The evolution and predicament of modern social technicalization

Jie Song

Shanxi University,China

Abstract Social technicalization refers to the construction and operation of society in accordance with the principles of technology.The stage of modern social technicalization was spawned after the Industrial Revolution and has mainly been manifested in two aspects:the heavy reliance of the operation of society on technology,and the increasing rationality of social technology.Modern society has undergone four stages of development driven by natural and social technologies:the initial stage,the institutionalised stage,the era of globalisation and the era of intelligence.The standardisation of social technology into natural technology,the comprehensive shaping of the human perspective and the promotion of social technicalization to attain social modernisation highlight the rationality and progressiveness of the technicalization of modern society.However,the rise of technological rationality also poses the dilemma of the one-sided human pursuit of efficiency,which has deepened the conflict between technology and culture and has exacerbated the imbalance between the development of social technology and natural technology.This needs to be examined dialectically.

Keywords Social technicalization,social technology,evolution,predicament

1.Introduction

The concept of ‘technicalization’ is not unfamiliar.Owing to rapid advances in science and technology(S&T)in recent decades,technological development has dominated political,economic,cultural and social life in contemporary society.Society has achieved ‘technicalization’ to some extent as a consequence.The concept of ‘social technicalization’emphasises the use of S&T achievements to inform the functioning of various fields of society,and thus realise the transformation of certain structures and functions of those fields.

The rapid S&T advances that ensued after the Industrial Revolution have had an enormous impact on society and have propelled human society into the stage of modern social technicalization.On the one hand,technology has penetrated every field of society owing to its powerful influence and has become an important force that dominates social operation.On the other hand,S&T developments have led to changes in society,such as an increasingly refined social division of labour and the rise of social organisations with different functions.Production,medical care,education and administration are thus maturing and have spawned increasingly sophisticated management systems,models and mechanisms in the processes of production of enterprises as well as the operation of various social organisations.Those social organisations,with various functions and efficient and orderly management systems,have promoted social technology to become increasingly rational and have enhanced the degree of social technicalization.

Although the concept of social technicalization has not been explicitly mentioned in previous theories in this area,the state of social operation to which it refers has been detailed in many theories.George Rizer’s ‘McDonaldized society’,Max Weber’s‘rational society’,John Kenneth Galbraith’s ‘new industrial society’and Jacques Ellul’s‘technological society’ all describe the technological construction and operation of modern society at different levels and in different ways.Modern social technicalization is the inevitable result of the social pursuit of rationalisation.

Social technicalization means that a society is constructed and operated according to technical principles.It started as a mode of social operation at the dawn of human society,which entered the stage of modern social technicalization after the Industrial Revolution.Modern social technicalization has mainly been promoted along two dimensions.First,the operation and development of society are highly dependent on technology,which occupies a dominant position in social life.Technology permeates all fields pertaining to nature and society and determines and supports the operation of modern society.Second,social technology is becoming increasingly rational as it is perfected.It is a technical form that operates with the society as its object,and abstracts significantly from the rules,institutions and organisations related to social governance.Social technology can be divided into the forms of social organisation and social processes.‘Social organization’ mainly refers to the organisations and groups that assume certain social functions,and‘social processes’ refers to the workflow and regulations that are formulated to maintain the normal operation of organisations and groups.The development of natural technology and the perfection of the social technology system promote the advance of modern social technicalization.Modern social technicalization‘is a rational form of social life,which is based on reasonably designed technological artefacts and institutions endowed by reasonable technical disciplines’(Feinberg,2018).

Social technicalization is an accurate portrayal of the current world,including politics,economy,culture and the daily lives of people.Modern social technicalization is a complicated process that has undergone four stages of development:the initial stage,the stage of institutionalisation,the era of globalisation and the era of intelligence.Many problems have been encountered while promoting social development that need to be examined rationally.Investigating this process can help us understand the relationship between natural technology and social technology in order to better understand the operational basis,the evolutionary logic and the developmental predicament of modern society.It also encourages people to reflect on their own state of living.This paper provides a detailed review and description of the process of social technicalization,analyses its complex effects based on that process and identifies the difficulties faced by modern social technicalization in an attempt to show the panorama of its development.

