Measuring technological progress | Computer Science homework help

Reply in full sentences, and make sure to use appropriate English spelling and grammar. Sources should be cited in APA format. Your response must be 4 (four) pages in size. Rigorously research and overview the part titled “Approaches to Measuring Technological Progress.” Use your individual phrases to jot down a brief compare-and-contrast essay that defines and explains three distinct views on the evolution of know-how. As you write, think about you might be speaking to a buddy who has no data of this matter. Briefly, write the way in which you communicate, utilizing a conversational tone. Additionally, attempt to alternate brief sentences and longer sentences to make your writing extra readable.

Make sure you create a title and cite your self because the creator. For instance:

A Comparability of Three Views on the Evolution of Know-how
Mei Quoran

Your essay ought to embrace 5 paragraphs, as follows:

• Paragraph 1 is your lead paragraph. It’ll include an outline of what it’s a must to say in evaluating and contrasting the views of Gerhard Lenski, Leslie White, and Alvin Toffler with respect to the evolution of know-how.
• Paragraphs 2, three, and four, are your physique paragraphs. 
  • In your essay, use paragraph 2 to explain the attitude of Gerhard Lenski.
  • In paragraph three, you’ll write in regards to the perspective of Leslie White.
  • In paragraph four, you’ll describe and focus on the attitude of Alvin Toffler.
• Paragraph 5 is your abstract and conclusion. Right here, you’ll examine the three views to indicate how they’re, or could also be, related. You’ll distinction the three views to explain how they’re completely different. You’ll finish this process–and your essay–by expressing your view as to which of those theorists (a number of) provide essentially the most helpful insights into the evolution of know-how, in your opinion.

It’s permissible to make use of direct quotes out of your studying, however don’t use too many. One to a few such quotes must be your restrict. Make sure you put a direct quote in citation marks. For instance: Based on Smith, “Carbon dioxide is each our buddy and our enemy.”

Measuring Technological Progress

Sociologists, anthropologists, and different researchers have developed alternative ways to measure and perceive technological progress. On this part, we’ll overview the ideas of 4 essential theorists. They provide 4 views on the connection between technological growth and our social world.

Gerhard Lenski

Sociologist Gerhard Lenski (1924–2015) believed that technological progress has been the driving power within the evolution of civilization. Based on Lenski, technological progress and civilization are carefully associated. Actually, the important thing to human progress is info. The extra we find out about harnessing and utilizing pure assets, the extra we will advance human society.

Lenski acknowledged 4 levels of communication, as follows:

• Stage 1 is the passing of genes from one era to the following. We would name this organic communication.
• Stage 2 is sentience, or the power to really feel, understand, or expertise objectively. As we start to develop consciousness and understanding of the world round us, we adapt higher to the surroundings of Earth. We’re in a position to share our expertise.
• In Stage three, we grow to be able to logic. We apply statement and fact-based evaluation to the world. For instance, if we see darkish clouds within the sky, we acknowledge that rain might be on the way in which.
• In Stage four, we grasp language, writing, and the power to create symbols. This stage is the muse of civilization.

Lenski additionally proposed 4 ranges of technological growth, as follows:

• On the hunter-gatherer stage, we bodily work to scale back meals insecurity.
• On the subsequent stage, we get hold of a part of the meals provide from horticulture (rising vegetation).
• On the subsequent stage, we have interaction in organized agriculture. Meals surplus permits advanced social orders to rise. We expertise social class inequality and a posh division of labor. We pursue technological advances in arts, crafts, structure, and civil engineering.
• Lastly comes the Industrial Revolution. At this stage, food-based economies are changed. We expertise a brand new sort of social class inequality together with revolutionary advances within the technique of manufacturing.

Leslie White

Anthropologist Leslie Alvin White (1900–1975) targeted on harnessing and controlling vitality. White believed that controlling vitality is the first function and performance of any tradition.

White recognized 5 levels of human growth, as follows:

• Stage 1: Vitality comes from human muscle energy.
• Stage 2: People harness the vitality of domesticated animals. We increase and herd livestock for meals vitality. We use different animals, particularly the horse, as transport in addition to mounts for warriors and hunters.
• Stage three: We have interaction within the agricultural revolution, which gives surplus meals vitality to increase the worth of Stage 2.
• Stage four: Particularly as expressed within the Industrial Revolution, we harness the ability of pure assets, akin to coal, oil, and pure gasoline.
• Stage 5: We harness and depend on nuclear vitality. (White was maybe too optimistic about our means to harness nuclear vitality, given its harmful drawbacks.)

