Technology and our culture

The government has long planned to build a nuclear reactor in Central Java. The plan has stirred some discussions and an unprecedented public debate is on the government's agenda. Noted sociologist Ignas Kleden outlines the relationship between society and the application of technology in a developing country.

JAKARTA (JP): Technology plays a decisive role in the development of modern society. This role has developed to the extent that modern society is sometimes believed to risk technicalizing social and cultural life.

At a certain point technology stops being technical and becomes social and cultural. This change takes place when technology is applied.

Technology is not applied in a social or cultural vacuum, but in a cultural system and within a social structure. From a cultural point of view, the introduction of technology into a social structure will engender shifts at the material base of society. The shift can change consumptive habits and productive patterns.

Sociologically, using technology which serves the consumptive patterns is easier for two reasons.

Firstly, new consumptive patterns take less learning than new production process. To drive a new car is much easier than to design a new engine. To buy brown bread is much easier than to produce it.

Secondly, the introduction of new consumptive patterns does not, in most cases, exert a direct influence upon the existing social structure. If we want to consume new rice by importing it from Thailand, this will not bring about many shifts in the social structure. If we want to cultivate a new type of rice, agricultural technology, ground preparation, harvesting techniques and even harvest agreements must change. This necessitates a new division of labor and new allocation of agricultural produce. It therefore changes society.

However, the relationship between technology and society lies not only in the impact the experts have upon the latter but also in the sociocultural conditions which fit the application of technology. Introducing a new culture into a society will get different responses, depending on how far the new culture is perceived. Is it perceived as a continuation or the extension of the existing culture or a discontinuation or a rupture with it?

Theoretically, the more a new culture is seen as a continuation of the existing culture, the more the participants are willing to accept the new development. The more the new influence is at odds with the existing culture, the more likely it becomes that the people will resist.

This is the reason why it is so important to use traditional symbols and traditional semantics when introducing modern technology. One reason the birth control program is so successful in Indonesia is because the new technology for family planning is introduced and conveyed through traditional semantics. It relates modern contraceptive technology to traditional habits. Prof. Haryono Suyono had a good point at a recent gathering with social scientists in Yogyakarta at a seminar celebrating the 80th birthday of Prof. Selo Soemardjan. He said that the success of the birth-control program in Indonesia is a success for applied sociology.

However, precisely at this juncture, we are faced with the ambivalent workings of technology. The meeting of traditional semantics or traditional symbols with modern technology can result in two different situations.

First, the application of technology can bring about social changes which bring people better lives or more problems. Air conditioners, for example, make the working condition in offices more comfortable, but, in the long run, they will contribute to the worsening of ozone conditions which are so dangerous to the sustenance of life on earth.

Second, the workings of technology depend very much on whether or not the sociocultural conditions are susceptible or supportive of the applied technology. Modern printers and computerized printing technology are a very big technological achievement. However, whether or not the application of this kind of technology helps promote reading depends very much on whether or not writing is treated as a proper substitute for the oral tradition. It also depends on whether a society relies more on oral sources than written sources.

If we look at the bus station and railway stations in Jakarta, we are struck by the fact that there is very little written information about where to go, which buses or trains to take, when they depart and what platform to go to. The information can be obtained only if one asks other passengers or the officials, if they happen to be around. In other words, if the society is still an oral society, the application of sophisticated printing technology will not help much.

Sociologically, technology is a specific way to organize and apply knowledge and discipline. The amount of expertise and discipline required are directly proportional to the level of technological sophistication. This implies: The more simple the technology, the more errors that are tolerable. The higher the technology, the fewer errors that are tolerable.

This is quite easy to understand. If something is out of order in our car, we can stop and try to repair it. But if something is out order on a plane, this is much more serious and dangerous, because passengers' lives are at stake.

In other words, the capacity to apply high-tech is measured against rather negative criterion. The success of its application is not seen in terms of the ability to deal with technological sophistication, but rather the capacity to reduce or even eliminate error. The reason for this is that high-tech, like a nuclear plant, is laden with high risk. This implies that the benefit brought by such technology is accompanied by possible disasters enormously greater than the expected benefit if human error gets out of control.

The problem which makes technology socioculturally dependent is that human error is due not only to a lack of expertise, but also a lack of discipline. Expertise is a technical matter which should be attributed to technicians. Expertise is something which people outside the experts's community have very little to say about.

Discipline, however, is a social matter which has its root in the mental life of the whole society. The discipline of individuals depends very much on the discipline of their society. This is the very reason why we cannot assume that technologists behave according to a certain discipline entirely different from their society. Those who are not used to the rules of traffic or who are not accustomed to punctuality will very likely breach the professional discipline necessitated by their job.

One can safely say that technology is a sociocultural matter as far as work ethos and discipline are concerned. In that sense, technology cannot be treated as something which can simply be transferred from outside and superimposed upon society. In western countries, technology is a phenomenon of a certain stage of social development which is characterized by philosophical rationalism and the flowering of a scientific mentality.

There is a basic relationship between general sociocultural development and the flowering of technology. Of course one can push for technology development without taking society into account. But this will result in technology developing without society, as was the case in countries of the former socialist block. There, a very big share of social product was allocated to the war industry at the expense of the welfare of the people.

Ironically, liberal ideals were initially ingrained in the creation of technology to alleviate life's burdens. But this is superseded by the conservative purposes of technology which ignore the welfare of the society.

Besides that, we forget that technology is nothing but an extension of human beings. Computers are an extension of human beings as thinking animals just as nuclear weapons are the extension of human beings as killing animals. In that case, technology has no moral or political priority. These priorities must be set by serious and critical deliberations among those who want to develop or to apply it. Technology can be the extension of human inclinations and human capacities, whether morally good or bad, politically beneficial or socially disastrous.

To put it more philosophically, the choice to use one sort of technology is not only a technical act but also a political and moral act. The choice is made on the basis of certain values which are by no means merely technical. Economic progress, political security and national pride are some value considerations which play a very important role in the selection and application of technology.

The selection of technology should be subjected to a political and public debate for the simple reason that Indonesians have the right to know what benefits to expect, what economic and social cost must be paid, and what risk is run. Many risks are not yet proven, but if we wait until we have some evidence, it will certainly be too late. With the evidence comes disaster.

The writer now works with the Jakarta-based SPES Foundation Research Center.

Window A: The problem which makes technology socioculturally dependent is that human error is due not only to a lack of expertise, but also a lack of discipline.

Window B: To put it more philosophically, the choice to use one sort of technology is not only a technical act but also a political and moral act.