Effects of culture and technology synergy today by Jarábik Barbara : As read in Implications of Changing Cultural Values by Eldon E. Snyder. It says that sociocultural values don’t only represent ideals and goals that people in a society strive to achieve. But it also selects the means that are used to achieve these goals and ideals. In addition, it is stated that “from the standpoint of society, cultural values function as ideals that orient the activities within and between social institutions. Thus, to properly understand the functioning of the family, or political, religious, economic, and educational institutions within society requires an analysis of sociocultural values.”
Technology and society or technology and culture refers to cyclical co-dependence, co-influence, co-production of technology and society upon the other (technology upon culture and vice-versa). This synergistic relationship occurred from the dawn of the humankind, with the invention of simple tools and continues into modern technologies such as printing press and computers. It has always been a matter of topic whether technology is boon or bane for the society. The impact of technology on our culture, tradition and social values is undoubtedly huge and classified as how it effects our society today and how it influence human activities.
In some cultures (African and South Asian), they have a tradition in which people meet and discuss the various factors like visions, dreams and things which influence their day-to-day activities like economics, social and political factors (Zamora, 1990), but in the end of the meetings generally, it was observed that people come up with ideas, but they did not see how these ideas could be implemented. They took mobile phone cameras and documented various stories, traditions and cultural aspects that they were experiencing collectively, later they collectively watch these videos to inspire each others, slowly this use of the technology got spread and people started using the mobile phone cameras to document abuses and by this, they collectively rallied around issues which were documented by the use of such a technology which in social sciences is referred as “collectively call for collective action from below” (Olson, 1965). In this case technology found a new meaning, but to do this you need to trust communities, cultures & traditions.
Socio-Culture is a focus of study in anthropology. The term is a combination of society and their cultural aspects. Every society has a set of values, beliefs, traditions, and habits known as their sociocultural values. These values shape how people engage and interact with their environment in everyday life. They are inherited and passed from a generation to another. Although the sociocultural values are bounded, they can be changed and influenced by the development and creations of each era. Just like the development and use of technology in our modern era has radically influenced our socio-culture. Read more details on Barbara Jarabik.
In most of the cultures riding a horse used to be a sign of pride, tradition, ease of transport (Clutton-Brock, 1992) but with the advent of the motor engine slowly we see how there is a progress in the integration of technology. In future, the role of technology would not only be to replicate the needs of a culture, but also choose parts from various cultures, integrate them and create a new model of foundation for a future technology. In some of the cultures meeting a person in person was considered to be the right way of communicating, but we observe that nowadays technology has integrated and slowly, people have started adapting different other means of communication like mobile phones, video conferencing etc.