2.Evolution of modern social technicalization

Modern social technicalization is the result of the rational application of technological planning to modern society.Technological development in modern society is occurring more quickly than ever before,with the most prominent progress being made in the economic field.Natural technological innovation has extended to social technology and has led to transformations in the two forms of social organisation and social processes.Once the social technicalization of the economy has yielded certain results,it will spread to other social fields and drive an upgrade of the entire system of social technology,thus shaping the outlook for social technicalization in different periods.

2.1 The initial stage

The steam engine constitutes a prelude to modern social technicalization.Its invention and application introduced mechanisation to production processes.Mechanical systems are composed of working machines,transmission engines and power engines,and this gives rise to their combination in the form of the factory.‘The factory came about not because it expanded the workshop,but because it used machine power,machines and engines’ (Landes,1986).The advent of the factory enabled the specialisation of production and prompted cooperation in the overall process of development.Factories combine many machines and workers and replace dispersed activities with joint activities.The latter necessitates management,and that led to the birth of the factory system.‘The factory system involves the concentration of capital,the collective labor of a large number of workers,a clear division of labor,and production management…The advantage is the extensive use of machines and the division of labor’ (Heaton,1920).

The Industrial Revolution was not only an accelerator of economic growth but also a driver of social transformation.Steam technology led to the development of the factory for production.The resulting use of large machines and numerous workers and the requirements related to their management led to the factory system.Factories and the factory system were the representative social and technological systems in this period.That led in turn to a more professional construction of social organisations than before and caused the social system to become increasingly orderly.Modern social technicalization was in its infancy in this period.

2.2 The period of institutionalisation

The invention and application of electric-power technology promoted developments in production.The scales of manufacturing organisations and financial institutions expanded continually,and capital became increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few rich capitalists and entrepreneurs.In the 1880s,the large-scale and standardised mode of production was dominant;monopolistic organisations came into being;and joint stock companies developed rapidly on the basis of the credit system.The establishment of corporations and the separation of property rights imposed more stringent requirements on management skills.

At the beginning of the twentieth century,there was a revolution in management with the development of models for organising production by Taylor and Ford.Taylor’s system emphasised accuracy,standards and quantification.It divided the operation of the factory into various tasks that were further classified into several parts.The time needed to complete each part was determined and the best scheme was designed.Taylor’s idea of‘standardization’ inspired the American automobile magnate Henry Ford.In 1913,Ford built the first production line for automobiles in history.‘A production organization pattern based on standardized mass production appeared’ (Liu and Wang,2015).Ford specialised and refined the division of labour in production to implement scientific and professional management.

This period is called the period of institutionalisation because it provided the basic pattern for the technicalization of modern society.The revolution ushered in by electric-power technology changed the economic geography of society,promoted the expansion of the social division of labour and led to more specialised and rational spatial forms.‘Architects rushed to build office buildings,banks,police stations,factories,train stations,department stores,prisons,fire stations,madhouses,theatres—many different forms of space.All need to be properly laid out and coordinated … The space has to be meticulously organized,like a Bach fugue’(Toffler,1996: 159).This accurately reflects social technicalization during this period.

2.3 The age of globalisation

After the Second World War,there was an ‘explosion’ of knowledge followed by the technological revolution,and the industrial society reached its developmental peak in this period.The most prominent achievement of this age was the development of the internet.Information travels at an extremely fast rate on the internet,and that led to the abolition of spatiotemporal boundaries such that information could be transmitted without delay.The birth of the internet marks the era of information technology.It began with the invention of microcomputer processing,which is now used in all fields of life.

