Barbara Jarabik discussing about art and technology synergy these days : Nowadays, whenever we look around us in our home, in public spheres, we will definitely see a tool of technology. Modern technology occupies an important position in our daily life by providing a sense of independence and connectedness. Human societies and their technology have become inseparable from one another, they have a co-dependent relationship manifested in co-influence and co-production. Technology influences socio-culture as much as socio-culture influences technology production.
The culture of a society is reflected in values, norms and practices. Culture observes itself through individuals to reflect their perception, practices, values and in transfer of technology. Technology has a crucial impact on fundamental aspects of all our cultures including language, art, mobility, education and religion. Culture of a community acts as a standard for perceiving, judging and evaluating the technology. As technology affects all the components of culture, it determines the direction of cultural development. To occupy the larger cultural dimension, technology should be in harmony with social and cultural conditions of community else there exists a friction between technological development and preservation of cultural values. A rational balance allows people to exercise freedom of expression in technical world which is beyond one’s ethnicity, age, or level of education. People use it for fulfilling their fantasies but a cultural downfall may occur due to lack of restrictions, regulation and/or consequences.
Technology, for an example, mobile phones find a very unique integration with culture and the work that an individual does (Palen, 2001, pp. 109- 122), today we see that technologies like mobile phones are being used in various roles , in one culture we see that it is used from the simple function as a torch light to more complex roles like fishermen using it for marketing and weather reports (Mittal, 2010). In another we observe how it changes the way people think and brings about a change in society (Contarello, 2007, pp. 149-163), we also observed that it has also seen applications in businesses like new apps (Butler, 2011), our daily activities. Technology is slowly getting locked with our culture, and becomes a daily necessity in some other cultures.
Technology influences society through its products and processes, which consequently influences the quality of life and the ways people act and interact. On the other hand, social needs, attitudes, and values also influence the direction of technological development. For societies to thrive and evolve, technological innovations have become necessary. It has evolved over the last centuries from simple tools such as stone tools and basic books to complex genetic engineering, smart machines, and information technology such as TV, computers, and cell phones. As technological systems are invented by humans, they reflect the very essence of a population’s needs and culture. See extra info at http://www.cullinandesigns.com/.
Another example of technology getting integrated with a culture would be washing machines, in some cultures, washing clothes used to be a way in which communities used to get together and wash their clothes and today slowly they have adapted to washing machines. Before gas or induction based stoves, cooking used to be done on fire from wood or coal and there were various rituals, which used to be part of the culture8 since fire was considered holy in that culture, but slowly in due course of time people started getting adapted to the change. Culturally, we observe that people used to put salt on meat or dry the meat so that it stays for a long time, but after a refrigerator was invented it took some time till people integrated it into their lifestyle and now we can see a large section of the cultures around the world have got an integrated simple concept of using a refrigerator.