist world. It requires governments that are simplier,
more effective, yet more democratic … It is a civilization with its own
distinctive world outlook, its own ways of dealing with time, space,
logic and casuality.
Summing up…
• Technology
 Major force of social change
 Change in personal attitudes and beliefs
 Change in relationships
 A change in social structures
• Society
-TECHNOLOGY AS AN INDICATOR OF DEVELOPMENT

-TECHNOLOGY AUTONOMY IS THE CAPACITY TO DECIDE WHICH

TECHNOLOGY TO IMPORT AND DEVELOP – WHAT DETERMINES

+
TECHNOLGICAL AUTONOMY?
Well-established tech
infrastructure Trained manpower
(Universities, R&D)
Points for discussion
in your group, discuss and answer the
following questions. Select a someone to
present in the class.
• 1. How do the Waves of Technology relate to the concept of
“paradigm shifts”?
• 2. The “wavefront analysis” has shown how technology can be a
driving force for social change – but is that change always for the
better?
• 3. The “wavefront analysis” has shown how technology can be a
driving force for social change – but can a reverse happen as
well? Can social changes influence technological development?
How?
• 4. At what stage is the Philippines in terms of waves of
technology?
 DIMENSIONS OF NATIONAL S&T DEVELOPMENT...4
TYPES OF TECHNOLOGY FIRST WAVE TECHNOLOGIES
MATERIALS TECHNOLOGIES Copper, Bronze, Iron,
Ceramic
INSTRUMENT TECHNOLOGIES Plow, Saw, Spinning Wheel
ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES Firewood, Watermill,
Windmill
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES Printing Press, Pens, Books
MEDICAL TECHNOLOGIES Traditional Medicine
AGRICULTURAL TECHNOLOGIES Traditional Agriculture
MANUFACTURING Craft-Based and Guild
TECHNOLOGIES Manufacturing
MILITARY TECHNOLOGIES Sword-and-Shield, Bow-
and-Arrow
SECOND WAVE TECHNOLOGIES
Steel, Aluminum,
Petrochemicals
Engines, Motors, Machine Tools
Steam Engine, Turbogenerator
Typewriter, Radio, Telephone,
TV
Immunization, Modern Surgery
Mechanized Agriculture,
Green Revolution
Factory-Based, Mass Production Robotic Factories
Guns and Explosives, Tanks and
Airplanes
THIRD WAVE TECHNOLOGIES
Semiconductors, Composites
Lasers, Robots, Micromachines
Photovoltaics, Nuclear Fusion
Computers, Internet, Mobile
Phone
MRI, Biotech Medicine, Smart
Drugs
Biotech Agriculture, Precision
Smart Farming
Space Wars, Electronic Battlefield