Social and Cultural base of

Technological Change
The technology “works” in an instrumental sense, but
fails in a cultural sense, leading to non-adoption. For
example, Japan has a sophisticated medical system
very much like the western allopathic system of
formalized, science-based medicine. However, organ
transplantation is exceedingly rare, and undesirable in
Japan unlike in the United States and parts of Europe.
Different ideas about when death occurs that cultural
and religious values inhibit in acceptance or rejection
of organ transplantation .
• Consider the ambiguities of the “Green Revolution” of
the 1960s and 1970s as Western agricultural interests
exported industrial agriculture to the non-western
world. In many cases, in the short term, yields and
nutrition improved.
• But these beneficial effects were short lived as the
costs of the new systems – fuel, new seed stocks,
fertilizers, and pesticides – became unsustainable.
“Green Revolutions” also have a tendency to seek
single robust seeds and high yields, a tendency that
leads to monocultures vulnerable to pests and
diseases; diversified ecologies are not as easily wiped
out by a single pest or disease.
• And, of course, a technology must work to be
adopted. This leads to the questions of “works
for whom” and “what is meant by ‘works’?”
• A technology works when people turn it on
and it does what they want.
• But what they want can be social or symbolic
as well as practical and functional. An
expensive car, such as an SUV or luxury model,
can be fuel inefficient, unsafe, and polluting
but still provide a social signal that the owner
is affluent and sophisticated.
• While designers and marketers may think that
they have a good idea about how a new
technology will fare, users in different social
locations may have very different ideas about
what a technology means, how they can or
will use it, or even if they will use it at all.