本文主要略论的是技术变革和文化变迁的关系的范文。随着现在科学技术的不断发展进步，技术是不断饿发展和进步，人们也不断的实现更多的新物品。技术的变革虽然一方面上会有一点的弊端，但利远远是大过于弊。
Introduction
Increasingly popular is the calling that media technology is new and therefore everything has changed and larger and larger is the number of human beings that wonder whether it has actually changed and in whatever ways it has changed in reality, nowadays it has been an inevitable trend to explore the relationship between technological change and cultural change through critically examining the relationship between “old” and “new” media technologies and their associated cultural practices. Therefore this project will develop an academic argument about the relationship between technological change and cultural change, from my own point of view, based on a comparative analysis of "A contemporary media technology/media form and historical media technology/ media form." The two media technologies/ media forms I chose are Facebook and the telegraph. Moreover, the comparative analysis must be supported by academic arguments as stated in the above, during which it will as well develop an argument about the facilitated content and cultural practices on a broader scale including an examination and comparative analysis of cultural practices for people engaged in Facebook and the telegraph.
It is significantly important to examine the relationship between Facebook and the telegraph and the cultural practices development around their use in that the society has absolutely changed from 19s till now and human beings rely more and more on technology nowadays. And it can be easily to predict that there exist both convenience and problems created by the innovations of technology. What are the problems produced from technological change and cultural change?
Argumentations
First and foremost comes that the cultural interaction with modern technology Facebook can contribute to the provision of more innovative ways of communication and a socio-cultural pattern as can not be realized through the historical technology telegraph. In comparison with the past, two changes are open and obvious: first, in the media form (content) and second, in the technology (how this content is delivered to the target audience). Therefore there will accordingly be two forms of influence to the cultural practices. Detailed speaking, the changes of the media form can make human beings carry out cultural practices in a more modern way so as to increase the efficiency of human beings to a certain degree. In this way, human beings can learn the cultural knowledge quicker and better with the help of the development of technology. Moreover, the changes of the manner of how the content is delivered to the target audiences can make the cultural practices easier to be implemented so as to involve as many people as possible. If it is in the long run, then it can be predicted that culture can be quicker developed due to the cultural improvement of each and every person concerned. And the more advanced the technology is, the quicker the culture can develop in an unprecedented speed.
While the case will be quite different if it is for the historical telegraph technology, under which human beings can only keep in touch with the cultural knowledge in a much slower speed and can realize that with much time wasted. Thus we can imagine that the cultural development with the less-development technology will correspondingly tend to be slower more or less. After comparing the telegraph with Facebook, it can be found that Facebook had millions of users from the whole world making everything open and shared among people. It makes Facebook a ‘cold’ media because it provides not only textual information, but also shared pictorial and audio-visual content involving emotions of various kinds. Telegraph is ‘hot’ medium that only provides a single medium of information. The media technology and media form of Facebook differ with that of telegraph, and their socio-cultural effects vary differently (McLuhan 28-30).
Media form evolved with the advancing technology, modernism, consumerism and other socio-cultural changes. While media technology like Internet has connected the whole world and made easy access to news and people to people connection. Thus, all these factors have become more effective in changing our outlook and attitude, values and norms, thoughts and ideas about society and social life. From the above, we can know that the technological changes can exert impactions on the cultural changes through changing human beings’ inner thoughts, those abstract issues such as outlook to the world, outlook on life, sense of worth as well as other invisible changes like that. It is a common sense that those aforementioned abstract feelings and thoughts are closely related with the cultural aspects so that their changes can be justified for the cultural changes to a large extent.
Media is associated with the medium of the word, of which he says, “Something that is intermediate between two degrees, amounts, qualities, or classes; a middle state” (McLuhan 13). To put it more specifically, contemporary media form Facebook can with the best efficiency provide whatever human beings need for the acquirement of the cultural knowledge so that human beings can later on learn it to the best of their ability with their personal needs satisfied. Facebook is so developed that it can bridge the gap among people from different countries all around the world and can in the meanwhile connect them closer and closer through the increase of cultural communications and exchanges. There is no doubt that the increase of cultural communications and exchanges can further speed up the process of cultural development by continuously draw lessons from other countries as for the feasible solutions that can be applied for the cultural development. It is the best state if it can take full advantage of the advantages and at the same time bypass the disadvantages of both its own country together with that of other countries. Though it may be hard or simply impossible to realize through personal efforts, it still needs to be tried so that it can be dealt with step by step in the end.
Herbert Marshall McLuhan (1994) elaborates that human beings create the world and its tool in their image and everything that is developed is the result of human endeavors to create something that could aid their senses and abilities (McLuhan 4). Thus, the media is also once such human innovation to extend its physical and mental capacity to give and take messages. The technological development can make it possible for human beings to extent both its physical and mental capacity so as to be endowed with greater possibility to engage themselves in the learning and developing of culture. Or maybe I can put it in another way that as long as human beings can adjust both their physical and mental capacity to the best state can they later on drown themselves in the atmosphere of picking up cultural knowledge for mastering it at last with their personal potential put to the full play. So the technological changes can lead to the cultural changes in that it can lead to the changes of human beings’ physical and mental state as can later be applied in the study on the cultural knowledge.
