essays on technological revolution

Industrial Revolution and Technology

Whether it was mechanical inventions or new ways of doing old things, innovations powered the Industrial Revolution.

Social Studies, World History

Steam Engine Queens Mill

The use of steam-powered machines in cotton production pushed Britain’s economic development from 1750 to 1850. Built more than 100 years ago, this steam engine still powers the Queens Mill textile factory in Burnley, England, United Kingdom.

Photograph by Ashley Cooper

It has been said that the Industrial Revolution was the most profound revolution in human history, because of its sweeping impact on people’s daily lives. The term “industrial revolution” is a succinct catchphrase to describe a historical period, starting in 18th-century Great Britain, where the pace of change appeared to speed up. This acceleration in the processes of technical innovation brought about an array of new tools and machines. It also involved more subtle practical improvements in various fields affecting labor, production, and resource use. The word “technology” (which derives from the Greek word techne , meaning art or craft) encompasses both of these dimensions of innovation. The technological revolution, and that sense of ever-quickening change, began much earlier than the 18th century and has continued all the way to the present day. Perhaps what was most unique about the Industrial Revolution was its merger of technology with industry. Key inventions and innovations served to shape virtually every existing sector of human activity along industrial lines, while also creating many new industries. The following are some key examples of the forces driving change. Agriculture Western European farming methods had been improving gradually over the centuries. Several factors came together in 18th-century Britain to bring about a substantial increase in agricultural productivity. These included new types of equipment, such as the seed drill developed by Jethro Tull around 1701. Progress was also made in crop rotation and land use, soil health, development of new crop varieties, and animal husbandry . The result was a sustained increase in yields, capable of feeding a rapidly growing population with improved nutrition. The combination of factors also brought about a shift toward large-scale commercial farming, a trend that continued into the 19th century and later. Poorer peasants had a harder time making ends meet through traditional subsistence farming. The enclosure movement, which converted common-use pasture land into private property, contributed to this trend toward market-oriented agriculture. A great many rural workers and families were forced by circumstance to migrate to the cities to become industrial laborers. Energy Deforestation in England had led to a shortage of wood for lumber and fuel starting in the 16th century. The country’s transition to coal as a principal energy source was more or less complete by the end of the 17th century. The mining and distribution of coal set in motion some of the dynamics that led to Britain’s industrialization. The coal-fired steam engine was in many respects the decisive technology of the Industrial Revolution. Steam power was first applied to pump water out of coal mines. For centuries, windmills had been employed in the Netherlands for the roughly similar operation of draining low-lying flood plains. Wind was, and is, a readily available and renewable energy source, but its irregularity was considered a drawback. Water power was a more popular energy source for grinding grain and other types of mill work in most of preindustrial Europe. By the last quarter of the 18th century, however, thanks to the work of the Scottish engineer James Watt and his business partner Matthew Boulton, steam engines achieved a high level of efficiency and versatility in their design. They swiftly became the standard power supply for British, and, later, European industry. The steam engine turned the wheels of mechanized factory production. Its emergence freed manufacturers from the need to locate their factories on or near sources of water power. Large enterprises began to concentrate in rapidly growing industrial cities. Metallurgy In this time-honored craft, Britain’s wood shortage necessitated a switch from wood charcoal to coke, a coal product, in the smelting process. The substitute fuel eventually proved highly beneficial for iron production. Experimentation led to some other advances in metallurgical methods during the 18th century. For example, a certain type of furnace that separated the coal and kept it from contaminating the metal, and a process of “puddling” or stirring the molten iron, both made it possible to produce larger amounts of wrought iron. Wrought iron is more malleable than cast iron and therefore more suitable for fabricating machinery and other heavy industrial applications. Textiles The production of fabrics, especially cotton, was fundamental to Britain’s economic development between 1750 and 1850. Those are the years historians commonly use to bracket the Industrial Revolution. In this period, the organization of cotton production shifted from a small-scale cottage industry, in which rural families performed spinning and weaving tasks in their homes, to a large, mechanized, factory-based industry. The boom in productivity began with a few technical devices, including the spinning jenny, spinning mule, and power loom. First human, then water, and finally steam power were applied to operate power looms, carding machines, and other specialized equipment. Another well-known innovation was the cotton gin, invented in the United States in 1793. This device spurred an increase in cotton cultivation and export from U.S. slave states, a key British supplier. Chemicals This industry arose partly in response to the demand for improved bleaching solutions for cotton and other manufactured textiles. Other chemical research was motivated by the quest for artificial dyes, explosives, solvents , fertilizers, and medicines, including pharmaceuticals. In the second half of the 19th century, Germany became the world’s leader in industrial chemistry. Transportation Concurrent with the increased output of agricultural produce and manufactured goods arose the need for more efficient means of delivering these products to market. The first efforts toward this end in Europe involved constructing improved overland roads. Canals were dug in both Europe and North America to create maritime corridors between existing waterways. Steam engines were recognized as useful in locomotion, resulting in the emergence of the steamboat in the early 19th century. High-pressure steam engines also powered railroad locomotives, which operated in Britain after 1825. Railways spread rapidly across Europe and North America, extending to Asia in the latter half of the 19th century. Railroads became one of the world’s leading industries as they expanded the frontiers of industrial society.

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Related Resources

Technology over the long run: zoom out to see how dramatically the world can change within a lifetime

It is easy to underestimate how much the world can change within a lifetime. considering how dramatically the world has changed can help us see how different the world could be in a few years or decades..

Technology can change the world in ways that are unimaginable until they happen. Switching on an electric light would have been unimaginable for our medieval ancestors. In their childhood, our grandparents would have struggled to imagine a world connected by smartphones and the Internet.

Similarly, it is hard for us to imagine the arrival of all those technologies that will fundamentally change the world we are used to.

We can remind ourselves that our own future might look very different from the world today by looking back at how rapidly technology has changed our world in the past. That’s what this article is about.

One insight I take away from this long-term perspective is how unusual our time is. Technological change was extremely slow in the past – the technologies that our ancestors got used to in their childhood were still central to their lives in their old age. In stark contrast to those days, we live in a time of extraordinarily fast technological change. For recent generations, it was common for technologies that were unimaginable in their youth to become common later in life.

The long-run perspective on technological change

The big visualization offers a long-term perspective on the history of technology. 1

The timeline begins at the center of the spiral. The first use of stone tools, 3.4 million years ago, marks the beginning of this history of technology. 2 Each turn of the spiral represents 200,000 years of history. It took 2.4 million years – 12 turns of the spiral – for our ancestors to control fire and use it for cooking. 3

To be able to visualize the inventions in the more recent past – the last 12,000 years – I had to unroll the spiral. I needed more space to be able to show when agriculture, writing, and the wheel were invented. During this period, technological change was faster, but it was still relatively slow: several thousand years passed between each of these three inventions.

From 1800 onwards, I stretched out the timeline even further to show the many major inventions that rapidly followed one after the other.

The long-term perspective that this chart provides makes it clear just how unusually fast technological change is in our time.

You can use this visualization to see how technology developed in particular domains. Follow, for example, the history of communication: from writing to paper, to the printing press, to the telegraph, the telephone, the radio, all the way to the Internet and smartphones.

Or follow the rapid development of human flight. In 1903, the Wright brothers took the first flight in human history (they were in the air for less than a minute), and just 66 years later, we landed on the moon. Many people saw both within their lifetimes: the first plane and the moon landing.

This large visualization also highlights the wide range of technology’s impact on our lives. It includes extraordinarily beneficial innovations, such as the vaccine that allowed humanity to eradicate smallpox , and it includes terrible innovations, like the nuclear bombs that endanger the lives of all of us .

What will the next decades bring?

The red timeline reaches up to the present and then continues in green into the future. Many children born today, even without further increases in life expectancy, will live well into the 22nd century.

New vaccines, progress in clean, low-carbon energy, better cancer treatments – a range of future innovations could very much improve our living conditions and the environment around us. But, as I argue in a series of articles , there is one technology that could even more profoundly change our world: artificial intelligence (AI).

One reason why artificial intelligence is such an important innovation is that intelligence is the main driver of innovation itself. This fast-paced technological change could speed up even more if it’s driven not only by humanity’s intelligence but also by artificial intelligence. If this happens, the change currently stretched out over decades might happen within a very brief time span of just a year. Possibly even faster. 4

I think AI technology could have a fundamentally transformative impact on our world. In many ways, it is already changing our world, as I documented in this companion article . As this technology becomes more capable in the years and decades to come, it can give immense power to those who control it (and it poses the risk that it could escape our control entirely).

