Technology and Cultures

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Modern society involves the transition of a new era: the transition is partly brought out through the use of cultural tradition, and through the production of new ideas and the invention of new techniques. The latter may be appropriated and adapted from outside a given culture in addition to what can be acquired from within the culture itself by way of exercise of the academic, evaluative, and adaptive capacities.

A sustained interest in science is important for at least two reasons. It would provide an stable base for a real technological evolution at a time in the history of the world when the dynamic connections between science and technology have been recognized and made the basis of equal attention to both: technology has become science-based, while science has become technology-directed. The second reason, relative to the first, is that the application of science to technology will help improve traditional technologies.

Ideally, technology, as a cultural product, should take its rise from the culture of a people if it is to be accessible to a large number of the population. For this reason, one approach to creating modern technology in Africa, as elsewhere, is to improve existing traditional technologies whose development seem to have been underdeveloped in the traditional setting because of their very weak scientific base.

Traditional technologies have certain characteristics that must be featured in the approach of developing modern technology in Africa. Traditional technologies are usually simple, not highly specialized technologies: this means that large numbers of people can participate in the use of technologies, as well as contribute to their development; but it also promotes local technological awareness. The...

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...can be resolved; however, if we assume that there will be original technological capacities, regardless the minimum kind, that would therefore need to be nurtured, developed, and augmented to some level of sophistication required in operating a modern technology. The assumptions also presuppose that the transferred technology, developed in a specific cultural environment that is different in many ways from that of a developing country, it is easily adaptable to the social and cultural environment of the developing country (Etzioni Amitai.1993).

Works Cited

Dalfovo A. T., et al. The Foundations of Social Life: Ugandan Philosophical Studies. Vol. 1. Washington, D.C.: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1992.

Etzioni Amitai. The Spirit of Community. The Reinvention of American Society. New York: Simon and Schuster, a Touchstone Book, 1993.

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