Facebook and telegraph, like all other forms of media, aids human social abilities and interaction, psychological abilities and effects intellectual functions. Just like wheel is considered as an extension of the foot, similarly media can be considered as an extension of human nervous system and their senses. Human consciousness revolves around thoughts, ideas, and feelings, which are generated and affected by the nervous system. Media serves as an extension of these inner beliefs. Plainly, media is the extension of the human consciousness (Logan 82). That is to say, technological changes can be taken as the extensions for human beings to smooth their process of cultural learning and developing so as to make contributions to cultural changes quite easily. Or maybe it can be put in another way that technological changes can act as stepping stones for the realization of cultural changes as it can help meet the preconditions for the successful conduct of cultural changes. It is a common sense that the improvement in the technological form can to some degree indicate the improvement of the general situation of the whole group as will absolutely include the cultural aspects. It will take place as those factors are actually a whole as is swamped with mutual influence and mutual dependence in a way or another.
It is important to note that some theorists like McLuhan, were of the view that the content of the medium is not important at all. He proposed that it is the medium, such as Facebook, and the telegraph, that is more important as they can give the opportunity to the users to exchange messages and for other purposes as well. McLuhan explains that it is wrong to consider the media content important. He believes that it is the medium itself which influences human thought and ideas, i.e., change the human consciousness. Thus, he contends ‘medium becomes the message’ (determines its nature). However, such kind of opinion has only paid attention to part of the media so that it tends to be somewhat partial and needs further research to be carried out for making up its disadvantages in order to perfect it finally. So it calls for us to be extremely discreet to judge what is right and what is partial while reading the works of numerous authors with the achievement of the best outcome.
Another innovation of ‘Translations’ lead to popularity of media content, increased its users and followers, attracted greater audience, and all these changes lead to greater human consciousness. These media forms also necessitated translations as an inevitable in media. For example, in printed text before the digital texts were limited in circulation and readers and were more media form was more detailed when compared with the digital texts. Printed texts culture nurtured individualism and a sense of privacy. In contrast to printed texts, digital texts have changed the genre of writing. It has become more open and public. This part has referred to that the technological changes have influenced the cultural changes for both its followers and users through the influence as is exerted onto it by being influenced by its popularity.
The above is mainly concerned about the advantages that the technological changes can give to the cultural changes, what comes next at the list and what can not be neglected is the disadvantages as can be brought by the technological changes to the cultural changes. The technological changes will make human beings distract a lot from learning the cultural knowledge as they can not resist the temptation from the technological changes. Detailed speaking, technological changes will make it easier for human beings to get access to all kinds of entertainment activities and to keep in touch with more and more people so that it will rather difficult for them to concentrate on the boring cultural learning as in the past when there is no the link to those modern entertainment activities or equipments.
But what is reassured that the disadvantages are only a matter of self-control and can be conquered through personal persistence and insistence in the long term. That is to say, as long as human beings themselves can keep good control of their personal behaviors under whatever conditions, then the disadvantages of the technological changes can be retreated completely and will not cause any bad impact to any one of human beings. We can easily imagine that under this case, human beings can all share the advantages of technological changes and it can be really convenient for them to deal with the issues either small or large in the daily life so as to benefit their individual life to a certain degree in the long run. But such case may not be that easy if it is for those people that are with low sense of self-control, which may be that the cultural knowledge has been forgotten to the utmost and what they do are just enjoying the pleasure on hand without taking any regard of the cultural changes issues at that specific moment.
Conclusion
To sum up, the advantages of the technological changes outweigh the disadvantages of the technological changes to cultural changes. And what the great majority of human beings have to do is to try their best to take the best advantage of the advantages of it and in the meantime bypass the disadvantages of it, leading to the most effective application of technological changes to the cultural changes so as to benefit the whole world in the long run.
Works Cited
1.Barelka, Alexander J, Aand Eyaraj and Ryan G. Walinski. "Content Acceptance Model And New Media Technologies." Journal of Computer Information Systems (2017): 56-64. Print.
2.Boczkowski, Pablo Javier and Ignacio Siles. "Steps toward cosmopolitanism in the study of media technologies." Information, Communication & Society (2017): 560-571. Print.
3.Kane, Gerald C., et al. "What's Different About Social Media works? A Framework And Research Agenda." MIS Quarterly (2017): 275-304. Print.
4.Logan, Robert K. Understanding New Media: Extending Marshall McLuhan. Bern: Peter Lang, 2017. Print.
5.McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1994. Print.
6.Mora, Necla. "Media And Globalization." Electronic Journal of Social Sciences (2017): 242-251. Print.
7.Striphas, Ted. "The Internet of Words." Chronicle of Higher Education (2017): B11-B13. Print.
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