White developed a formulation that is still helpful:

P = E*T

On this formulation, “E” is a measure of vitality consumed. “T” is a measure of the effectivity of technical elements that make the most of this vitality. “P” is what we get when calculate these two measures.

For instance, once we examine early steam engines to steam-powered generators, the effectivity of generators will increase the worth “P.” In White’s phrases, “tradition evolves as the quantity of vitality harnessed per capita per 12 months is elevated . . . or because the effectivity of the instrumental technique of placing the vitality to work is elevated.”

Alvin Toffler

Alvin Toffler (1928–2016) was a journalist, social critic, and futurist. Toffler stands out among the many thinkers related to the postindustrial period. That’s as a result of he was in a position to attain a big viewers.

The next quote offers an concept of Toffler’s view of our present period:

“To outlive, to avert what we now have termed future shock, the person should grow to be infinitely extra adaptable and succesful than ever earlier than. We should get your hands on completely new methods to anchor ourselves, for all of the outdated roots—faith, nation, group, household, or occupation—are actually shaking underneath the hurricane affect of the accelerative thrust. It’s now not assets that restrict selections; it’s the resolution that makes the assets.”
 

Toffler is finest recognized for the idea of future shock. He outlined this as the non-public notion of “an excessive amount of change in too brief a time period.” Toffler argued that human societies are present process huge social and technological structural change. We stay in an unprecedented period by which industrial society is altering to a “super-industrial” society. In Toffler’s view, many discover the velocity of change overwhelming. Thousands and thousands of individuals really feel disconnected. We stay lives characterised by “shattering stress and disorientation.” In different phrases, we’re “future shocked.”

Based on Toffler, we’re drowning in info overload. (Toffler invented this time period.) In Toffler’s view, future shock is chargeable for most modern-day social issues.

Toffler recognized three levels within the growth of society, as follows:

• Stage 1 is the agrarian stage. This stage started with the invention of agriculture through the Neolithic interval (New Stone Age). Toffler related the agricultural revolution with the transfer from “barbarity” to “civilization.”
• Stage 2 is the commercial stage. This stage started in England with the Industrial Revolution. Based on Toffler, essential advances throughout this era included machine instruments and the steam engine.
• Stage three is the postindustrial stage. This began within the second half of the 20 th century. Stage three is marked by the innovations of automated manufacturing, robotics, and the pc. This stage can be related to the expansion of the service sector. Throughout this stage, the necessity for “brainwork” has elevated, whereas the necessity for handbook labor (akin to manufacturing unit work) has decreased.

William F. Ogburn

Lastly, William F. Ogburn (1886–1959) was a distinguished sociologist who developed the idea of cultural lag. That is the concept it takes time for a tradition to catch as much as improvements in know-how. Though Ogburn died way back, his concepts are nonetheless taken fairly severely by teachers.

Based on Ogburn, materials tradition—technology–progresses a lot quicker than nonmaterial tradition. Know-how adjustments extra rapidly than social establishments like household, authorities, non secular establishments, and even the humanities.

To cite Ogburn,

“The invention of the car . . . freed younger folks from direct parental statement [and] made it potential for them to work at distances from dwelling . . . Half a century earlier, households have been structured … as household farms. Younger folks have been underneath steady statement as they labored proper on the homestead.”
 

Based on Ogburn, financial techniques adapt extra rapidly to new applied sciences than different establishments. That’s as a result of such advances provide a return on funding to enterprise. For instance, including robotics to an meeting line can velocity up the manufacturing course of. Likewise, counting on advances in digital communications will help corporations to share info extra simply. Actually, company tradition and the profit-driven software of know-how are inclined to drive technological innovation (materials tradition).

It’s attention-grabbing to notice that non secular establishments are typically significantly impacted by “future shock.” Scientific and technological advances have traditionally been opposed by organized faith. For instance, the Roman Catholic Church continues to oppose contraception. Equally, evangelical and fundamentalist teams proceed to reject long-accepted concepts about evolution and pure choice.

“We stay in a society exquisitely depending on science and know-how, by which hardly anybody is aware of something about science and know-how.”
–Carl Sagan, astronomer and theorist
 

Unintended Penalties

Toffler’s insights started an ongoing debate into info overload. Simply how overwhelmed are folks by speedy advances in know-how? This debate continues, and we’ll revisit it later on this lesson.

Lenski, White, and Ogburn provided helpful perception into the connection between know-how and the evolution of society. Nevertheless, they failed to handle the unintended penalties of postindustrial growth. That is particularly the case respecting social, cultural, and technological progress in an period of anthropogenic (human-caused) local weather change and world warming.

