Technology and Social Order

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses, using George Orwell's "1984" as an example, how advances in technology have the potential of controlling social order. It looks at how in today's society, more social order is required to address problems such as generalized insecurity, criminal victimization and fear of crime and how without some social controls, there would be no defined ordered and chaos would rule. It looks at how monitoring devices designed to monitor and locate people, which are currently used primarily for elderly people and children open up a world of possibilities for decriminalization.

From the Paper:

"Technology, in and of itself, offers no threat to the social order; specific technologies within the hands of abusers, does. A printing press can be used by one man to create a card professing his love to the woman of his dreams while another man can use it to produce hate propaganda. It is expressly important in this fervent atmosphere to create more sophisticated technologies that the individual remain vigilant and not give away privacy in the interest of decriminalization and thus give self-fulfillment to Cronkite's recognition. "Greater efficiency, ease, and security may come at a substantial price in freedom, that law and order can be a doublethink version of oppression, that individual liberties surrendered for whatever good reason are freedoms lost" (Orwell 2)."

More papers on Technology and Social Order:

• Essay # 58130 : "The Changing Social Order"
• Case Study # 41346 : "Information Technology and the Social Order"
• Research Paper # 45554 : "Technology and the Government: The Mark of the New World Order"

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