Such systems might seem hard to imagine today, but AI technology is advancing quickly. Many AI experts believe there is a real chance that human-level artificial intelligence will be developed within the next decades, as I documented in this article .

Technology will continue to change the world – we should all make sure that it changes it for the better

What is familiar to us today – photography, the radio, antibiotics, the Internet, or the International Space Station circling our planet – was unimaginable to our ancestors just a few generations ago. If your great-great-great grandparents could spend a week with you, they would be blown away by your everyday life.

What I take away from this history is that I will likely see technologies in my lifetime that appear unimaginable to me today.

In addition to this trend towards increasingly rapid innovation, there is a second long-run trend. Technology has become increasingly powerful. While our ancestors wielded stone tools, we are building globe-spanning AI systems and technologies that can edit our genes.

Because of the immense power that technology gives those who control it, there is little that is as important as the question of which technologies get developed during our lifetimes. Therefore, I think it is a mistake to leave the question about the future of technology to the technologists. Which technologies are controlled by whom is one of the most important political questions of our time because of the enormous power these technologies convey to those who control them.

We all should strive to gain the knowledge we need to contribute to an intelligent debate about the world we want to live in. To a large part, this means gaining knowledge and wisdom on the question of which technologies we want.

Acknowledgments: I would like to thank my colleagues Hannah Ritchie, Bastian Herre, Natasha Ahuja, Edouard Mathieu, Daniel Bachler, Charlie Giattino, and Pablo Rosado for their helpful comments on drafts of this essay and the visualization. Thanks also to Lizka Vaintrob and Ben Clifford for the conversation that initiated this visualization.

Appendix: About the choice of visualization in this article

The recent speed of technological change makes it difficult to picture the history of technology in one visualization. When you visualize this development on a linear timeline, then most of the timeline is almost empty, while all the action is crammed into the right corner:

In my large visualization here, I tried to avoid this problem and instead show the long history of technology in a way that lets you see when each technological breakthrough happened and how, within the last millennia, there was a continuous acceleration of technological change.

The recent speed of technological change makes it difficult to picture the history of technology in one visualization. In the appendix, I show how this would look if it were linear.

It is, of course, difficult to assess when exactly the first stone tools were used.

The research by McPherron et al. (2010) suggested that it was at least 3.39 million years ago. This is based on two fossilized bones found in Dikika in Ethiopia, which showed “stone-tool cut marks for flesh removal and percussion marks for marrow access”. These marks were interpreted as being caused by meat consumption and provide the first evidence that one of our ancestors, Australopithecus afarensis, used stone tools.

The research by Harmand et al. (2015) provided evidence for stone tool use in today’s Kenya 3.3 million years ago.

References:

McPherron et al. (2010) – Evidence for stone-tool-assisted consumption of animal tissues before 3.39 million years ago at Dikika, Ethiopia . Published in Nature.

Harmand et al. (2015) – 3.3-million-year-old stone tools from Lomekwi 3, West Turkana, Kenya . Published in Nature.

Evidence for controlled fire use approximately 1 million years ago is provided by Berna et al. (2012) Microstratigraphic evidence of in situ fire in the Acheulean strata of Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa , published in PNAS.

The authors write: “The ability to control fire was a crucial turning point in human evolution, but the question of when hominins first developed this ability still remains. Here we show that micromorphological and Fourier transform infrared microspectroscopy (mFTIR) analyses of intact sediments at the site of Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa, provide unambiguous evidence—in the form of burned bone and ashed plant remains—that burning took place in the cave during the early Acheulean occupation, approximately 1.0 Ma. To the best of our knowledge, this is the earliest secure evidence for burning in an archaeological context.”

This is what authors like Holden Karnofsky called ‘Process for Automating Scientific and Technological Advancement’ or PASTA. Some recent developments go in this direction: DeepMind’s AlphaFold helped to make progress on one of the large problems in biology, and they have also developed an AI system that finds new algorithms that are relevant to building a more powerful AI.

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1 What is a Technological Revolution?

• Published: October 2020
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Almost daily we are told how some new technology will revolutionize in our lives. The truth of the matter is most technologies do not. However, occasionally a new technology does appear which provides the grounding for gradual changes that eventually transform our systems of production and the way we live our lives. Historically, we speak of these developments as technological revolutions. By focusing on how such technologies change the nature of work, occupational structures, and systems of production, this chapter attempts to answer two questions: “What is a technological revolution?” and, more importantly, “How do current technologies associated with artificial intelligence fit into the history of technological change?”

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How the AI Revolution Will Reshape the World

We are about to see the greatest redistribution of power in history.

Over millennia, humanity has been shaped by successive waves of technology. The discovery of fire, the invention of the wheel, the harnessing of electricity—all were transformational moments for civilization. All were waves of technology that started small, with a few precarious experiments, but eventually they broke across the world. These waves followed a similar trajectory: breakthrough technologies were invented, delivered huge value, and so they proliferated, became more effective, cheaper, more widespread and were absorbed into the normal, ever-evolving fabric of human life. 

We are now facing a new wave of technology, centered around AI but including synthetic biology, quantum computing , and abundant new sources of energy. In many respects it will repeat this pattern. Yet it will also depart from it in crucial ways only now becoming clear. Amidst all the hype, the hope, the fear, I think the fundamentals are getting lost; the unique characteristics of this wave are getting missed in the noise. Understanding them, seeing what, exactly, is changing, is critical to understanding the future.

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AI is different from previous waves of technology because of how it unleashes new powers and transforms existing power. This is the most underappreciated aspect of the technological revolution now underway. While all waves of technology create altered power structures in their wake, none have seen the raw proliferation of power like the one on its way. 

Think of it like this. Previous era’s most powerful technologies were generally reserved to a small capital rich elite or national governments. Building a steam powered factory, an aircraft carrier or a nuclear power plant were costly, difficult and immense endeavors. With the leading technologies of our time, that’s no longer going to be true.  

If the last great tech wave—computers and the internet—was about broadcasting information, this new wave is all about doing . We are facing a step change in what’s possible for individual people to do, and at a previously unthinkable pace . AI is becoming more powerful and radically cheaper by the month—what was computationally impossible, or would cost tens of millions of dollars a few years ago, is now widespread.

These AIs will organize a retirement party and manage your diary, they will develop and execute business strategies, whilst designing new drugs to fight cancer. They will plan and run hospitals or invasions just as much as they will answer your email. Building an airline or instead grounding the entire fleet each becomes more achievable. Whether it’s commercial, religious, cultural, or military, democratic or authoritarian, every possible motivation you can think of can be dramatically enhanced by having cheaper power at your fingertips. These tools will be available to everyone, billionaires and street hustlers, kids in India and pensioners in Beverly Hills, a proliferation of not just technology but capability itself.

Read More: The Case Against AI Everything, Everywhere, All at Once

Power, the ability to accomplish goals, everywhere, in the hands of anyone who wants it. I’m guessing that’s going to be most people. This is far more empowering than the web ever was. 

And it’s coming faster than we can adequately prepare for. This is an age when the most powerful technologies are open-sourced in months, when millions have access to the cutting edge, and that cutting edge is the greatest force amplifier ever seen. This new era will create giant new businesses, empower a long tail of actors—good and bad—supercharge the power of some states, erode that of others. Whether a giant corporation or a start-up, an established party or an insurgent movement, a wild-eyed entrepreneur or a lone wolf with an ax to grind, here is an immense potential boost. Winners and losers will emerge quickly and unpredictably in this combustible atmosphere as power itself surges through the system. In short this represents the greatest reshuffling of power in history, all happening within the space of a few years.

Those most comfortable today look vulnerable. Even as the discourse around AI has reached a fever pitch, those with power today, the professional classes, feel shockingly unprepared for the disruptions and new formations of power this tumult will bring. They—the doctors, lawyers, accountants, business VPs—will not emerge unscathed, and yet most I speak to are still incredibly blasé about the changes afoot. It’s not just automated call centers. This wave will fundamentally reshape and reorder society and it is those with most to lose, reliant on established capital, expertise, authority and security architectures, who are precisely the most exposed.

