Issues With Technology

7 Key excerpts on "Issues With Technology"

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  eBook - ePub

  The Routledge Handbook of Social Work Ethics and Values

  • Stephen Marson, Robert McKinney, Jr., Stephen M. Marson, Robert E. McKinney, Jr.(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Section IX Technological issues Passage contains an image

  32

  Ethical social work practice in the technological era

  Jim Gough and Elaine Spencer

  Introduction

  Societies across the globe have advanced because of the efficient and reliable technologies designed to solve problems or specific practical issues. Social work practice is immersed in these technologies. So, we need to pay critical attention at the micro and macro level to the ongoing and changing effects of technology, impacting the nature of everyone’s lived experience. Technologies can be things, instrumental objects, like computers or automobiles, or processes/programs like software programs or internet interaction apps, sites, and applications. Technology provides valuable health care options, social options, and our existence in the world. It takes knowledge from science/practical skills and uses it to improve the application of social functions, like communication, transportation, and health. The ethical focus is: whether it is value-neutral, whether it is politically/legally controlled by government or others to exercise power ove r us or empower us , liberating our open, expressive possibilities or alienating us from them, whether technology changes itself or because of external influences, remains true to its original instrument purpose which effects our concerns for equality, confidentiality, personal integrity, and privacy. We consider positive and negative aspects impacting, influencing, and transforming social work practice everywhere.

  The history and progression of technology

  Throughout humankind’s recorded history, technologies have played a role in the shaping of our societies and the individuals with them. Technologies have enabled us to live better and survive longer as they help us to use our resources in soil, water, and tools better, more effectively and efficiently. The progress of society is in large part due to our ability to collectively adapt our existence to the environment using the instruments provided by technologies.

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  Macro Social Work Practice

  Advocacy in Action

  • Carolyn J. Tice, Dennis D. Long, Lisa E. Cox(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  Unfortunately, there is a dearth of empirical research on how technology can influence social work practice and policy (Ceranoglu, 2010). The need for research to inform the use of technology in practice and policy is but one issue that the social work profession must address as we move further ahead in the application of technology to practice. Other issues to consider are as follows:

  1. Ensuring that social work students are kept abreast of technological advances through their courses and field education enrollment
  2. Encouraging social work faculty to gain competency in technology and to maintain a skill set in the area
  3. Advocating for structural support for and student, staff, and faculty training in technology at colleges and universities
  4. Supporting local, state, and federal funding sources to conduct research on the efficiency and effectiveness of various types of technology in relationship to the common good of all
  5. Establishing interdisciplinary working relationships with programming and technology companies to offer input on how and why computer platforms and devices are creative
  6. Participating and involving consumers on boards of programming and technology companies to provide input on design, research, and product distribution feedback
  7. Funding innovation in technology in schools of social work, agencies, and community organizations so as to enhance the ability for intersectionality of technological tools across systems
  8. Advocating for universal Internet to ensure that all people and communities have access to technology in an equal fashion
  9. Introducing technology to children early in school settings across all sectors of society along with accompanying ethical standards
  10. Networking with the local, state, and federal political structures in such a way that elected officials are readily available to communicate across all systems and with all segments of the population
  11. Advocating for robust federal privacy policies and regulatory standards of enforcement

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  The Societal Impact of Technology

  • Savvas A. Katsikides(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  8Critical Issues for the Domains of an Information Society

  Part One

  Though this chapter will focus on different issues of information society, from a critical point of view, it is essential to recall some thoughts from chapter two and chapter four in order to outline theory and empirical evidence.

  Chapter two has attempted to show that there is a variety of theoretical issues which can be directed to mainstream sociology of technology. One common understanding which derives from the research in the field reveals that most sociological studies on technology use the comparative method, and the remaining surveys apply to the field of technology assessment. We have argued that technology reflects the synergy of power and societal processes, and these must be analyzed under the foci of sociology of science or even of the emerging sociology of information. While sociology of information should address a variety of theoretical perspectives that can be directed towards the social phenomenon of information, they alone do not give sufficient insight into the nature of information either as an object of disciplinary discourse or as an object of nature (Balnaves 1993:108).

