The development of new technologies will likely drive profound changes in government and society. New technologies will likely amplify cognitive biases that affect individuals’ ability to process information. This may make it more challenging for individuals and communities to identify and agree on facts about themselves and their shared experiences, identities and cultural touchpoints.
How might emerging technologies contribute to cultural change?
Though new technologies might have extensive cultural impacts, not all technologies will lead to cultural change. Indeed, some technologies will be integrated into existing cultural frameworks, with technology users drawing on existing cultural frameworks (e.g. norms and values) to interact with them. However, we identified several potential areas of considerable cultural change at different levels of individual and societal engagement with emerging technologies:
At the Personal Level:
Technological advances (such as human augmentation) may spark questions about the fundamental nature of human identity and the biological foundations of human experience. Some experts specifically flag the technological hybridisation of human identity, with perceptions of identity increasingly intertwined with technological enablement, leading to disruptive sociocultural effects.
Among People or Between People and Technologies:
Cultural change may arise from tensions between personalising human experiences or information flows and a community’s ability to define common cultural touchpoints. As emerging technologies help tailor information spaces to individual preferences, communities may increasingly struggle to collectively identify and agree on facts about our physical, societal, political and economic realities and, thus, culture.
Regarding a Person’s Interaction with Their Broader Environment (e.g. a City):
Some emerging technologies will likely shift interpersonal interaction from the physical to the virtual world. In particular, the potential for widespread adoption of augmented, mixed and virtual reality indicates significant technological mediation of many or all aspects of a person’s interaction with their environment, affecting individuals’ interactions and relationships with physical spaces and infrastructure. This increasing relocation of human activity into virtual spaces may erode the cultural value of physical artefacts (e.g. architecture) while also changing the make-up of physical environments such as cities through technological integration and connectivity.
Across Different Technological Areas:
Cultural change may also arise from the rapid pace of innovation and adoption of new technologies. Cultural integration of technology may become more complex as social institutions struggle to absorb technological changes into existing cultural frameworks or adapting norms and rules of behaviour to the capabilities and uses of new technologies. This may increase the likelihood that new technologies generate technology-mediated cultural change.
SOURCE : https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RBA2662-1.html by Linda Slapakova, Abby Fraser, Megan Huges, Maria Chiara Aquilino, Kristin Thue – Mar 25, 2024
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