I’ve seen this kind of willful blindness before. I call it “pessimism aversion”: a tendency to look away from sweeping technological change and what it really means. Until recently it was a common affliction of the Silicon Valley elite, many of whom pursued technological “disruption” without considering the likely outcomes. The arrival of generative AI and other AI products has started to change that. Although there is much further to go, leaders in Silicon Valley have begun taking a more proactive and precautionary approach to the development of the very largest AI models. But more widely it’s vital that societies facing this wave do not dismiss it as hot air, turn away, and get caught out. The preparation for what I call containment, a comprehensive program of managing these tools, needs to begin now. 

As we start to see power itself proliferating, its distribution and nature fundamentally changed, pessimism aversion is no answer. It’s time to confront the consequences of this shift in who can do what, when and how, understand what it means, and begin to plan for how we can control and contain it for everyone’s benefit. History can be a useful guide. But with AI, synthetic biology and the rest, we can be confident of one thing: we are facing the genuinely unprecedented. 

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Essay on Industrial Revolution

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The Industrial Revolution marks a pivotal period in human history, fundamentally transforming the fabric of society, economy, and technology. Spanning from the late 18th to the early 19th century, it commenced in Britain and gradually proliferated across the globe. This essay delves into the essence, causes, key developments, and profound impacts of the Industrial Revolution, offering insights for students participating in essay writing competitions.

Industrial Revolution

The genesis of the Industrial Revolution can be traced back to Britain, fueled by a confluence of factors including agricultural advancements, population growth, financial innovations, and a surge in demand for goods. Agricultural improvements led to food surplus, supporting a burgeoning population that provided labor and created a market for industrial goods. Moreover, Britain’s political stability, patent laws, and access to vast resources due to its colonial empire set a fertile ground for industrial innovation.

Technological Innovations

At the heart of the Industrial Revolution were groundbreaking technological innovations that revolutionized manufacturing processes. The introduction of the steam engine by James Watt and the development of power looms significantly enhanced productivity, transitioning industries from manual labor to mechanized production. The iron and coal industries also saw major advancements, with the smelting process being vastly improved by Abraham Darby’s use of coke, leading to stronger and cheaper iron.

Impact on Society and Economy

The Industrial Revolution ushered in dramatic social and economic shifts. Urbanization escalated as people flocked to cities in search of employment in factories, giving rise to burgeoning urban centers. While the revolution generated wealth and propelled economic growth, it also introduced stark social disparities and challenging working conditions. Child labor, long working hours, and unsafe environments became prevalent issues, sparking movements for labor rights and reforms.

Impact on Society

• Urbanization: The Industrial Revolution led to a massive shift from rural areas to cities as people moved in search of employment in factories. This urbanization changed the social fabric, leading to the growth of urban centers and the emergence of a new urban working class.
• Labor Conditions: Factory work during the early Industrial Revolution was often characterized by long hours, low wages, and harsh working conditions. This led to labor protests and the eventual emergence of labor unions advocating for workers’ rights.
• Technological Advancements: The Industrial Revolution saw the development of new technologies and machinery that revolutionized production processes. Innovations like the steam engine and mechanized textile mills transformed industries and increased efficiency.
• Social Stratification: The gap between the wealthy industrialists and the working class widened during this period, resulting in increased social inequality. The emergence of a capitalist class and the growth of industrial capitalism contributed to this divide.
• Education and Literacy: The need for a skilled workforce led to greater emphasis on education. Public education systems began to develop, contributing to higher literacy rates among the population.
• Family Life: The traditional family structure evolved as men, women, and children worked in factories. Child labor, in particular, became a contentious issue, eventually leading to child labor laws and reforms.
• Social Reform Movements: The harsh conditions of industrialization fueled various social reform movements, including the women’s suffrage movement, the abolitionist movement, and efforts to improve public health and housing conditions.

Impact on the Economy

• Economic Growth: The Industrial Revolution fueled rapid economic growth as production processes became more efficient, leading to increased output of goods and services.
• New Industries: New industries and sectors emerged, such as textiles, coal mining, iron and steel production, and transportation. These industries became the backbone of the modern economy.
• Global Trade: The Industrial Revolution facilitated global trade by improving transportation and communication networks. The expansion of railways, canals, and steamships allowed for the movement of goods on a larger scale.
• Entrepreneurship: The period saw the rise of entrepreneurship, with individuals and companies investing in new ventures and technologies. Innovators like James Watt and George Stephenson played pivotal roles in the development of steam power and transportation.
• Financial Institutions: The growth of industry led to the expansion of financial institutions, including banks and stock exchanges, to support investment and capital accumulation.
• Capitalism and Market Economies: The Industrial Revolution played a significant role in the development of capitalism and market-driven economies, with private ownership of means of production and the pursuit of profit as driving forces.
• Labor Markets: Labor markets evolved as people migrated to urban areas in search of work. The supply of labor increased, impacting wages, labor laws, and the development of employment contracts.
• Consumer Culture: Mass production and improved transportation made consumer goods more accessible and affordable. This contributed to the rise of consumer culture and the growth of retail markets.

Transportation and Communication Breakthroughs

Transportation and communication underwent transformative changes, shrinking distances and fostering global interconnectedness. The construction of railways and the steam locomotive revolutionized travel and commerce, enabling faster movement of goods and people. Similarly, the telegraph, patented by Samuel Morse, allowed for instantaneous communication over long distances, laying the groundwork for the modern connected world.

Environmental and Global Implications

The Industrial Revolution had profound environmental impacts, with increased pollution and resource exploitation becoming notable concerns. The reliance on coal and the expansion of industries contributed to air and water pollution, foreshadowing contemporary environmental challenges. Globally, the revolution catalyzed industrialization in other countries, altering global trade patterns and establishing new economic hierarchies.

Cultural and Intellectual Responses

The Industrial Revolution also sparked a rich cultural and intellectual response, inspiring movements such as Romanticism, which critiqued the era’s industrialization and its disconnect from nature. Philosophers and economists, including Karl Marx and Adam Smith, analyzed its implications on class relations and economic systems, offering divergent perspectives on industrial capitalism.

The Second Industrial Revolution

Following the initial wave of industrialization, a Second Industrial Revolution emerged in the late 19th century, characterized by further technological advancements in steel production, electricity, and chemical processes. Innovations such as the internal combustion engine and the harnessing of electricity for lighting and motors opened new avenues for industrial and societal development.

Challenges and Reforms

The Industrial Revolution’s darker facets, such as exploitative labor practices and environmental degradation, elicited calls for reform. The establishment of labor unions and the enactment of laws to improve working conditions and limit child labor were critical steps towards addressing these issues. These reforms laid the groundwork for modern labor rights and environmental consciousness.

Legacy and Continuing Influence

The legacy of the Industrial Revolution is enduring, laying the foundations for modern industrial society and shaping the contemporary world. Its innovations spurred continuous technological progress, setting the stage for the information age and the current technological revolution. Moreover, it has left lasting imprints on societal structures, economic practices, and global relations.

In conclusion, The Industrial Revolution was not merely a period of technological innovation; it was a profound transformation that redefined human society, economy, and the environment. Its multifaceted impacts, from spurring economic growth and global interconnectedness to introducing social challenges and environmental concerns, underscore its complexity and significance. As students delve into the intricacies of the Industrial Revolution, they uncover the roots of modern society and the ongoing evolution shaped by this pivotal era in human history. This exploration not only enriches their understanding of the past but also offers valuable lessons for addressing the challenges and opportunities of the future.

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Essay on Rise of Technology

Students are often asked to write an essay on Rise of Technology in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Rise of Technology

The advent of technology.

Technology has been evolving since mankind’s early days. From simple tools to advanced computers, the rise of technology has been remarkable.

Technology and Daily Life

Today, technology is an integral part of our daily life. It has made tasks easier, saving us time and effort.

Technology in Education

In education, technology has revolutionized learning. It made information accessible to everyone, promoting a more inclusive learning environment.

Future of Technology

The future of technology holds immense possibilities. It continues to evolve, promising to make our lives even more convenient.

250 Words Essay on Rise of Technology

The advent of the technological era, accelerating pace of innovation.

The technological revolution has been a gradual process, but the pace has significantly accelerated over the past few decades. The advent of the Internet, artificial intelligence, and blockchain technology are testament to this. These innovations have disrupted various sectors, from commerce and communication to healthcare and education, altering our interaction with the world.

