- 2075 Asoj · 8 marks
Technology definition and change in culture
Short answer
Technology is the systematic application of scientific knowledge, tools, and skills to solve problems and produce goods. It transforms culture by weakening traditional joint families, replacing local customs with globalised communication, altering festivals, eroding caste-based occupations, empowering women, and shifting values towards individualism and consumerism, though it can also preserve culture digitally.
What do you understand by the term technology? How it changes culture and traditions of a society?
Technology is the systematic application of scientific knowledge, tools, techniques, skills and organisation to produce goods and services and to solve practical human problems. It includes not only machines (hardware) but also methods, know-how (software) and the organisation needed to use them. Examples: plough, wheel, electricity, mobile phone, vaccine.
Technology has four elements: technique (tools/machines), knowledge, organisation and product.
How technology changes culture and tradition
- Family and social structure: Industrial and urban jobs, vehicles and foreign employment break joint families into nuclear ones. Mutual help systems like parma and guthi are weakening.
- Communication: Mobile phones and social media replace letters and village gatherings; people stay connected globally but face-to-face interaction falls.
- Language, dress and food: TV, internet and travel spread Western clothing, fast food and English words; local languages and dresses are used less, especially by youths.
- Festivals and rituals: Greetings are sent online, weddings happen in party palaces with DJs, and rituals are shortened. Relatives abroad join ceremonies by video call.
- Occupation and caste: Factory goods displace traditional crafts of potters, tailors (damai), blacksmiths (kami), weakening caste-based occupations and the hereditary link between caste and work.
- Status of women: Education, household appliances, birth control and jobs give women independence and change gender roles.
- Health beliefs: Modern medicine reduces faith in dhami-jhankri and superstitions; average life expectancy rises.
- Agriculture and festivals: Tractors and threshers replace oxen and communal planting/harvesting songs (e.g. ropain songs in Asar).
- Values: Money, time, speed, education and individual success become more valued than community, religion and inherited status.
- Entertainment: Folk music, dohori and local games give way to TV, films, YouTube and mobile games.
Assessment
| Positive | Negative |
|---|---|
| Reduces superstition and discrimination | Erosion of indigenous culture, language |
| Wider knowledge and global outlook | Consumerism, imitation of foreign culture |
| Gender equality | Generation gap, loneliness of elderly |
Technology can also preserve culture: digital archives of old scripts, recording of folk songs, online promotion of festivals and tourism. A society should adopt technology selectively so that development does not destroy its identity.
✓ Answer checked by Claude Opus 5.5 (high effort)
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