Changes Brought in with the Technological Shifts - Essay Example

Yet, new inventions and technological up-gradations are important. Neil Postman has identified a framework that has five factors that he thought are essential for any technological development. The experts feel that the framework holds good for almost all of the technologies. The five factors are as follows: Every technology change is a trade-off as it has a price associated with it.

The equation says that the higher the degree of technology, the greater is the price. As the new technology comes in, it has certain advantages and disadvantages associated with it. But those advantages and disadvantages are never distributed equally among the population and always there are certain gainers and some losers when a new technology is introduced. The new technology always comes aligned with certain new messages and that could be social, political, or epistemological. The medium changes with every new technology.

The change that is brought in by the new technology is essentially ecological and therefore it should not be left to the hands of the few assuming it to be additive. New technology is often assumed to be the gift of God, but it is created by humans and therefore the good or bad effects would depend upon human actions and decisions. Western America had been famous for mines. It was in 1848 when James Marshall found gold at a ranch in Northern California. Soon, a whole lot of Americans gathered in the region in search of luck through minerals.

Some mined for gold while others for silver and other precious minerals. But the technology of mining changed soon. The crude wooden sluices that were used previously were replaced by hydraulic mining that used water jets to break the earth. Such a change impacted greatly the economy and the society which can be co-related with Neil Postman’s framework of new technology. As the first principle goes, the new technology called for huge investments and many of the small miners could not bear the cost and they lost the mines to big Western companies.

The new technology was advantageous for the big established players and the companies as it called for huge investments. The entrepreneurs who dreamt of making it big through mines were definitely in disadvantageous positions. The message (third principle) that came with the new technology was that more power was bestowed in the hands of the powerful and the rich with sound infrastructure only could take advantage of it. Though Postman says that the power should not be left to the few, in his fourth principle, most unfortunately same happened.

It was only the big companies that could survive with only a few individuals like Philip O’Rourke, with the involvement of hydraulic machines in place of wooden instruments for mining. The last principle was followed as it was the management of companies that decided where to mine and how much to mine. The mining was never an act of God but was based upon the decisions and actions of humans.