Implications of Technological Advancements

The implications of the rise of technology are profound. It has democratized information, bridging the gap between different societal strata. However, it also presents challenges such as data privacy concerns and the digital divide. The key lies in harnessing technology responsibly and ethically.

The Future of Technology

The future of technology looks promising, with advancements like quantum computing and nanotechnology on the horizon. These developments will further revolutionize our lives, paving the way for a future that is as exciting as it is unpredictable.

In conclusion, the rise of technology is a testament to human ingenuity and the quest for progress. It is a double-edged sword that presents both opportunities and challenges. As we stand on the brink of a new era, it is imperative to navigate this technological landscape with a balanced and informed approach.

500 Words Essay on Rise of Technology

The dawn of the digital age.

The rise of technology has been a defining characteristic of the 21st century. It is an era marked by rapid technological advancements, which have transformed every aspect of our lives, from communication to transportation, education, healthcare, and entertainment.

The Evolution of Technology

Technology and communication.

One of the most significant changes has been in the realm of communication. The rise of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram has revolutionized the way we interact with each other. These platforms have made it possible to communicate with anyone, anywhere in the world, at any time. They have also given rise to a new form of communication, where the written word is supplemented with images, videos, and even emojis.

Technology and Education

Technology has also had a profound impact on education. The advent of online learning platforms has made education more accessible and flexible. It has democratized education, making it possible for anyone with an internet connection to access high-quality educational resources. This has also changed the traditional classroom setting, with more emphasis on interactive and collaborative learning.

Technology and Healthcare

The flip side of technology.

Despite its numerous benefits, the rise of technology has also raised several concerns. Privacy and data security issues have become more prevalent with the increase in digital data. The digital divide, the gap between those who have access to technology and those who do not, has become more pronounced. Moreover, the increased reliance on technology has raised questions about its impact on our mental and physical health.

The rise of technology has undoubtedly been transformative, impacting every facet of our lives. While it has brought numerous benefits, it has also raised several challenges. As we continue to embrace technology, it is crucial to address these challenges and ensure that technology serves as a tool for progress and prosperity, rather than a source of disparity and discontent. The future of technology is promising, and its potential is immense. However, it is up to us to harness this potential responsibly and sustainably.

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The Industrial Revolution (1750–1900)

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The term Industrial Revolution, like similar historical concepts, is more convenient than precise. It is convenient because history requires division into periods for purposes of understanding and instruction and because there were sufficient innovations at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries to justify the choice of this as one of the periods. The term is imprecise, however, because the Industrial Revolution has no clearly defined beginning or end. Moreover, it is misleading if it carries the implication of a once-for-all change from a “preindustrial” to a “postindustrial” society, because, as has been seen, the events of the traditional Industrial Revolution had been well prepared in a mounting tempo of industrial, commercial, and technological activity from about 1000 ce and led into a continuing acceleration of the processes of industrialization that is still proceeding in our own time. The term Industrial Revolution must thus be employed with some care. It is used below to describe an extraordinary quickening in the rate of growth and change and, more particularly, to describe the first 150 years of this period of time, as it will be convenient to pursue the developments of the 20th century separately.

The Industrial Revolution, in this sense, has been a worldwide phenomenon, at least in so far as it has occurred in all those parts of the world, of which there are very few exceptions, where the influence of Western civilization has been felt. Beyond any doubt it occurred first in Britain, and its effects spread only gradually to continental Europe and North America . Equally clearly, the Industrial Revolution that eventually transformed these parts of the Western world surpassed in magnitude the achievements of Britain, and the process was carried further to change radically the socioeconomic life of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Australasia. The reasons for this succession of events are complex, but they were implicit in the earlier account of the buildup toward rapid industrialization. Partly through good fortune and partly through conscious effort, Britain by the early 18th century came to possess the combination of social needs and social resources that provided the necessary preconditions of commercially successful innovation and a social system capable of sustaining and institutionalizing the processes of rapid technological change once they had started. This section will therefore be concerned, in the first place, with events in Britain, although in discussing later phases of the period it will be necessary to trace the way in which British technical achievements were diffused and superseded in other parts of the Western world.

Power technology

An outstanding feature of the Industrial Revolution has been the advance in power technology. At the beginning of this period, the major sources of power available to industry and any other potential consumer were animate energy and the power of wind and water, the only exception of any significance being the atmospheric steam engines that had been installed for pumping purposes, mainly in coal mines. It is to be emphasized that this use of steam power was exceptional and remained so for most industrial purposes until well into the 19th century. Steam did not simply replace other sources of power: it transformed them. The same sort of scientific inquiry that led to the development of the steam engine was also applied to the traditional sources of inanimate energy, with the result that both waterwheels and windmills were improved in design and efficiency . Numerous engineers contributed to the refinement of waterwheel construction, and by the middle of the 19th century new designs made possible increases in the speed of revolution of the waterwheel and thus prepared the way for the emergence of the water turbine, which is still an extremely efficient device for converting energy.

Meanwhile, British windmill construction was improved considerably by the refinements of sails and by the self-correcting device of the fantail, which kept the sails pointed into the wind. Spring sails replaced the traditional canvas rig of the windmill with the equivalent of a modern venetian blind, the shutters of which could be opened or closed, to let the wind pass through or to provide a surface upon which its pressure could be exerted . Sail design was further improved with the “patent” sail in 1807. In mills equipped with these sails, the shutters were controlled on all the sails simultaneously by a lever inside the mill connected by rod linkages through the windshaft with the bar operating the movement of the shutters on each sweep. The control could be made more fully automatic by hanging weights on the lever in the mill to determine the maximum wind pressure beyond which the shutters would open and spill the wind. Conversely, counterweights could be attached to keep the shutters in the open position. With these and other modifications, British windmills adapted to the increasing demands on power technology. But the use of wind power declined sharply in the 19th century with the spread of steam and the increasing scale of power utilization. Windmills that had satisfactorily provided power for small-scale industrial processes were unable to compete with the production of large-scale steam-powered mills.

Although the qualification regarding older sources of power is important, steam became the characteristic and ubiquitous power source of the British Industrial Revolution. Little development took place in the Newcomen atmospheric engine until James Watt patented a separate condenser in 1769, but from that point onward the steam engine underwent almost continuous improvements for more than a century. Watt’s separate condenser was the outcome of his work on a model of a Newcomen engine that was being used in a University of Glasgow laboratory. Watt’s inspiration was to separate the two actions of heating the cylinder with hot steam and cooling it to condense the steam for every stroke of the engine. By keeping the cylinder permanently hot and the condenser permanently cold, a great economy on energy used could be effected. This brilliantly simple idea could not be immediately incorporated in a full-scale engine because the engineering of such machines had hitherto been crude and defective. The backing of a Birmingham industrialist, Matthew Boulton , with his resources of capital and technical competence , was needed to convert the idea into a commercial success. Between 1775 and 1800, the period over which Watt’s patents were extended, the Boulton and Watt partnership produced some 500 engines, which despite their high cost in relation to a Newcomen engine were eagerly acquired by the tin-mining industrialists of Cornwall and other power users who badly needed a more economic and reliable source of energy.

During the quarter of a century in which Boulton and Watt exercised their virtual monopoly over the manufacture of improved steam engines, they introduced many important refinements. Basically they converted the engine from a single-acting (i.e., applying power only on the downward stroke of the piston) atmospheric pumping machine into a versatile prime mover that was double-acting and could be applied to rotary motion, thus driving the wheels of industry. The rotary action engine was quickly adopted by British textile manufacturer Sir Richard Arkwright for use in a cotton mill, and although the ill-fated Albion Mill, at the southern end of Blackfriars Bridge in London, was burned down in 1791, when it had been in use for only five years and was still incomplete, it demonstrated the feasibility of applying steam power to large-scale grain milling. Many other industries followed in exploring the possibilities of steam power, and it soon became widely used.

Watt’s patents had the temporary effect of restricting the development of high-pressure steam, necessary in such major power applications as the locomotive. This development came quickly once these patents lapsed in 1800. The Cornish engineer Richard Trevithick introduced higher steam pressures , achieving an unprecedented pressure of 145 pounds per square inch (10 kilograms per square centimetre) in 1802 with an experimental engine at Coalbrookdale, which worked safely and efficiently. Almost simultaneously, the versatile American engineer Oliver Evans built the first high-pressure steam engine in the United States , using, like Trevithick, a cylindrical boiler with an internal fire plate and flue. High-pressure steam engines rapidly became popular in America, partly as a result of Evans’ initiative and partly because very few Watt-type low-pressure engines crossed the Atlantic. Trevithick quickly applied his engine to a vehicle, making the first successful steam locomotive for the Penydarren tramroad in South Wales in 1804. The success, however, was technological rather than commercial because the locomotive fractured the cast iron track of the tramway: the age of the railroad had to await further development both of the permanent way and of the locomotive.