The technology in this period exhibited the characteristics of rapid development,extraordinary complexity,high penetration,and the sharing of resources and responsibility.These characteristics highlight the universality of technology that caused the world to become closely connected,and laid the foundation for global social technicalization.With further advances in information technology,the socialisation and internationalisation of production reached an unprecedented level.Satellite communication,the internet and wireless technologies led to integrated production and consumption all over the world.Production overcame the boundaries of space and time,and the pursuit of combinations of production factors and their free circulation led to the emergence of multinational corporations.

The development of information technology induced a surge in the demand for information products and network equipment.An important feature of those products was their high degree of standardisation and modularisation.The production mode advanced by‘Wintelism’ emphasised modularisation and large-scale production to integrate the production advantages and resources of all countries across the world.In order to promote international trade,rules and organisations were established one after another,which promoted a global advancement in social technology.The construction of the social technology system was no longer limited to a single country;technologies needed to be designed while considering reasonableness and standardisation in a globally holistic manner.Multinational corporations and Wintelism constituted the typical social technology system in this period.Products from all over the world became readily available at any given place,and this deepened the division of labour and cooperation among countries and led to the stage of global social technicalization.

2.4 The intelligent era

The developments in information technology have prompted a technological revolution.In 2016,the World Economic Forum was hosted in Davos,Switzerland,with the theme of ‘Managing the Fourth Industrial Revolution’.In the same year,Klaus Schwab noted in his book,The Fourth Industrial Revolution,that ‘the Fourth Industrial Revolution is being developed on top of intelligent technology’ (Schwab,2016).Intelligent technology is a comprehensive form of technology based on the internet,big data,cloud computing,artificial intelligence and other technologies.It is characterised by accuracy,openness and transparency.Intelligent technology has caused the intelligent factory to emerge as the core site of production.An intelligent system is used to realise automatic production.Data reading is completed by intelligent equipment and the output is obtained by using specific devices.In traditional production,there are fixed links among the raw materials,equipment,factory,transportation and the sale of goods,and they are all necessary to the system.These five modules are rendered independent as ‘activity’ modules in an intelligent factory.Each module has an independent system and supporting software in order to realise personalised production.Personalised customisation has thus become the main form of the process.

Society has entered the intelligent era as driven by intelligent technology.The intelligent factory and personalised customisation are representative systems of social technology in this period.InThe Third Wave,Toffler has pointed out that this era has led to the introduction of new norms in society.For example,the workday has become more arbitrary.It no longer spans from 9 am to 5 pm regardless of the nature of the job,but varies according to the nature of the work involved.Dates are no longer fixed,and there is no clear division between day and night in the city:

There are deep psychological,economic and technological forces behind this rhythm … Wealthier,better educated,and with more choices than their parents,people are reluctant to be seen as homogeneous.People do different jobs,use different products,and naturally want to be seen as different individuals who are not willing to accept a routine(Toffler,1996:161).

In the era of intelligence,increasingly stringent demands are being imposed on intelligent products.Intelligent wearable devices,intelligent homes,intelligent transportation and intelligent medicine reflect the trend of technology towards humanisation and intelligence.

3.Dialectical review of modern social technicalization

Although the concept of social technicalization has not been explicitly mentioned in previous theories in this area,the state of social operation to which it refers has appeared in many theories.The McDonaldized society,the rational society,the new industrial society and the technological society all describe the technological construction and operation of modern society from different aspects and in different ways.The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has deepened our understanding of this mode of social operation.‘Technological pandemic prevention’ became a well-known phrase in this time.Big data,cloud computing and artificial intelligence played an important role in tracing the spread of the disease,resource allocation,disease prevention and treatment.Large amounts of personal data were used for pandemic prevention and control as well as the resumption of work and production-related activities but posed issues of the violation of personal privacy as a consequence.Therefore,it is important to determine the boundary of intelligent governance and balance the relationship between personal data protection and the public interest.This is the fundamental expression of the contradiction between technical singleness and individual diversity and needs to be resolved in the process of modern social technicalization.

3.1 Advantages of modern social technicalization

In the process of modern social technicalization,the construction of social technology is continuously perfected.This is important for the normative development of natural technology.

