Society & Technology: Adaptation
Part 3 of 3 where I look at how societies become aware of and then adapt a technology, after which a technology becomes boring and very interesting.
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 schools, to legislation and regulations at national levels.
“Technological change is neither additive nor subtractive. It is ecological… A new technology does not add or subtract something. It changes everything.”
— Neil Postman, Anthropologist
Most significantly however, is that culture then changes the technologies in deeper and meaningful ways.
What Happens in the Adaptation Phase
As thinker Marshall McLuhan, sociologists and anthropologists have pointed out, along with some prescient futurists, when a revolutionary technology comes along, it changes us. What I believe they’ve overlooked is that then society and culture, ultimately change the technology. A process of symbiotic adaptation.
This is what happens in the adaptation phase. In our modern capitalism model the most notable changes are often economic, but that is a byproduct of how other elements of culture react. Remembering that culture is not just art, music and literature, that is the aesthetic element of culture. Also included in culture is economic and political systems, militaries, societal governance, norms, traditions and behaviours.
One example is the smartphone. The Blackberry, that beloved device with the physical keyboard, was the opener for the iPhone and all subsequent touch-screen mobiles. Smartphones changed how we accessed, interacted with the internet and how we communicated with one another. It changed societies around the world in largely beneficial ways.
In the early days of mass availability of cell phones, we walked around jabbering very loudly, answering calls in ways we would no longer dare (such as in meetings or meals) so everyone knew that hey, I could afford a phone. It was a social signal.
As Blackberry’s came along and the phones got smaller, Motorola StarTak and Nokia, a new technology was added, Bluetooth. The author got to see a prototype version at Ericsson’s R&D facility in Uppsala, Sweden in 1998. Bluetooth lead to those ear mics with blue flashing lights, which were another social signal.
As we became aware of how cell phones were changing society, such as social behaviours and then distracted driving, we moved into an evaluation phase. How did culture want to deal with the way mobiles disrupted social norms? How do we stop or deal with driving while using these devices? Which became worse with smartphones. The cultural tool applied here was Rule of Law.
Over a period of about a decade, social etiquette came into play with the behaviours around mobile devices. Gradually, it became rude to answer your phone at a dinner, on a date or some special event. Slowly, those headphone mics with the blinking blue lights disappeared. A little later, we no longer clipped phones to our belts and pursed and we stuck them in pockets. We do now see wireless earbuds and sometimes wired headphones.
A clear signal of this is fashion, an aesthetic aspect of culture, are coats and jackets, blazers and suits including a larger breast pocket for phones. Backpacks had holes and pockets for smartphones. Auto makers included Bluetooth. These are social adaptations that impact the technology and society.
A technology adaptation made by smartphone makers was to remove the notification light that most every mobile had to tell you when there were messages. It was considered socially obtrusive. Also, with so many communications channels, notifications could no longer be distinguished between a message and an incoming call. But it was largely a social adaptation.
In the adaptation phase, society starts to make decisions and take action on a technology. Society does this by using cultural aspects, all of which are some sort of mass action, group think at scale and on steroids if you will. There are academic ways of describing this that would make this article about 10 minutes longer. You get the idea.
These cultural actions can be the imposing of laws and regulations, taxes and other requirements like by-laws in cities (e.g. creating transit lights for buses.) Social movements are often used to pressure politicians into enacting laws. Industry lobbyists try to affect laws they feel may hurt the economic interest of their clients. It’s effective. Up to a point. Lobbyists rarely win against broader societal interests in the long term. In democracies anyway.
Although sometimes more sophisticated autocracies can react in unusual ways to technology adaptation. China imposed strict regulations around children’s use of video games, even creating addiction treatment camps, And surprisingly robust privacy laws. Although the Chinese State is quite fine surveilling its citizens.
Another way that culture affects changes on a technology is through play. We start playing with technologies even in the awareness phase, but it becomes more prolific and profound in the evaluation phase. Usually, this is when we combine technologies in interesting ways. Such as being able to sync smartphones with our tablets and laptops, using smartphones to start or unlock or even summon our cars.
A Signal of Technology Maturity
If a technology reaches the evaluation phase, it is more likely to become sustainable and successful in societal and economic terms. Two monolithic technology research and advisory firms, Forrester and Gartner have what they call the wave and hype cycle respectively. They are very useful and informative, but are largely just economic indicators, they aren’t societal indicators. Yet they are important.
“Technological change is neither additive nor subtractive. It is ecological… A new technology does not add or subtract something. It changes everything.”
— Dr. Sertag Koshafian, Cultural Anthropologist
Any economic success of a technology is predicated on sociocultural activities far and above and more impactful than just economic indicators. A business may spend hundreds of millions marketing a technology product, but if culture ultimately doesn’t want it, it will fail. In economic terminology this is called the invisible hand. On which I’ve written before.
We may well be entering the maturity phase of social media and we are in the tail end of evaluation phase. This is indicated by all the law suits being aimed at social media platforms and governments in some cases banning certain platforms from use within their bureaucracies and in some cases, putting age limitations in place.
Part of the societal challenge today is that, unlike ever before in human history, we have multiple revolutionary technologies placing pressures on established sociocultural systems all at once. These include genetic engineering, biotechnology, blockchain, Generative Artificial Intelligence, drones, robots and data analytics. They’re all in various stages of awareness, evaluation and adaptation.
What’s Next? It’s Boring. That’s Interesting.
As I mentioned before, it’s when technologies become broadly accepted and are deeply embedded across multiple facets of societies, essentially becoming invisible, is when they get really interesting. As tensions become more obvious in the adaptation phase and changes are made to the technology, interesting things start to happen. Technologies become proven with viable uses in economic terms and for human societies as a whole.
What’s next is that technologies become rather boring. They’re just, well, there. They have become useful to our daily lives. Cars have become rather comfy, have lots of things that go beep and boop and are much safer than ever before. Because they became boring.
More on the boring stuff later, because, from a sociocultural perspective, that’s arguably more interesting than when a revolutionary technology comes into society.