Meanwhile, the stationary steam engine advanced steadily to meet an ever-widening market of industrial requirements. High-pressure steam led to the development of the large beam pumping engines with a complex sequence of valve actions, which became universally known as Cornish engines ; their distinctive characteristic was the cutoff of steam injection before the stroke was complete in order to allow the steam to do work by expanding. These engines were used all over the world for heavy pumping duties, often being shipped out and installed by Cornish engineers. Trevithick himself spent many years improving pumping engines in Latin America. Cornish engines, however, were probably most common in Cornwall itself, where they were used in large numbers in the tin and copper mining industries.

Another consequence of high-pressure steam was the practice of compounding , of using the steam twice or more at descending pressures before it was finally condensed or exhausted. The technique was first applied by Arthur Woolf, a Cornish mining engineer, who by 1811 had produced a very satisfactory and efficient compound beam engine with a high-pressure cylinder placed alongside the low-pressure cylinder, with both piston rods attached to the same pin of the parallel motion, which was a parallelogram of rods connecting the piston to the beam, patented by Watt in 1784. In 1845 John McNaught introduced an alternative form of compound beam engine, with the high-pressure cylinder on the opposite end of the beam from the low-pressure cylinder, and working with a shorter stroke. This became a very popular design. Various other methods of compounding steam engines were adopted, and the practice became increasingly widespread; in the second half of the 19th century triple- or quadruple-expansion engines were being used in industry and marine propulsion. By this time also the conventional beam-type vertical engine adopted by Newcomen and retained by Watt began to be replaced by horizontal-cylinder designs. Beam engines remained in use for some purposes until the eclipse of the reciprocating steam engine in the 20th century, and other types of vertical engine remained popular, but for both large and small duties the engine designs with horizontal cylinders became by far the most common.

A demand for power to generate electricity stimulated new thinking about the steam engine in the 1880s. The problem was that of achieving a sufficiently high rotational speed to make the dynamos function efficiently. Such speeds were beyond the range of the normal reciprocating engine (i.e., with a piston moving backward and forward in a cylinder). Designers began to investigate the possibilities of radical modifications to the reciprocating engine to achieve the speeds desired, or of devising a steam engine working on a completely different principle. In the first category, one solution was to enclose the working parts of the engine and force a lubricant around them under pressure. The Willans engine design, for instance, was of this type and was widely adopted in early British power stations. Another important modification in the reciprocating design was the uniflow engine, which increased efficiency by exhausting steam from ports in the centre of the cylinder instead of requiring it to change its direction of flow in the cylinder with every movement of the piston. Full success in achieving a high-speed steam engine, however, depended on the steam turbine , a design of such novelty that it constituted a major technological innovation. This was invented by Sir Charles Parsons in 1884. By passing steam through the blades of a series of rotors of gradually increasing size (to allow for the expansion of the steam) the energy of the steam was converted to very rapid circular motion, which was ideal for generating electricity. Many refinements have since been made in turbine construction and the size of turbines has been vastly increased, but the basic principles remain the same, and this method still provides the main source of electric power except in those areas in which the mountainous terrain permits the economic generation of hydroelectric power by water turbines. Even the most modern nuclear power plants use steam turbines because technology has not yet solved the problem of transforming nuclear energy directly into electricity. In marine propulsion, too, the steam turbine remains an important source of power despite competition from the internal-combustion engine .

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Technological Revolutions and the Role of the State in the Governance of Digital Technologies

This essay is part of Global Cooperation on Digital Governance and the Geoeconomics of New Technologies in a Multi-polar World.

Introduction

The view that the role of the state in the economy is constant over time clashes with reality. Usually, those who perceive the state’s economic role as static espouse a theoretical view that states should intervene as little as possible in markets, except to correct occasional “market failures” in order to allocate resources efficiently. From a historical perspective, this constant, hands-off governmental 1 approach is apocryphal. What can be observed is a changing role of the state, which varies with the cyclical surges of technological change as well as of geopolitical (and ideological) inclinations. This conference paper discusses the former: how the role of the state changes along the life cycle of a technological revolution while also taking into account the latter.

Several scholars propose different ways to conceptualize the evolution of technical change in terms of technological or industrial eras. One approach is to contrast the technological developments since the eighteenth century, which came to define our current era of “industrial modernity” with the ways that society organized itself and the economy in the preceding (mostly) agrarian era (Brynjolfsson and McAfee 2014; Schot and Kanger 2018). Another approach does not see the post-Industrial Revolution period as monolithic but identifies successive “long waves” of industrial or technological “revolutions” (Perez 2002; Schwab 2016, viii). These revolutions would follow distinctive and recurrent patterns of emergence, diffusion and consolidation, yet creating unique impacts on established structures (Perez 2002). Schot and Kanger (2018) provide a periodization that actually could be seen as a bridge between both approaches: in their view, the several technological revolutions of the past three centuries represent a first “deep transition” (from the agrarian era to industrial modernity) and we would be witnessing, due to a wave of breakthrough renewable energy technologies and green innovations (powered by disruptive digital technologies), the emergence of a second deep transition — this time, from industrial modernity to sustainable post-modernity. Despite their distinct perspectives on the cyclical nature of capitalist technological development, these authors tend to agree that the wave of digital innovation from the past 40 years has created challenges and opportunities — for incumbent firms, industries, regions and whole nations — posing new demands for the role of the state, particularly in relation to the governance of disruptive digital technologies.

My discussion of the role of the state is based on the periodization of technological revolutions proposed by Perez (2002) because of its comprehensiveness, level of conceptual detail and coherence, which provides a compelling picture of the long-term dynamics of capitalist technological development. Working in the neo-Schumpeterian long-wave (or Kondratiev cycle 2 ) tradition, Perez (ibid.) identifies five technological revolutions, each triggering “great surges of development” (GSD) (see Table 1): “the process by which a technological revolution and its paradigm [ 3 ] propagate across the economy, leading to structural changes in production, distribution, communication and consumption as well as to profound and qualitative changes in society” (ibid., 15). Perez (ibid.) sees the emergence and diffusion of each GSD as divided into two: initially, the emergence of a new revolution is led by financial capital, while, in the second half of the process, diffusion of the revolutionary innovations is promoted by the state (I will return to and detail this conceptualization in the section titled “The Perezian Techno-economic Cycle”).

Table 1: Five Great Surges of Growth and Five Major Technology Bubbles

The second conceptual anchoring for the discussion of the role of the state in the process of technological development is the notion of a “double movement” in capitalism, proposed by Polanyi (2001): the idea that contradictory forces govern capitalist development in a dialectical process (Fiori 2004). One force is based on liberalizing principles that promote the expansion of free markets; the other is based on social self-protection principles that keep this expansion constantly in check to protect society from the “ravages of this [free market] satanic mill” (Polanyi 2001, 73). While such forces are always in operation, they come to the fore and subside in different historical moments, so that Polanyi’s double movement can also be interpreted as a secular pendulum (Kretschmer 2019; Nölke and May 2019; Stewart 2010). Perez’s (2002) theory seems consistent with Polanyi’s double movement: indeed, I will argue that Perez (ibid.) offers an explanation of Polanyi’s political-economic double movement in terms of technological dynamics.

Against this background, I shall discuss two interrelated propositions:

• From a Polanyian perspective, since the 2000s, the world has moved toward a period of a proactive role of the state, most visible in the level of political and policy discourse (but also increasingly put into action).
• From a Perezian perspective, this new proactive role calls for specific regulations and investments to address technological externalities and social inequalities caused by and associated with the digital technologies of the fifth technological revolution (which is yet to be put into action).

The conference paper 4 is structured around these two propositions (sections titled “The Polanyian Pendulum” and “The Perezian Techno-economic cycle,” respectively), and concludes with a discussion of the implications for the prospects of global cooperation on digital governance.