Social technology is superior to natural technology.The objects of human cognition can be divided into three fields:nature,human society and human thinking.If the purposeful activities of humans are thus classified,natural technology,social technology and thinking-related technology are correspondingly obtained.Carl Mitcham,an American philosopher of technology,divides technology into the following aspects from the perspective of technological function:technology as reflected in the human mind,manifested through human social activity,and represented in the interaction between humans and nature (Mitcham,1999).Technology as reflected in the human mind corresponds to thinking-related technology;that expressed through human activities corresponds to social technology;and technology involved in the interaction between humans and nature corresponds to natural technology.Thinking-related technology is the most basic of the three.Social and natural technologies can function normally based on thinking-related technology.Natural technology is the intermediate between social and thinking-related technologies.On the one hand,it is reflected as the achievement of thinking-related technology and,on the other,it is the cornerstone of social technological construction.Social technology is at the apex of these technologies.It integrates natural technology and thinking-related technology,is the realistic expression of human activities,and plays a leading and regulatory role in the development of natural technology.Every major social change in history has occurred owing to natural and social technologies.On the eve of the Industrial Revolution,Watt made a significant transformation of the steam engine.The English patent law of 1623 involved a series of policies to encourage technological innovation,which increased the benefits accruing from technological innovation.Innovation in social technology is an indispensable condition and guarantor of the development of natural technology.If the main body of social technological innovation can formulate policies to encourage technological innovation,and can solve the problems of investment,cooperation,service and technological expansion in the process of technological innovation,natural technology will develop in a benign direction.

Social technicalization shapes people’s comprehensive development.Modern social technicalization accelerates the development of natural technology and provides the material foundation for the comprehensive development of humans.Moreover,the perfection of social technology guarantees such comprehensiveness.Maslow (1943) placed human needs at the core of his sociological theory and established a hierarchy of the needs.From the satisfaction of material life to the pursuit of spiritual life and the yearning for cultural life,the continual progression of human needs leads to the comprehensiveness of humans,and this needs to be supported by modern social technology.In the aspect of physiological demand,it requires the support of natural technology.When security-related needs become pressing,the state and society should formulate institutions and laws to protect personal safety and property.In the context of emotional needs,more support and options are needed for public association,assembly,and freedom of religion.Needs further up the hierarchy,such as self-esteem,self-love and self-actualisation,require that society provide an environment of fairness and justice as well as equality of opportunities.The more people’s demands rise,the greater is the extent to which advances in social technology need to match those in natural technology.Comprehensive personal development is a dynamic and historical process that requires the corresponding development of the modern society as supported by natural and social technologies.

The modernisation of society is facilitated by social technicalization.Modernisation is a macroscopic and multifaceted state of social development with political,economic and cultural progress as the main content.By contrast,technicalization mainly refers to the coordinated development of natural and social technologies.The relationship between them is one of inclusion and promotion:social modernisation includes social technicalization,and social technicalization promotes social modernisation.Different researchers have provided different definitions of ‘modernization’,but their content and expressions are similar.Modernisation represents social changes whereby politics,the economy,society,culture and people all advance efficiently in a clear direction.That requires the promotion of social technicalization.

3.2 Negative effects of modern social technicalization

The advent of the ‘risk society’.Modern social technicalization is a new civilisation in practice.It appears that people can control the development of society to the greatest extent if they have a wide range of knowledge and abide by rational laws and order.Thus,people can enter an era of safety.

Unfortunately,human society has encountered increasing uncertainty with advances in knowledge as well as progress in science and technology.While society is continually developing,it is now facing unprecedented crises and risks.The advent of the‘risk society’ is not only the negative consequence of modern social technology,but also a characteristic of modern social technology.This risk occurs mainly due to the high dependence of modern society on technology and the risks inherent in technology itself.First,modern technology is a complex system based on cutting-edge science,and technological operation on this basis can yield unpredictable behaviours.‘Complex technological processes and systems have made our world so vulnerable that a single unexpected change could lead to a catastrophe’ (Rapp,1986).Second,technological artefacts need to be present in the environment to interact with social factors,and that interaction places technology in uncertain relationships.‘Technology can’t just be restored to its original structure;it can take on multiple,stable,complex structures as it is used’ (Ihde,2002).Technological development means that human beings recognise technological defects and hope to improve current technologies through new technological means,thus leading to a superposition of risk.

