In the following pages it is intended to explain social change. There is a certain link between social change and its pace, on the one hand, and the extent of technological development. Social change is more likely to be faster in case there is a greater degree of technological development.
Human beings, in any society, live according to their social values and norms, which limit and condition human behavior. These values have a say in their actions and reactions.
The behavior of technology lacks consideration for social values and norms. This lack accounts for social change. When technology, which is man-made, is in action (or operation), its action or behavior is not social- or value-conditioned. When operation of a technological instrument is stopped through interference of a human agent, the instrument is made to stop.
There is precise, clear-cut, machine-like, exact behavior. This behavior is not susceptible to social values and conditions, including social norms and considerations, in the sense that once it started, it takes its course of action naturally, irrespective of any social condition. The precision and non-amenability of this behavior to social condition could not be compromised or controlled in its course of action. In this sense, this behavior is “blind.” This behavior is humanly controllable, in the sense that it could be stopped.
There is, on the other hand, social behavior, in the sense that it is value-laden, value-conditioned, value-controlled or value-driven. It is conditioned by social and human values and norms.
The difference between the exact behavior and the socially value-laden behavior varies from one society to another and from one time to another, following the level of social development of a given society in a given time. The similarity or dissimilarity of value-laden behavior to exact behavior is related to the level of social development.
The type of relationship between the exact behavior is indicative of the level or stage of social development. When the exact behavior is geared to or compromised in favor of or subjected to the value-laden behavior in a given society, this is indicative of a low social development of that society. In a more developed society, the contrary happens, namely, the value-laden behavior is inferior or gives way to the exact behavior. The more a society is developed, the greater is the inferiority of the value-laden behavior to the exact behavior and vice versa.
Value-laden type of behavior is more commonly spread among illiterate, homogenous and traditional societies, with a stronger sense of group solidarity. In these societies relations are more personal, uncritical and traditional, the sacred prevails over the secular, where actions and relationships are more based on, determined by, and oriented towards the family and the clan, where organization is not based on professional differentiation, where particularistic and diffuse relationships predominate, where use of money and of markets is more limited, and where the clan affiliation has a predominant role as a controlling agent and as an agent which teaches, prepares and gives orientation.
More exact behavior is one which is more typical of societies where patterns of behavior differ from those characteristic of the above-mentioned societies. Exact behavior is more discernible in more modernized societies, where organization is more set along specialization and professionalism, where functions are more specific and less diffuse, where use of money and markets is more widespread, where clan roles are less significant, and where urbanization and industrialization is more advanced.
As mentioned earlier, the exact or precise behavior is, in its nature, not susceptible to compromise or altering by an agent outside of itself. It is not socially conditioned.
The value-laden behavior, on the other hand, is, as the term suggests, conditioned by values.
There are contexts or social environments in which these two kinds of behavior come into contact with each other. Since the one type of behavior is inherently on intrinsically not compromising, and since the other type of behavior is socially conditioned, then when these two types of behavior come into contact with each other they conflict or collide with each other. This collision produces certain responses or reactions by the behaving (human and non-human) agents to the collision. As the exact behavior is a party in the collision, or as this behavior has helped produce it, the human agent in the collision who was performing a socially conditioned behavior would undergo a new type of experience, to which he was not used or accustomed before, one which would open the mind of the human agent to the fact that there are other types of behavior than that to which he was heretofore accustomed, or with which he was acquainted.
The type of the experience of the human agent is new because of the precision of the behavior of one of the two types involved in the collision. The precision of this behavior was unfamiliar, strange, novel or foreign to the human agent. Since the collision situation has an element of novelty, the responses by the human agent resulting from the collision situation should be different from the socially familiar responses. Such responses should include a new element.