The Polanyian Pendulum

Karl Polanyi (2001, 3–4) introduces his thesis of a capitalist “double movement” in the beginning of the first chapter of The Great Transformation : “Our thesis is that the idea of a self-adjusting market implied a stark Utopia. Such an institution could not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human and natural substance of society; it would have physically destroyed man and transformed his surroundings into a wilderness. Inevitably, society took measures to protect itself, but whatever measures it took impaired the self-regulation of the market, disorganized industrial life, and thus endangered society in yet another way.”

Only in chapter 8 does Polanyi refer to this dynamic as a double movement and, later, in chapter 11, he explains that whenever “the market expands itself continuously […] this movement [is] met by a countermovement checking the expansion in definite directions” (ibid., 130). Polanyi’s double movement represents a constant dialectical process: “the two principles have material and social roots that coexist in a necessary, permanent and contradictory way within capitalism” (Fiori 2004, 60 [my translation]). Indeed, in the history of capitalism, the state was and is responsible for establishing rights and duties that define the limits of the free market (Chang 2002). The liberal market itself is embedded in social, political and cultural institutions (Granovetter 1985) that define its boundaries of free action, such as law and public order, execution of contracts, property rights, public goods, conditions of business conduct and economic regulations. Polanyi (2001, 140) is adamant that even in England, the cradle of capitalism, the free-market economy (what the author calls “ laissez-faire economy”) was produced by the deliberate action of the state: “The road to the free market was opened and kept open by an enormous increase in continuous, centrally organized and controlled interventionism.”

The capitalist double movement is often also interpreted as a secular pendulum, an idea that is rooted in Polanyi’s insight that “various countries of a widely dissimilar political and ideological configuration...each…passed through a period of free trade and laissez-faire , followed by a period of antiliberal legislation in regard to public health, factory conditions, municipal trading, social insurance, shipping subsidies, public utilities, trade associations, and so on. It would be easy to produce a regular calendar setting out the years in which analogous changes occurred in the various countries” (ibid., 147). This insight resulted in a stream of research that sought to identify the periods of laissez faire and the periods of interventionism. While the specific dates differ, the periods seem largely to coincide. Drawing on Burawoy (2010), Kretschmer (2019), Nölke and May (2019), and Stewart (2010), a periodization can be established for the Polanyian pendulum between the late eighteenth century and the early twenty-first century (Figure 1). Of course, the dates are approximate, because the forces are always in operation (it is a dialectical process), each slowly moving to the foreground or to the background (until certain events may catapult one or the other to prominence).

Figure 1: The Swings of the Polanyian Pendulum

While the identification of the first three periods of “social self-protection” and of laissez faire are based on an interpretation of those works, here I propose that the fourth period of social self-protection has started somewhen around 2010, or after the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2007–2008. To be sure, this “new swing of the Polanyian pendulum” is discussed by other authors, such as Fiori (2004) and Kaldor (2018), who discuss a new “realist” period in the geopolitical dynamics. In this conference paper, I will, however, concentrate on the role of the state in the technological process and, therefore, in terms of innovation (and industrial) policy and regulation.

In Penna (2021), I argued that the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic magnified those interrelated geopolitical and techno-economic trends, claiming that:

• The manufacturing global value chains overly dependent on China would eventually be a central target of national policy, which would aim at making the country’s economy less dependent on Chinese imports.
• Upgrading industrial structures and reshoring of value chains would become “the flavour of the month” in the policy makers’ menu of measures, i.e., a return to active industrial policy.
• Industrial and innovation policies would increasingly be “mission-oriented” (Mazzucato and Penna 2015), i.e., aimed not only at seizing technological opportunities associated with the new wave of disruptive digital technologies, but also at contributing to the solution of urgent societal challenges (such as mitigating climate change or caring for an aging population).
• As a consequence of the US-China technological and geopolitical competition, the policy space for multilateral governance of digital technologies would be diminished.

These speculations were a logical conclusion from the observed empirical trends (while also explained from the theoretical perspective of political economy). The new activist role of the state in innovation and technological policy is most visible in the policy discourse, as indicated by the number of governmental publications discussing how to ascertain “technological sovereignty” and make economies and value chains more resilient, while also focusing industrial and innovation strategies on the achievement of missions (Figure 2). 5

Governmental attention to industrial policy seems to have increased substantively in the aftermath of the GFC, reaching a peak in 2019, which is likely to be surpassed in 2021. Mission-oriented innovation policy received an impetus in 2018, which coincided with the publication of the European Commission’s “Mazzucato Report” (Mazzucato 2018). The catalyst effect of the COVID-19 pandemic seems most evident in the case of governmental attention to “technological sovereignty,” which was not mentioned in governmental documents in the Overton database before 2014 (except for one European Parliamentary Research Service report in 2011 on the impact of the GFC on European defence).

Figure 2: Government Documents Citing Technological Sovereignty, Mission-Oriented Research and Innovation, and Industrial Policy (2000–2021)

Concern with technological sovereignty at the EU level predates the pandemic (which is visible in Figure 1) and was triggered in 2019 by European Commission President (then elected) Ursula von der Leyen, who made the issue a priority in her presidential term (Cunningham 2020). Such prioritization of technological sovereignty will likely continue when France takes over the rotating presidency of the European Commission in January 2022, given French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent declarations (Macron, quoted in Kayali 2021) 6 on the need to ensure Europe’s “digital” and “technological” sovereignty. Macron also announced in October 2021 France’s own €30 billion technological and industrial plan to ensure the country’s domination of digital, robotic and genetic technologies. On the other side of the Atlantic, US President Joe Biden’s industrial and infrastructure plan can also be seen as a techno-economic sovereignty strategy that seeks to ensure the United States has the “most resilient, innovative economy in the world.” 7 Both the (French and US) plans are also “mission oriented,” as they seek to address climate change and other societal challenges.

These political discourses and policy plans expose a tension between the interests and strategies of different countries in terms of technological sovereignty, while revealing a new approach to the role of the state in the innovation process. This tension was evident in the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when countries were holding back medical supplies for themselves: from China (O’Keeffe, Lin and Xiao 2020) 8 restricting exports of masks and other medical goods, to the United States supposedly “hijacking” (Ankel 2020; O Globo 2020) medical equipment shipped to third countries through US territory. These episodes show that, when a crisis looms, the actions of national governments suddenly become “realist” and any traces of the “liberal” international relations’ 9 rhetoric disappear: the nation-state and the interests and welfare of their citizens become the privileged frame of reference. But beyond the rhetoric of the political discourse and the action of active investments in new industries and technologies, what is the new role of the state in the governance and regulation of digital technologies? To address this question, we look at the Perezian techno-economic cycle (Perez 2002).

The Perezian Techno-economic Cycle

Perez (ibid., 36) calls the first half of the GSD the “installation period,...when the new technologies irrupt in a maturing economy and advance like a bulldozer disrupting the established fabric and articulating new industrial networks, setting up new infrastructures and spreading new and superior ways of doing things”; and the second half “the deployment period,...when the fabric of the whole economy is rewoven and reshaped by the modernizing power of the triumphant paradigm, which then becomes normal best practice, enabling the full unfolding of its wealth generating potential.”

Based on a historical analysis of the five surges, she further argues that, on the one hand, installation is led by financial capital, which thrives in free markets, while, on the other hand, deployment is promoted through state activism that supports production capital. This is the reason why the role of the state changes alongside a technological revolution: from a non-interventionist approach to the economy, facilitating entrepreneurial experimentation fuelled by financial capital, to a proactive leading role, promoting institutional change and investments to regulate negative externalities caused by new technologies, addressing inequalities and income polarization, and further supporting technological diffusion. Toward the end of a GSD, the role of the state becomes entrepreneurial itself, with public investments creating the very inventions that provide a fertile soil for the private entrepreneurial activity that will trigger the next technological revolution and GSD. This is the “entrepreneurial state” that Mazzucato (2013) talks about. What Perez does is to offer an explanation of the political-economic double movement identified by Polanyi that is linked to technological dynamics.

From the Perezian perspective, the new role of the state calls for an active approach to promote institutional changes (new laws and regulations), in order to address technological externalities and social inequalities caused by and associated with the digital technologies of the fifth technological revolution (or GSD). Or, to put it in a Polanyian “language”: to protect society from the ravages of the free-market “satanic mill.” In the fourth GSD — that of the automobile and mass production — the institutional recomposition and state activism started with then US president Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and, more crucially, with the new financial architecture provided by the Bretton Woods system. (The European reconstruction initiative known as the “Marshall Plan” can also be seen as part of this process, as can the developmental policies of Latin American and Asian countries).