The deepening crisis of social trust.In a technological society,we are faced with a plethora of information,confusion and fragmentation,which have resulted in a crisis of confidence.If the news is not true,the public will lose trust in the media.People are more likely to be deceived by lies and to become indifferent,such that they do not pursue the truth.That‘leads to information fatigue,the paralysis of decisionmaking ability,or a lack of in-depth thinking about the issues they care about at the level of being informed’ (Goldman,1999).When that trust breaks down,the cost for social operation increases.On the one hand,it takes a lot of time to authenticate information,and,on the other,that reduces the effectiveness of early warning information.The resulting social harm can be catastrophic.

The technological survival of humans.The most profound change owing to social technology lies in the large number of technological artefacts that influence life and production-related activities,where this significantly extends the scope of human activities.The performance of certain functions of human beings by using technologies is a level of human technicalization,reflecting the progress and liberation of human beings.However,the continual replacement of human labour by technologies is exactly a process of continuous ‘materialization’ of human beings.According to a 2017 report by McKinsey &Company,‘By 2030,between 0 and 30 percent of jobs in various industries will be replaced by AI,ushering in an era of skyrocketing technological unemployment’ (McKinsey Global Institute,2017).

4.The predicament of modern social technicalization

Modern social technicalization is an advanced form of the modern technological movement and the basic trend of social evolution.However,the excessive expansion of technological rationality has brought about a crisis of human civilisation.Modern social technicalization faces many difficulties in the pursuit of sustainable development.

4.1 The pursuit of efficiency makes people one-dimensional

The most prominent characteristic of modern social technicalization is the supremacy of efficiency.The functions of society need to be accurate and orderly in the pursuit of efficiency.Modern enterprises continue to quickly innovate,and efficiency has greatly improved because of production standardisation,as well as the adoption of high-tech tools,the assembly line and intelligent equipment.Thus,social technicalization is deepened.Social management also sets efficiency as its goal.The early idea of such management was based on the belief that ‘true democracy and true efficiency are unified’(Ding,2004).

The pursuit of technological efficiency in modern society also requires accuracy.The bookThe McDonaldization of Society(Ritzer,2006)describes how the fast-food company McDonald’s sets strict standards for production.There are stringent requirements for the weights of pastries and meat,the operational process,the production technology,the distribution of seasonings and the time taken for roasting and frying,so that hamburgers made by McDonald’s have the same weight and taste,whether in Africa or Oceania.In the field of education,one’s scholarly achievements can be summarised by one’s grade point average.The quality of television is no longer considered important,and the success of entertainment productions is determined based solely on ratings.In the pursuit of accuracy,there is a pervasive tendency to create the illusion of quantity and to reduce production and service processes to an‘exact’number.Ritzer(2006)summarized four characteristics of the ‘McDonaldized’ world: efficiency,quantification,predictability and controllability.These characteristics are shared by modern social technology.They are linked: quantification makes it easier to measure effectiveness;once they have been quantified,products and processes become more predictable.A variety of controllable,non-manual techniques are designed to ensure that a task is completed on time,or that the final product has a consistent weight and specifications.Behind these demands for precision is the same drive for efficiency.

In the process of technological development,society has been moving towards precision and efficiency at the cost of the richness and diversity of human beings.Accuracy and efficiency underlie a certain set of standards and prompt people to increasingly adjust their behaviours according to the relevant norms and standards.Being allowed to live in such a society means to be disciplined,which is a kind of submission of individuals to technical rationality.Society thus becomes a disciplined body in which the richness and diversity of individuals disappear,and the trend of one-dimensional thinking becomes prominent.

