terms - chapter 8 (Gould)

Technological Change and the Environment

technology

the practical application of knowledge about the natural world to manipulate the natural world. In simplest terms, technology is how we make “stuff” and do “stuff.” A series of entanglements with social systems and ecosystems, close and far, obvious and hidden.

technological change

In order to make certain kinds of stuff and do certain kinds of stuff, we organize and reorganize social relations and nature. And technological change is most commonly produced by social actors and institutions.

labor surplus

In Marxist terms, work performed in excess of that necessary to produce the means of livelihood of a worker (the additional work that then produces a profit for the owner of the means of production). The term is also commonly used to refer to people for whom no work is available. The unemployed constitute surplus labor in an economy, as they are not being put to productive economic use. Technology consists of both physical, tangible “things” and the social relations they imply. No technology is separable from its social relations, even though those relations are intangible and take a little more work to actually “see.”

neotechnic era

(starting around 1900), he argues, was typified by the use of steel as the primary material and the use of electricity.

The Agricultural Revolution (beginning around 10,000 BCE)

• The realization that by planting the seeds of desirable plants, people could transform ecosystems to make them produce large volumes of preferred food and textile crops radically changed the relationship between human societies and nature.

• This technology was developed in multiple locations in the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas 10,000–12,000 years ago, and eventually reached northern Europe about 6,000 years ago.

• Allowed humans to modify their local ecosystems to meet their food needs rather than modifying their societies (through migration) to meet local ecosystem conditions.

• The power balance between environment and society was shifted toward greater human agency and greater ecosystem malleability.

• Pastures were cleared, ecosystems transformed, and species gradually modified to serve human goals.

• the technology of agriculture is what began the process of human societies constructing permanent houses and filling them with material possessions.

• Led to labor surplus

• Supporting larger populations in one place required more complex social organization in governance and the production and distribution of a wider variety of goods and services.

• The primary goal of weapons technology turned from killing other animals to killing humans.

The Industrial Revolution (beginning around 1760 CE)

• the first great industrial civilizations emerged in Europe.

• European social analysts like Marx, Weber, and Durkheim established the scientific study of societies and social change in efforts to understand the new patterns of social relations generated by the emergence of industrial production.

• The industrialization of production generated a vast array of social changes; most notably the creation of new classes and the formation of industrial cities.

• industrialization ushered in societal dependence on enormous inputs of nonrenewable resources, particularly fossil fuels.

• Our current society can be thought of as one designed specifically to thrive in, and to survive off of, endless increases in energy inputs.

• Industry required the expanding conversion of elements of ecosystems (trees, coal, metals, minerals, etc.) into natural resource inputs in the production of products.

• ecosystems and habitats, at first locally and later globally, were pillaged to meet the needs of industry for raw materials. We can think of these as ecosystem “withdrawals.”

• the capacity of industry to produce on increasingly vast scales resulted in the world being increasingly full of synthetic products and byproducts. The products, although useful for a time, eventually find their way into dumps, landfills, the oceans, and incinerators as waste. The byproducts tend to be returned to ecosystems as industrial air-, water-, and land-based emissions. In addition, many of the products create byproducts themselves in the course of their use. We can think of these socially created artificial elements injected by industrial societies back into ecosystems as ecological “additions.”

• rise of cities and urbanization cut off large portions of the human population from direct daily contact with natural environments.

Basic science

Scientific research aimed at discovering or establishing information that explains natural phenomena. Basic scientific knowledge forms the knowledge base that supports applied science. Basic scientific research is largely conducted by governments and universities.

applied science

The discipline of science that utilizes existing basic scientific knowledge in the development of useful applications and technologies. Applied science is primarily directed by corporations.

waste sinks

An area or element of the environment that social institutions use to absorb human-made waste.

nanotechnology

The engineering of matter on an atomic and molecular scale to produce new materials and technologies with at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometers. (A nanometer is equal to one billionth of a meter.) Molecularly engineered materials are sometimes referred to as nanates. Machines engineered at the molecular scale are commonly referred to as nanites or nanobots.