In the fourth GSD, taming the externalities of the paradigm-carrying US automobile industry — the industrial sector that produces and disseminates the core technological innovation of the revolution, and thus establishes the “best practice” principles (i.e., the techno-economic paradigm) — required the establishment of new laws, which culminated with, for example, the US National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966, which established mandatory safety standards for automobiles, and the US Clean Air Act of 1970, which mandated that automobiles would have to comply with stringent emission levels for carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons (Penna 2014). These laws established a new technological governance framework that further underscored the proactive role of the state in the second half of the fourth technological revolution (i.e., from the 1940s to the 1970s). It is such a technological governance framework that is absent from the current pro-state rhetoric, which mostly focuses on governance and regulatory aspects to assure technological sovereignty (with the notable exception of the case of data privacy 10 ).

Conclusion: Implications for Global Governance of Digital Technologies

Nowadays, the widespread diffusion of digital technologies is bringing about negative externalities in the form of disruption of established structures (work relations, business models, trade patterns). This potential disruption calls for a realignment of institutions and the establishment of a new governance system. Digital technologies result in many different types of issues, each creating a new demand for technological governance (Instituto Euvaldo Lodi et al. 2017):

• ethical (for example, the right to privacy and data confidentiality);
• proprietary (for example, ownership and access to data);
• industrial design (for example, the degree of autonomy of machines, which could become an issue of economic and political power);
• normative (for example, the establishment of open versus proprietary standards and of technical standards for tracking decisions, securing compatibility and retrofitting legacy systems);
• techno-economic (for example, support for the development of technical and organizational skills adapted to each production system); and
• socio-environmental (for example, rising unemployment due to robotization or the disposal of digital equipment, supplies and goods).

All such problems call for a new regulatory role of the state, and some of them may not be amenable to national regulations — they need a global framework if the problems are to be effectively addressed. Former US president Donald Trump’s discourse of distrust over the action and mandates of existing multilateral institutions (and threat to leave the World Health Organization and World Trade Organization) was at odds with the prospects of international agreements in the regulation of the digital economy. While it is expected that Biden will resort to a cooperative rhetoric, this benevolent discourse will likely disguise real action to safeguard the interests of the United States.

As I discuss in the section titled “The Polanyian Pendulum,” the current scenario is defined by increased realism in international relations, whereby nation-states will increasingly act to guarantee their own (economic, political, technological) sovereignty. The US-China technological and geopolitical competition that came to the fore of the global stage in the Barack Obama era and became most evident (until now) during the Trump years already indicated a diminishing policy space for multilateral governance of digital technologies (Penna 2021). The Annual Security Policy Forecast for 2021 by the Austrian Ministry of National Defence makes a scenario assessment that concludes that “the global strategic environment is moving towards deterioration into a fragmented, confrontational international environment with decreasing possibilities of steering at the global and regional levels” (Richter 2021, 55). Indeed, in this scenario, multilateralism tends “to assert the interests of the apparently benevolent liberal US hegemon” (Jedlaucnik 2021, 67).

In terms of digital technologies governance, what may be seen is a dispute between competing technological standards at the global level, for instance, for fifth-generation telecommunications technologies, but also for blockchain standards, data protection regulations or Internet of Things, for example. While a technological-standard tug of war between the United States and China is obvious, with the former trying to ascertain its techno-industrial prowess (and keep its status as technological leader) and the latter trying to advance its techno-industrial capabilities (and go beyond its status as the world’s manufacturing powerhouse to challenge the US technological leadership), we may also see the emergence of a European way for technological governance of digital technologies.

It was during the twentieth-century Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union that the world witnessed the “golden age” of capitalism — a period of widespread global welfare that Perez (2002) sees as a possibility for every second half of a technological revolution, as long as there is an adequate institutional framework to address the issues created in its first half. Thus, it could well be that during the current swing of the Polanyian pendulum we see a new global golden age. Yet, for that to happen, the role of national states will have to go beyond assuring narrowly defined technological sovereignty plans and promote a new institutional architecture that addresses the negative consequences of technologies and the socioeconomic inequalities at the global level.

• Despite important conceptual differences between “state” and “government” (and their derivations), I will use them as synonyms throughout this conference paper (unless otherwise specified).
• It was Joseph Schumpeter who named these capitalist cycles after Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev, who identified, based on statistical data, long-term periods of high economic growth followed by periods of relatively slow growth.
• Perez (2002) refers to a “techno-economic paradigm” as the best-practice principles of how to apply the technological revolution to continuously innovate or modernize the whole economy.
• The conference paper synthesizes and expands on the discussions in Penna (2021, forthcoming 2021).
• This section draws on the analysis in Penna (forthcoming 2021), which used the following search queries in the Overton database ( https://app.overton.io ): for technological sovereignty documents, (“technological sovereignty”); for value chain and industrial policy, (“industrial policy” and “value chain” or “supply chain”); for mission-oriented innovation policy, (“mission-oriented innovation” or “mission oriented research” or “mission oriented policy”). I restricted results to “government” as type source (excluding, for example, documents by policy think tanks). Overton claims to be “the world’s largest collection of policy documents, parliamentary transcripts, government guidance and think tank research.” While it is not expected to be complete, particularly for earlier years, it can provide an indication of governmental attention to certain topics in recent periods, which is the intended use here.
• See also Browne (2020).
• Quoted in www.nytimes.com/2021/03/31/business/economy/biden-infrastructure-plan.html . See also Atlantic Council (2021).
• See Bradsher and Alderman (2020).
• On the different schools of international relations, see Snyder (2004).
• There is a parallel between the regulation of the externalities from the automobile and those from the digital technologies, which is discussed in Penna (2021). It is interesting that corporate scandals (for example, General Motors spying on consumer activist Ralph Nader and the “antitrust case of the century,” which showed that the American Big Three auto firms General Motors, Ford and Chrysler conspired not to develop emission-control technologies ahead of each other) played an important role in influencing public opinion in favour of the establishment of those regulations. Whether the latest Facebook “scandal” (Duffy 2021) will play such a role in the establishment of an online privacy and safety regulatory framework is yet to be seen.

Works Cited

Ankel, Sophia. 2020. “At least 5 countries — including a small Caribbean island — are accusing the US of blocking or taking medical equipment they need to fight the coronavirus.” Insider, April 7. www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-us-accused-of-diverting-medical-equipment-from-countries-2020-4 .

Atlantic Council. 2021. “The Biden White House plan for a new US industrial policy.” Atlantic Council, June 23. www.atlanticcouncil.org/commentary/transcript/the-biden-white-house-plan-for-a-new-us-industrial-policy/ .

Bradsher, Keith and Liz Alderman. 2020. “The World Needs Masks. China Makes Them, but Has Been Hoarding Them.” The New York Times , March 13. www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/business/masks-china-coronavirus.html .

Browne, Ryan. 2020. “France’s Macron lays out a vision for European ‘digital sovereignty.’” CNBC, December 8. www.cnbc.com/2020/12/08/frances-macron-lays-out-a-vision-for-european-digital-sovereignty.html .

Brynjolfsson, Erik and Andrew McAfee. 2014. The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.

Burawoy, Michael. 2010 “From Polanyi to Pollyanna: The False Optimism of Global Labor Studies.” Global Labour Journal 1 (2): 301–13.

Chang, Ha-Joon. 2002. “Breaking the Mould: An Institutionalist Political Economy Alternative to the Neoliberal Theory of the Market and the State.” Cambridge Journal of Economics (26): 539–59.

Cunningham, Francine. 2020. “European Commission unveils regulatory plan to achieve ‘technological sovereignty.’” Bird & Bird, February. www.twobirds.com/en/news/articles/2020/global/european-commission-unveils-regulatory-plan-to-achieve-technological-sovereignty .

Duffy, Clare. 2021. “The Facebook Papers may be the biggest crisis in the company’s history.” CNN, October 25. https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/25/tech/facebook-papers/index.html .

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Home — Essay Samples — Information Science and Technology — Impact of Technology — How Technology Has Changed Our Lives

How Technology Has Changed Our Lives

• Categories: Impact of Technology

About this sample

Words: 1130 |

Updated: 9 November, 2023

Words: 1130 | Pages: 2 | 6 min read

Table of contents

Hook examples for technology essay, technology essay example.

