Is Technology Neutral?
While the internet is at the center of many people’s lives and corporate entities’ operations, recent technological innovations have occurred in communication. Those innovations have positive and negative consequences as technology is the tool giving people a choice to use it.
The choice of how to use technology will always be present, given it does not have any capability of determining how it should be used or if it should be used in the first place as it plays the role of an application of scientific knowledge, with a biased purpose.
Technology itself is harmless and neutral, but what determines its effects is mainly how people use it, be it neutral or not neutral. On the social aspect, the application of technology is known to downgrade people.
While technologically advanced equipment creates a feeling of superiority for some people, differences in technology can also make some people feel out of place in given situations. For example, the usage of internet to update phones to enable seamless communication both internally among employees and externally with customers. Once the fact that a specific company has the ability to spend money on a given update for its software while another has not the ability, superiority comes in between.
Each technological development has a primary function that it aims to fulfill such as governance, infrastructure, network contingencies, communication amongst others. However, technology can have many uses or aspects depending on how one looks at it; for example.
As a result, even though the technology is used for a noble cause, it can have negative consequences such as resource shortage, pollution, and ecosystem change. These unfavorable consequences may affect people directly or indirectly, but the only contradiction is that its use is continuous even after it is uncovered that it has adverse side effects.
Socially, technology adoption had many alarming consequences on people, such as losing jobs due to automation. When institutions adopt computers or robots, many people lose their livelihood, although this may improve productivity in the institutions.
In some cases, technological innovation can be used for the good and bad of many people. Therefore, it results from the multi-functionality of technological innovations, meaning one technology can have multiple tasks which can benefit a group of people or harm them depending on how it is used.
It is worth mentioning that the U.S. broadband industry ended in May 2022 its legal challenge to California’s landmark net neutrality law, which seeks to protect the open internet. In parallel, business organizations have been using technology connected through internet as a primary tool to facilitate the communication process. From that aspect, it can be easily identified how technology can be used for different purposes; having good results after using a given technology can also cause disasters especially when another provided functionality is exploited.
Each technological innovation is usually adaptable within limits, and thus one technology becomes applicable for different purposes. The use and adoption of technology affects material things and social organizations and redefines social structures, as in how people interact and interrelate with each other.
Nowadays, technology’s usage is known to adjust value structures in societies. Let us take motor technology for instance. It led to people not having to stay in the same village because they could quickly move around and meet each other. In today’s digital social ecosystem, social networks on the internet transformed the public sphere or the general meaning of private space. While personal space traditionally meant one’s room or away in the woods, people these days create secret places in cyberspace.
New technology opens up business space and by doing so, it is creating numerous business opportunities. Technological changes affect organizations depending on their response to the change. If they respond correctly, technological innovations provide an opportunity for carving out a competitive advantage.
If the response is poor, organizational resources become redundant, and the company must invest heavily in new technology as it tries to catch up. Generally, technology change often means more costs for the organization, but it usually pays off in the long run.
Summary
Technology is neutral; there is no doubt about that, but the only determiner of its subliminal intentions is how we use it, what the end goal is, and the purpose of any technological implementation in a business or even for personal use.
While it is true that technology is neutral, one cannot ignore that the actual value of technology is associated with the intentions behind its usage. It is essential to consider all the effects or consequences of a given action before making a move when riding the wave of digital transformation. If people applied technology with enough constraints, technology would continue to serve humanity.
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