5ocial Technology
Social technology is a way of using human, intellectual and digital resources in order to influence social processes. For example, one might use social technology to ease social procedures via social software and social hardware, which might include the use of computers and information technology for governmental procedures or business practices. It has historically referred to two meanings: as a term related to social engineering, a meaning that began in the 19th century, and as a description of social software, a meaning that began in the early 21st century.Social technology is also split between human-oriented technologies and artifact-oriented technologies. History The term "social technology" was first used at the University of Chicago by Albion Woodbury Small and Charles Richmond Henderson around the end of the 19th century. At a seminar in 1898, Small described social technology as the use of knowledge of the facts and laws of social life to bring about rational social aims. In 1895 Henderson coined the term "social art" for the methods by which improvements to society are introduced. According to Henderson, social art gives directions. In 1901, Henderson published an article titled "The Scope of Social Technology" in which he renamed this social art as 'social technology', and described it as "a system of conscious and purposeful organization of persons in which every actual, natural social organization finds its true place, and all factors in harmony cooperate to realize an increasing aggregate and better proportions of the 'health, wealth, beauty, knowledge, sociability, and rightness' desires." In 1923, the term social technology was given a wider meaning in the works of Ernest Burgess and Thomas D. Eliot, who expanded the definition of social technology to include the application, particularly in social work, of techniques developed by psychology and other social sciences. In 1928, Luther Lee Bernard defined applied science as the observation and measurement of norms or standards, which control our relationship with the universe. He then separated this definition from that of social technology by explaining that social technology also "includes administration as well as the determination of the norms which are to be applied in the administration". In 1935, he wrote an article called "The Place of Social Sciences in Modern Education," in which he wrote about the nature of an effective education in the social sciences to reach effective education by the willing masses. It would be of three types: Firstly, "a description of present conditions and trends in society". Secondly, "the teaching of desirable social ends and ideals necessary to correct such social maladjustments as we now have". Thirdly, "a system of social technology which, if applied, might be expected to remedy existing maladjustments and realize valid social ends". Bernard explained that the aspects of social technology which lags behind are the technologies involved in the "less material forms of human welfare". These are the applied sciences of "the control of crime, abolition of poverty, the raising of every normal person to economic, political, and personal competency, the art of good government, or city, rural, and national planning". On the other hand, "the best developed social technologies, such as advertising, finance, and 'practical' politics, are used in the main for antisocial rather than for proper humanitarian ends". After the Second World War, the term 'social technology' continued to be used intermittently, for example by the social psychologist Dorwin Cartwright for techniques developed in the science of group dynamics such as 'buzz groups' and role playing and by Olaf Helmer to refer to the Delphi technique for creating a consensus opinion in a panel of experts. More recent examples are Human rights & social technology by Rainer Knopff and Tom Flanagan which addresses both human rights and government policies that ensure them. Another example is Theodore Caplow's Perverse incentives: the neglect of social technology in the public sector, which discusses a wide range of topics, including use of the death penalty to discourage crime and the welfare system to provide for the needy. At the current stage of social technology research, two main directions of usage of this term have emerged: human-oriented technologies and artifact-oriented technologies. According to the goal of social technology adaption, technologies oriented toward humans consist of: Technologies of power Fundamental legal regulations System of signs and symbols Participation technologies Group behavior pattern creation Information transfer mediation Eugenics Individual behavior pattern creation Legal norms Technologies of the self Technologies oriented toward artifacts consist of: Social interaction technologies Relation creation and sustainment technologies Co-operation technologies Knowledge development technologies Information aggregation technologies Resource compilation technologies Expertise location technologies
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