Cross cultural differences, Has technology changed culture?

Question

Cross cultural differences, Has technology changed culture?

Answer 1

Of course it has.

Put aside the strange rant about McDonald's, that seems to think the fryolator is a high piece of technology.  Then consider how big a difference some inventions have made in the past.  It's hard to deny the use of guns and gun powder led to the end of the warrior dominated cultures of the middle ages.  "cheaper soldiers" resulted in a wider power base, leading to the western republic.   The stirrup, the airplane, artillery have all wrought military changes, and result in cultural changes once those military advances  allowed a different set of over lords.

        Peaceful changes, Can anyone deny that the plow made a difference? or that the tractor did?  Maybe you still buy all your vegetables from the peasant family down the street, but not me.  I get mine from factory farms located in dozens of regions of the world, 1% of western countries involved in farming, instead of 99%, of course there is a cultural change.

       You're sitting at a major change right now.  Instant communication across the world.  Kind of makes Marco Polo a piker, but you can still appreciate the clipper ship for  opening communications and cross culture trading.

Answer 2

With no disrespect to the previous answerers, contrary to intuitive assumptions, technology has changed culture very little. Examples of trade and exchange are prevalent, but the underlying cultures themselves are relatively immobile.The technology has not changed the fundamental preferences of the members of group. Instead it has become a part of the activities of implementing these preferences.  If cultural difference is really of interest to people, they can spend some time reflecting the problems with defining "cultural difference". Is cultural change when the 15 McDonalds employees in their showcase restaurant in Vietnam say "Have a nice day" when you demand a full refund for a half eaten Big Mac, or do the other 74 million Vietnamese who will tell you to go to h**l for being an idiot suggest little change. Maybe the 15 people still tell you where to stick it when they are off work? By culture, we should be talking systematically similar changes the behaviors of all the people all of the time, not just radical changes of very few visible individuals. Even worse, the apparent aggregation of a few individuals so that they are seen by us is not a sign of meaningful cultural change.

    Hofstede, has demonstrated minimal cultural change amongst more than 30 cultures over the past 20 years (Hofstede 2000). Previously he had assembled a literature review for his original study from the existing literature of previous comparative cultural studies and had suggested that culture itself was a stable construct when viewed by years or even decades (Hofstede 1980).  Triandis 1989 also suggests the immobility of culture.

  Folks who suggest that culture is changing, and even converging on one big global culture may be assuming that all people are both receiving and are receptive to cultural influence via diffusion. While this does happen to some extent, groups of people typically define themselves by who they are NOT as well as who they are. Witness the situation in Iraq where significant numbers of individuals are now more familiar with US culture, but are not exactly embracing it on a mass scale. Currently, technology as allowing people to AVOID cultures contrary to their own by enabling people to spend their time embedded in content of their own background. Moreover, many nations select out culturally conflicting media, examples are China and Vietnam, where even internet content is screened by the police and the viewers are criminally accountable for perusing material that is typical grubby recreation for many American users.

A response to the answer following this from xxmachina is in order: To clarify the strange rant about McDonalds: what are we measuring when we say culture is changing? If you consider culture as behavioral use of technology, you will always get the change that is being assumed as so obviously intuitive. If you use the standard definition of culture as the core assumptions and values shared by a group of people, you will get little change. This is consistently reinforced by cultural research. All of these amazing technological breakthroughs have yet to precipitate changes in the core assumptions of peoples that are both fast and profound. It may feel like the crossroads of a revolutionarily new world because of instant communication, but the people are the same. I welcome any empirical studies that show otherwise because I am looking and haven't found any.

Cheers.

Answer 3

Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes Yes! I mean, technology hasn't changed all cultures; there are defintiely cultures out there that don't use technology. But for the most part, technology has made  it possible for many people to communicate so muhc easier, and communication paved the way for blending cultures together. How else can you explain McDonalds' millions establishments all over the world? Or the fact that we can watch  movies from Japan, or that we get imported goods? Generally speaking, technology has changed most of the world.

Answer 4

definitely

Answer 5

no doubt about it