• A Digital Revolution: Enter the era of smartphones, AI, and the Internet of Things, where technology is the driving force. Join me as we explore how technology has transformed our lives and the profound impact it has on society.
• An Intriguing Quote: Arthur C. Clarke once said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Let's delve into the magical world of modern technology and how it shapes our daily existence.
• The Paradox of Connectivity: Technology promises to connect us, yet it can also lead to isolation. Explore with me the paradox of our hyperconnected world and how it affects our relationships, both online and offline.
• The Impact on Work and Leisure: Discover how technology has revolutionized our work environments, blurring the lines between office and home. Together, we'll examine the changing landscape of leisure and entertainment in the digital age.
• Looking Ahead: As technology continues to advance, what lies on the horizon? Join me in discussing the future implications of emerging technologies and how they will further reshape our world in the years to come.

The Dark Side of Technological Advancement

• Increased Bullying
• Lack of Privacy
• Constant Distraction

Balancing Technology in Our Lives

Works cited.

• Anderson, M. (2018). The Effects of Technology on Teenagers. Verywell Family.
• Brown, B. W., & Bobkowski, P. S. (2011). Older and newer media: Patterns of use and effects on adolescents’ health and well-being. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 21(1), 95-113.
• Calvillo, D. P., & Downey, R. G. (2010). Mobile phones and interruption in college classrooms: Instructors’ attitudes, beliefs, and practices. Computers in Human Behavior, 26(2), 223-231.
• Clarke-Pearson, K., & O'Keeffe, G. (2011). The impact of social media on children, adolescents, and families. Pediatrics, 127(4), 800-804.
• Livingstone, S., & Smith, P. K. (2014). Annual research review: Harms experienced by child users of online and mobile technologies: The nature, prevalence and management of sexual and aggressive risks in the digital age. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 55(6), 635-654.
• Oulasvirta, A., Rattenbury, T., Ma, L., & Raita, E. (2012). Habits make smartphone use more pervasive. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 16(1), 105-114.
• Przybylski, A. K., & Weinstein, N. (2017). A large-scale test of the goldilocks hypothesis: Quantifying the relations between digital-screen use and the mental well-being of adolescents. Psychological Science, 28(2), 204-215.
• Rosen, L. D., Lim, A. F., Carrier, L. M., & Cheever, N. A. (2011). An empirical examination of the educational impact of text message-induced task switching in the classroom: Educational implications and strategies to enhance learning. Psicologia Educativa, 17(2), 163-177.
• Schulte, B. (2018). The human costs of bringing smartphones to every student. The Atlantic.
• Twenge, J. M., Joiner, T. E., Rogers, M. L., & Martin, G. N. (2018). Increases in depressive symptoms, suicide-related outcomes, and suicide rates among US adolescents after 2010 and links to increased new media screen time. Clinical Psychological Science, 6(1), 3-17.

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Technology Revolution in Learning Essay

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Introduction

Technology for learning content, technology in instructional strategy and planning, technological equipment for education.

With the immense growth in technology and its application in various fields, it has become indispensable in the delivery of educational content, educational strategies, and equipment. Technology now plays a big role in increasing educational productivity as an enabling platform for educational planning, content delivery, and equipment (Desai, Hart, & Richards, 2004). With the Internet age, content delivery has been facilitated via e-learning, simulation, video conferencing, and virtual classes. Proper utilization of technology in learning does not replace conventional education but provides students with significant tools to be successful.

As technological growth advances, institutions step forward in their adoption of asynchronous and synchronous methodologies of delivering learning content (Desai, Hart, & Richards, 2004). This is through various available media like the Internet, virtual classes, video conferencing, educational blogs and social media. Here, educational content is posted on the institution’s website, communication devices, customized educational software and simulations (Bullen & Janes, 2007). Digitizing of educational content saves student-teacher time and the costs associated with print materials.

Technology is widely applied in various aspects of instructional strategy and planning (Aldridge, & Goldman, 2007). This is through administrative purposes for efficiency and effective communication, optimal decision making, accountability and operational efficiency. Technology facilitates a cycle of professional development, innovation, resource allocation and forecasting of future trends and resource needs. It is further applied in technical support, educational assessment and quality assurance (Dewey, 1938). Technology enriches the curriculum by providing an interactive and hands-on level platform that allows students to work for their success.

Technology offers numerous versatile platforms for delivery of educational and learning materials. This includes computing and mobile devices and the use of the Internet. With the world wide web, the available intellectual resources are increased by providing a dynamic learning environment (Desai, Hart, & Richards, 2004). There is the use of mobile web-enabled devices, notebooks, I-pads, laptops, smartphones and tablets with educational content. These devices have revolutionized communication, evaluation, education and management. With easy access to the Internet via the devices, students can easily access flexible e-learning (Bullen & Janes, 2007). This saves training costs in terms of time, hiring instructors, convenience and the costs involved in travelling for training. Companies further develop their own m-learning platforms for employee training to enhance their skills and productivity.

Advantages of technology use in education

• Technology helps enhance understanding through simulations and elaborate diagrams (Marzano, Pickering & Pollock, 2001).
• Technology helps students improve in areas of vocabulary, reading comprehension, conceptual facts and creativity.
• Use of technology improves student attitudes and interest. Visual and audio aids are vital for students with special needs (Johnson, Dupuis, Gollnick, Hall, & Musial, 2008).
• Technology enhances academic skills through communication and collaboration. Students are able to communicate across the globe and exchange ideas in social forums, blogs, at video conference and through social media (Pérez-Prado, & Thirunarayanan, 2005).
• Joint learning by students on computers facilitates understanding, self-esteem and attitude towards the process of learning.
• Web-multimedia content promotes interactive learning that surmounts the provisions of traditional static content hence distance learning is easier (Desai, Hart, & Richards, 2004).

The full adoption of technology by educational institutions has a significant impact on performance and grades. There are gains in the reduction of financial costs and operational efficiency in the educational system (Gutek, 2004). Technology presents a personalized platform that assists students to address their unique learning requirements. E-learning provides for equal and flexible access to higher education (Pérez-Prado, & Thirunarayanan, 2005). The use of technology in learning is extensive and influences or is influenced by the various educational stakeholders who should have consensus for technology change implementation.

Aldridge, J., & Goldman, R. (2007). Current issues and trends in education (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education. Web.

Bullen, M., & Janes, D. P. (2007). Making the transition to e-learning: Strategies and issues . Hershey, Pa. [u.a.: Information Science Pub. Web.

Desai, M. S., Hart, J., & Richards, T. C., (2004), E-learning Paradigm Shift in Education, Education 129 (2): 327-334. Web.

Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education . New York, NY: Touchstone Books. Web.

Gutek, G. L. (2004). Philosophical and ideological voices in education . Boston, MA: Pearson Education. Web.

Johnson, J. A., Dupuis, V. L., Gollnick, D. M., Hall, G. E., & Musial, D. (2008). Foundations of American education: Perspectives on education in a changing world (14th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education. Web.

Marzano, R. J., Pickering, D., & Pollock, J. E. (2001). Classroom instruction that works: Research-based strategies for increasing student achievement . Alexandria, Va: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Web.

Pérez-Prado, A., & Thirunarayanan, M. O. (2005). Integrating technology in higher education . Lanham, Md. [u.a.: University Press of America. Web.

• Public Policy for Career Development
• Ending Cultural and Cognitive Relativism in Special Education
• E-Learning in the Academic Industry
• Advantages and Disadvantages of E-Learning
• Students' Attitudes Towards E-Learning
• College Teaching Method: Paulo Freire's and James Loewen's Ideas
• The Banking Concept of Education by Paulo Freire
• Motivating and Developing Activities - Adult Learning
• Philosophies and Theories of Education
• Higher Order Learning Teaching and Assessment Strategies
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2020, May 12). Technology Revolution in Learning. https://ivypanda.com/essays/technology-revolution-in-learning/

"Technology Revolution in Learning." IvyPanda , 12 May 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/technology-revolution-in-learning/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'Technology Revolution in Learning'. 12 May.

IvyPanda . 2020. "Technology Revolution in Learning." May 12, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/technology-revolution-in-learning/.

1. IvyPanda . "Technology Revolution in Learning." May 12, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/technology-revolution-in-learning/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Technology Revolution in Learning." May 12, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/technology-revolution-in-learning/.

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