  The emerging approach is that an entirely new concept is required and that there is a vital need for improved analysis with respect to the assessment of technological issues. It can be argued that theoretical considerations have to be linked with practical methodology in order to evaluate technological and societal issues, because different sets of complexities exist between the cultural and the operational aspects of the functional role of technology. However the issue here is more complex, and the argument can be summarized as follows. The first problem relates to methodology, where it is clear that a global approach, whether theoretical or empirical, reaches its limits very quickly. The second problem is a more general issue that refers to all the social sciences: a common direction to resolve common social phenomena is lacking. Thirdly, it can be argued that a new approach is needed, which would focus on a detailed evaluation and provide a synthesis of all the intervening variables involved in the technological discussion. One example of such an approach is the ARS model (Katsikides 1994). Finally, technological developments, like other social, economic, and technical approaches, are not socially neutral, and in the end they deal with different traditions (European, US, Scandinavian, Japanese, etc.). As such they accumulate social processes and reflect them, or, as Thomas Kuhn (1970) put it ‘a failure to assimilate fully new conditions and technology will strain the existing structures’ of society. Existing structures means the certain sociopolitical and economic span will continue in a sense to construct the system, where modernization has a long way to go. If we can see technology as a social phenomenon, by terms of sociological analysis and as such determined, then is socially constructed, this however, is definitively a case of socialization and thereby could be socially ‘taught and learned’. Chapter two ends with questions that could make people rethink their choices concerning technological change and problem solving.

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  The Global Information Society

  • William J. Martin(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  In an age when computerization will continue to be a pervasive presence, the impact of technological change will not yield readily to generalized interpretations of a black and white nature. Different people, different workplaces and organizations will respond in different and unpredictable fashion to the application of similar technologies and systems. Indeed, to really begin to understand the social impact of information and communications technology, it is necessary to look first at the organizational and social settings into which these technologies are to be deployed. Issues of gender, and the occupational structures into which women workers tend to be locked are, for example, critical to the control and organization of work, most notably in white collar occupations.

  Other controversial dimensions relate to the use of computers for group supported work, either in the office or by means of teleworking, and for monitoring and measuring employee performance. This embraces the critical issue of the impact of new technology on the skills of employees, an aspect where both deskilling and upskilling can occur depending upon a wide variety of factors including the job, the employee, the workplace and the specific technology in use. Undoubtedly, the introduction of all such systems and particularly information systems, must be approached from the perspective of social design, which embraces the opinions and values of eventual users of the system, and which embodies recognition of the importance of the human and social infrastructure to the successful operation of any new system.

  29

  One area in which there is now growing interest is that which concerns the relationship between work time and leisure time. Several forecasters are predicting that the eventual outcome of current technological change will be a reduction of employment levels in all sectors of the economy, in white collar as well as blue collar occupations.

  29

  The more imaginative forecasters anticipate new arrangements for work organization such that society can be organized to leave time for individual autonomous activities consequent on a reduction of the time needed to be spent on the job and a sharing of socially necessary work among the greatest number of people.

  30

  Exactly what such arrangements would be and how they would be funded, remains unclear. Moreover, if modern societies are to abandon or, at least, seriously modify their attitudes to the work ethic, there will need to be major social and cultural adjustments for which little precedent exists.

  30

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  Social Work and Social Policy

  Advancing the Principles of Economic and Social Justice

  • Ira C. Colby, Catherine N. Dulmus, Karen M. Sowers(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  So, where we will be in 2022 with technology and social policy is difficult to say with certainty, but it surely will be a different place than where we are today. In 1990, few people could even imagine the scope of change that would result in our communities because of technologies. No matter how technology continues to evolve and change our work habits and interpersonal relationship styles, the social work profession must keep social justice clearly in mind to build, form, and guide all types of social policies and interactions.

  Key Terms

  • technology and social policy
  • social justice
  • anywhere access
  • globalization and technology
  • information access and authenticity
  • social media

  Review Questions for Critical Thinking

  1. What are the positive benefits of technology's influences on social work practice, both clinical and macro?
  2. What are the negative attributes of technology's influences on social work practice, both clinical and macro?
  3. Why do people feel they must be connected 24/7?
  4. How will technology influence social policy, and will social justice be any more attainable than it is today?
  5. Will the results of technology's influence on globalization make the achievement of social justice more possible, or will we see increased discrepancies and injustices? In other words, is the world really flat or are the mountains getting taller and the valleys deeper?