4.2 Deepening conflict between technology and culture

Technology and culture are the two main themes of human civilisation,and their development creates different forms of civilisation.They have formed both opposing and reinforcing relationships over human history and are interdependent.Technology is invented and applied in a certain cultural form,and culture constitutes the environment of technological operation.Culture cannot be separated from technology,and any representation of the former must rely on a certain form of the latter.Technology is an important carrier of cultural representation and preservation.Every technological innovation drives an upgrade in the cultural system and becomes an important part of the culture.Therefore,from the perspective of the identity of technology and culture,the former is embedded into the latter,and is dependent on it.At this time,technology,as a subsidiary of culture,is restricted to the framework of culture and life.Therefore,the same relationship between technology and culture occupies the dominant position in the context of traditional technology.

After the Industrial Revolution,technology took on an entirely new look.The invention and use of the steam engine led to innovations in production,which in turn led to a reform of the social structure such that the degree of social technicalization improved significantly.The economic benefits of modern technology are so significant that it has penetrated all fields of social life and has become the leading force of social development by virtue of its efficiency and accuracy.Its development has shaped a unique technological culture during its evolution.The relationship between technology and culture subsequently changed: culture had to submit to technology and become a part of it.That led to a split between the scientific and the humanistic cultures.The relationship between the two is a problem faced by modern society in the development of technology.

4.3 Imbalance between the development of natural and social technologies

Modern social technicalization is continually advancing under the joint impetus of natural technology and social technology.Technology is divided into natural and social technologies because of their different fields of application,but they are in fact interdependent and complementary.On the one hand,natural technology requires a suitable social environment and institutional construction to achieve rapid development.North(1994)claimed that‘institutional factors,not natural and technical factors,are decisive for economic growth’.He believed that the development of social technologies,such as institutions,led to the development of natural technologies.On the other hand,once natural technology has been formed,it requires the coordination and cooperation of all social elements to be applied.Without social technology to mobilise the people,and money and materials,natural technology cannot influence progress.Social technology acts as a leader and a servant in the development of natural technology.Benign social technicalization should involve the coordinated development of natural technology and social technology.However,the evolution of modern social technicalization shows that the development of social technology is lagging behind that of natural technology.Another problem facing modern society is the imbalance between the development of natural and social technologies.

The failure of social technology to standardise natural technology and shape the comprehensive nature of human beings has led to problems in the process of modern social technology.‘The striking progress of natural technology,the extreme backwardness of social technology,and the cause of many modern misfortunes is the imbalance between the two technologies’ (Jin,2002).In addition to the risk-related characteristics of technology itself,unsound technical norms and poor technical standards led to the failure to set a boundary for the development of natural technology.

5.Conclusion

Modern society functions in a technicalized manner and is more efficient and orderly than any other society in human history.Its development as driven by advances in natural and social technologies can be divided into four periods: the initial stage,the period of institutionalisation,the era of globalisation and the intelligent era.The current status of modern social technicalization shows that society is on the route to rational,normative and efficient progress that has had numerous material benefits but has also caused many social problems.The crisis in the process of modern social technicalization is fundamentally the result of a conflict between technology and culture.The excessive expansion of technological rationality has caused culture to become increasingly technicalized and lose its‘cultural’character.It is thus necessary to strike a balance between technology and culture and to enable culture to help adapt technology.That can be achieved by appropriately shaping the cultural environment to improve social technology.The system of social education should be improved in this context,because education can enrich people’s understanding and encourage them to reflect on their lives in the world today.That can promote the benign progress of modern social technicalization.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,authorship,and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research,authorship and/or publication of this article: This study is supported by two research programmes.One is a research project of the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Youth Program funded by the Ministry of Education titled‘Research on the construction path of harmonious labour relations in the era of artificial intelligence’(project number 22YJC710057),and the other is the Research Programme of Philosophy and Social Sciences of Higher Learning Institutions of Shanxi,‘Analyzing the trend of ideological and political education in colleges and universities from the perspective of social technology philosophy’ (grant number 2021W012).