What unintended penalties can we imply? Let’s take a look at the essential assumptions of a capitalist financial system. In capitalist societies, continuous progress is desired: promote extra, construct extra, develop extra markets, and domesticate extra consumerism. If we designed a bumper sticker to outline consumerism, it would say, “Extra, extra, extra!” or “You’re what you should purchase!” or “Whoever dies with essentially the most toys wins!”

In fact, traditionally, the world has been minimally involved with ecological points. When Lenski, White, and Ogburn have been growing their concepts, public consciousness of local weather change had but to emerge. As an alternative, traditional assumptions about financial progress nonetheless utilized; that’s, financial progress was measured primarily by its fixed progress. Naturally, we now understand this assumption is unrealistic. The world faces too many ecological threats from a deal with unrestrained progress. Actually, from an ecologist’s perspective, unrestrained progress is suicidal. To attract a parallel, within the pure world, unrestricted mobile progress is named most cancers.

Capitalism is about return on funding. It’s in regards to the backside line. It’s targeted on decreasing prices to extend income. The best methods to scale back prices is to decrease wages or change human employees with know-how. Contemplate the distinction between human and robotic employees. Robotic can work 24 hours a day, 7 days every week, and may cost a little a enterprise 30 cents per hour. Clearly that’s a lot decrease than even minimal wage.

Throughout developed nations, digital know-how has shrunken the marketplace for industrial jobs, significantly in manufacturing. Jobs that paid a residing wage are vanishing. For instance, in the US, large firms—like Walmart, Apple, and Dell—have exported manufacturing jobs to overseas labor markets in China and elsewhere. Consequently, the American center class continues to shrink. Jobs that after paid nicely have been changed by less-lucrative jobs within the service sector.

In fact, the state of affairs is sophisticated. International productiveness has elevated enormously as a result of advances in digital and digital applied sciences. Nevertheless, on the similar time, in developed nations like the US, the ratio of producing jobs to service sector jobs has modified radically. To cite economist Hank Robison, “In 1950, 30 p.c of all U.S. jobs have been in manufacturing, whereas 63 p.c have been in providers. In 2011, 9 p.c of whole employment remained in manufacturing, with 86 p.c in providers.”

Robison continues: “Does this signify a shift in customers’ tastes from manufactured items to providers? The brief reply is not any; if something, we eat extra ‘issues.’ The distinction is that issues are manufactured with far much less labor, and they’re more and more made someplace else.”

Wages have both declined or remained stagnant for the reason that 1970s. Thus, cheaper items (plus excessive ranges of private debt) hold the consumerist philosophy alive.

Economically, the world is coping with two sorts of unintended penalties. Each have been produced by capitalist ideology. First, will increase in productiveness have led to decrease wages and roughly everlasting unemployment for unskilled laborers. Second, continuous progress requires ever extra vitality. Meaning greenhouse gasoline emissions proceed to extend. This, in flip, has led to a worldwide vitality disaster.

Scientific Consensus on Local weather Change

Based on NASA, a number of research printed in peer-reviewed scientific journals present that about 97 p.c of local weather scientists are in settlement that adjustments to the local weather over the previous century will be attributed to human actions. Whereas scientists proceed to interpret information and debate causal connections, they comply with the essential premise that people are negatively affecting the worldwide surroundings. Scientific debate is about weighing precise proof. Scientists pose hypotheses and take a look at them. They test outcomes and repeat the method to get ever nearer to fact-based fact.

Overview the quotes beneath to get an concept of the scientific consensus on local weather change and world warming. These three pattern statements will be discovered within the eighteen lined in NASA’s report (“Scientific Consensus: Earth’s Local weather Is Warming,” NASA. Retrieved Could 31, 2018, from http://local weather.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus.)

In preview, listed here are three pattern statements out of eighteen supplied within the report.

“The scientific proof is evident: world local weather change brought on by human actions is going on now and it’s a rising risk to Society.” American Affiliation for the Development of Science, 2006.
“The proof is incontrovertible: International warming is going on. If no mitigating actions are taken, vital disruptions within the Earth’s bodily and ecological techniques, social techniques, safety and human well being are more likely to happen. We should cut back emissions of greenhouse gases starting now.” American Bodily Society, 2007.
“The Geological Society of America (GSA) concurs with assessments by the Nationwide Academies of Science (2005), the Nationwide Analysis Council (2006), and the Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change (IPCC, 2007) that world local weather has warmed and that human actions (primarily greenhouse gasoline emissions) account for a lot of the warming for the reason that center 1900s.” The Geological Society of America, 2006; revised 2010.