  Online Resources

  1. Online Social Justice: www.onlinesocialjustice.com/sites-on-the-web/
  2. Center for Medical Simulation: www.harvardmedsim.org/
  3. Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technology: www.ieet.org/
  4. Virtual Reality Medical Institute: www.vrphobia.eu/
  5. Online Therapy Institute: www.onlinetherapyinstitute.com/

  References

  Another Voice (The Philadelphia Inquirer). (March 31, 2012). Passwords and privacy, editorial in Houston Chronicle, p. B-6.

  Better Business Bureau. (2005). Retrieved on March 2, 2007, from http://www.bbbonline.org/idtheft/consumers.asp

  Bok, D. (2006). Our underachieving colleges: A candid look at how much students learn and why they should be learning more. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

  Cohen, R. (March 11, 2007). Retrieved on March 13, 2007, from www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/magazine/11wwlnethicist.t.html?_r=1

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  Technological Change

  • Clotilde Coron, Patrick Gibert(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-ISTE

    (Publisher)

  1 The Human and Social Sciences in the Face of Technological Change

  Discourses on technological change are numerous and do not owe everything to social scientists. Engineers as well as merchants, philanthropists as well as intellectuals, have a point of view on the subject. Crossed by multiple conceptions, these discourses sometimes intersect and merge.

  In order to disentangle this and to reflect the diversity of approaches, this chapter focuses firstly (section 1.1 ) on their summative presentation, concluding with the presentation of the anthropotechnical perspective, which shows the interdependence between technical and social factors. Inspired by this perspective, the second section examines the long history of technological change and its most recent developments (section 1.2 ).

  1.1. Approaches to technological change

  We will approach our subject according to the postulated relationship between technology and society. Technical historians have wondered whether inventions are inevitable, whether the machine makes history. But economists, on the other hand, have wondered whether it was not rather social demand that led to innovation. Sociologists have also questioned the relationship between technical innovation and social transformations. Philosophers have often been critical, but sometimes also adopted the cause of technophiles.

  Following Vinck (1995), it should be noted that technology and society have generally been thought of as two distinct spheres, one of which influences the other. In relation to this conception, in a first approach, technology is seen as exerting its influence on the social sphere, which is what is referred to as technological determinism (section 1.1.1 ). The opposite approach assumes that the influence of society is exerted on the technology, what Vinck calls “social constructivism” (section 1.1.2 ). A third approach, with which we will agree, postulates the mutual influence of technical and social aspects, or even the fusion of technical and social ingredients (section 1.1.3

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  Understanding Digital Events

  Bergson, Whitehead, and the Experience of the Digital

  • David Kreps(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  During the past decades, philosophers of technology have offered theoretical tools that enable us to conceptualize a significant part of the phenomenology of these digital-technological experiences and practices. For example, so-called postphenomenology has shown how technologies mediate our relation (perception and action) to the world in various ways (Ihde 1990; Verbeek 2005). In critical theory Feenberg (2010) has argued that use of technologies is not just a matter of technological rationality and what designers do and intend, but also depends on users and their experience and ways of adapting the technology. And science and technology studies have viewed technologies as part of the social life: as part of networks of humans and non-humans (Latour 1993).

  These perspectives offer a fruitful way of looking at what digital technologies do to our lives. For example, they enable us to describe how digital technologies such as smartphones become increasingly extensions of ourselves, not literally, but hermeneutically and existentially: as they become more embodied and take up a hermeneutic role, they have become part of our way of looking at the world and indeed part of our world. We also become very dependent upon them. Like other technologies, they shape our existential vulnerability (Coeckelbergh 2013). Furthermore, current digital technologies can also give a potentially large role to users. The technologies also have many consequences that are unintended by their developers or users; they are not neutral instruments. For example, some authors argue that our personal and social relationships have changed due to the smart-phone and computing technology (e.g. Turkle 2011, 2015). And smart digital technologies (consider digital assistants) increasingly participate in what seems a world where not only humans but also things speak, this time literally.

  What is often missing from such analyses of our digital existence, however, is the social and especially the temporal dimension of our lives and existence with technology. Our experience and use takes place in time, and connects to the temporal and narrative dimension of human (social) existence. In existentialist philosophy, this dimension has been analyzed by philosophers such as Heidegger (1927) and Ricœur (1983), and in metaphysics the temporal dimension has been highlighted by process philosophers such as Whitehead, Bergson, Peirce, and James (and in ancient times Heraclitus). But in contemporary philosophy of technology, not much has been done with these insights.

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