The rapid evolution of technology has enabled mankind to be more connected than ever before. However, the advent of technology dates back to our survival instincts from the Stone Age. Human desires are still primarily modeled according to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. As early men we have been using tools and these were part of our survival. These tools have kept evolving based on our need, desires and passion. We have tried improving its design and use every decade. Nowadays, technology is more of a desire to adapt to new ways of life than a way to survive. Mobiles, computers, and the internet have seamlessly entered our lives, making it impossible for us to separate ourselves from them in the future. Humans feel crippled without being connected to the mobile or the internet even for a couple of hours. The technology of today drives the world, and without it mankind would be greatly vulnerable. In this way, technology plays a vital role in our lives as social actors.
Keywords: Social actor, artifact, hooks, aesthetics,
Original: Bhanu Prathap
Technology acts as an agency that is driven from history to cater to the needs of mankind. The majority of technological advancements occurred during the world war, when human safety was of utmost concern. The traditional occupation of people was farming and various kinds of artisans, but industrialization opened up new opportunities and increased wages for thousands of people. As a result, family businesses lost value and economic importance, and men became factory workers. As a consequence, cities became more modernized, resulting in new classes and financial disparities in society. The rising competition led to an unemployment crisis and the need for a higher power and control through bureaucracy. Technology accelerates inequality within and between countries, as well as between rich and poor communities, rural and urban populations, and gender (UNCTAD/DTL/STICT/2019/10).
"Technology helps elucidate history and vice versa." (Mathewman, 2010, p. 08). As human needs or desires lead to technological advancement, this advancement will again lead to new requirements. The rapid developments create knowledge or developmental gaps and pose challenges for some countries, societies or classes. Technology is continuously evolving in the context of inequalities among people, companies, regions and nations. This process tends to widen and enhance the gaps in reality (Cozzens, 2010) Cycles keep repeating themselves, adding to our evolution. Although frontier technologies (artifacts) have created unprecedented opportunities and developments in our everyday lives, they also pose significant ethical concerns regarding privacy, security, data ownership and use, and safety.
The Agro-food industry is implementing digital technologies across all stages of production, from farm to fork. Data is collected in real time by sensors that are connected to 'intelligent' farm machines, including smart tractors and automatic milkers. They use sophisticated algorithms to help farmers increase yield and be more productive. Many farms across North America and Europe are installing automatic milking equipment (Hansen 2015; Schrijver 2016; Shortall et al. 2016). Monitoring animal health, monitoring animal produce, and identifying diseases early are some of the ways big data plays an important role in animal agriculture. Many countries now mandate the use of traceability programmes to monitor the animal capacity and yield like in the European Union's trade control and expert systems and the United Kingdom’s Cattle Tracing System (Green et al. 2018; Bajardi et al. 2012).
The system seems simple and straightforward like a complete sack of sweet apples that can bring harmony to everyone, yet farmers doubt its benefits and are wary of investing in an expensive set of technologies. Digitizing this whole system of agro business requires implementation of the technology and a third party promoted company to manage the data and the whole engineering process to construct the network. The technologies are aimed at the needs of large scale capital rich farmers mainly while ignoring the indirect impacts by the gaps created for the small and mid-sized farmer in terms of competition, yield of produce and pricing. Nearly all agro-food sectors, Farmers as producers don't have control over the prices they receive for their crops, making these technologies expensive (Schewe and Stuart 2015; Rotz 2017). This also leads to an increase in farmers' debt. Furthermore, the political economic dynamics question the following main aspects of digital agriculture; (1) data ownership and control; (2) the production of technology and data development; (3) and data/cyber security (Rotz , Duncan, Small, Botschner, Dara, Mosby, Reed and Fraser, 2019,p. 210)
The big question is, Who owns the data? As Ruha Benjamin states “What you have access to has access to you”. Even though the farmers accept the terms of data ownership there is little control over their consent rights. The data ownership largely lies in the hands of the corporations running the system even though. In this system farmers fall vulnerable to the operability of the companies. Democratization of data control is essential to ensuring fairness for all. (Mooney 2018, p. 38).
In terms of the development process, producers have little or no control as they're directed mostly by corporate interests. Farmers, for example, raise concerns about not operating yield monitors for over ten years, primarily because they do not possess the right support to make that data into usable decision making data (Duncan 2018). In contrast to ‘bottom-up’ or ‘farmer-driven’ development, this is characterized as development from the top down by the author (Rotz , Duncan, Small, Botschner, Dara, Mosby, Reed and Fraser, 2019,p. 210).
There is always the threat to the data stored in any place. Here the crop data, livestock health data, and even farmers’ personal online profiles may be vulnerable in case of a cyber breach in the agro companies.
The case study shows that technology can contribute to improving agricultural productivity, but at the same time, the so-called technological solutions are often developed in a way that empowers corporate actors instead of enabling independent farmers to make informed decisions about agroecological practices.
Our world is connected through the technological apparatus. With the technology ofsocial media, and the internet available to everyone, people are able to connect withothers no matter where they are. The technology finds its roots in telegraph machinesthat tapped out dots and dashes electronically. At this point, technology advancementswere viewed from a neutral perspective, with the aim of connecting people using scienceand technology. The first SNT emerged in 1997 with the Six Degrees profile uploadingservice where technology was the solution to the communication problems and a valuable tool in socializing. SNT was eclipsed by Facebook by 2008, and Humansbecame enmeshed with this system (Endframing). Social media platforms gained 490million users this year (that’s a 13.2% increase, year over year; the previous year’sgrowth was only 7.2%). [Paige Cooper (2021, April 13) 140+ Social Media Statistics thatMatter to Marketers in 2021. Retrieved fromhttps://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-statistics-for-social-media-managers/]. Theconnection since then has invaded our social lives which leaves us vulnerable in severalways. Now this SNT influences our everyday decisions starting from what we have forbreakfast and what we do before we sleep. “What you have access to has access to you”[Ruha Benjamin, (2021). Which Humans? Innovation, Equity, and Imagination inHuman-Centered Design [Motion picture]. Available from Youtube]
The concern of privacy has spiked in recent years. Cyber attacks and data breaches have forced users to rethink the adoption of this technology, which now is considered a social dilemma. The Consulting agency Cambridge Analytica, for example, is a gripping case in point. Facebook's private information was used to influence the 2016 presidential election using more than 50 million Facebook accounts. (The New York Times, 2018). In response to these concerns, numerous laws and policies have been passed with stringent measures, and we are now considering ways to build technologies without being intrusive. Now we need Technology to protect us from technology. But to think of it, these invasions were not planned by anyone but they were unintended consequences in the process of finding a solution to a problem which gave rise to new problems.
The advent of new technologies always raises the question of power. It is very important to keep in mind that the politics of new technology is not just a form of rhetoric, but an actual phenomenon that manifests through various channels. Consider the design of the spiked benches [Fabian Brunsing [Photograph], PAY & SIT: the private bench from Fabian Brunsing onVimeo.] in the park designed by a German artist to portray the metaphor ofdiscriminating designs around us. Such spiked designs exist all around us, and it is ourresponsibility to recognize and stand up to them in our society. [Ruha Benjamin, (2021).Which Humans? Innovation, Equity, and Imagination in Human-Centered Design[Motion picture]. Available from Youtube]. In implementing a new design let us bemindful of such spikes and ask questions: What will this enable? What might theydisable? Who will be in control? Are these politics of technology my personal politics?What is my individual responsibility to restore or fix this system? It doesn't matter whatwe do but what matters is that we take a standpoint in doing something. (Evan Barba,2018)
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