Research Paper on Technology, Inequality, and the Impact on Society

Introduction

Technology has transformed the operations of every human being and company. It has made it easier for many people, especially when it comes to advancements in the medical fields and communication. However, weather technology contributes to the favorable social structures in various societies and has remained questions of serious debate. With the imminent inventions of different technologies, such as automated machines, robots, among others, society is relatively more unequal currently than it used to be in the past. This can be seen in terms of income distribution and wealth distribution. Within one country, income inequality can be measured through the use of different coefficients, which have shown that there is more inequality today than any point since the beginning of the Second World War. The inequalities are experienced from the perspective of societal divisions that caused the 2008 global financial crisis (Ahlborg, 2017). This crisis was also amplified by the inequalities instigated by technology. The economies have been worsened, and it has been stagnant for more than a decade after the crisis had ended. Despite the positive contribution that technology has made to the overall quality of life; it has led to a significant replication of inequality that has remained part of the society today; this paper will analyze the role of technology in relation to its contributions to the social inequalities

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Role of Technology in Social Disintegration

Technology has contributed to the ongoing disintegration between individuals. Various societies are continuously going to disintegrate themselves from the others, including the political rise of Donald Trump, who succeeds because of his campaign for disintegration. The other example is the case of Brexit by the United Kingdom as well as other nationalism and political failures going through Europe and Brazil. All these social problems have had technology play a major part in them. The consequences and courses of high Rising and the inequality is because of unequal distribution of wealth. Before the financial crisis broke, it was found out that only 10% of the richest adults own more than 85% of the household wealth in the whole globe (Selwyn, 2015). This meant that only 1% of the global wealth is owned by the bottom half of all the population (Ahlborg, 2017). As a result, the rich would always want to disintegrate themselves from the others.

How Technology Has Contributed to The Existing Social Structures

Recently, much attention has been paid to the impact that technology has made to the existing inequalities and the ongoing social structures. Particularly, information technology and several advancements such as automated processes and robotic machines, together with big data, have been blamed for numerous workers losing their jobs and increasing the ongoing elite dominance. In the past, many members of the society could share a portion of the wealth that was owned by the elite members of the society, and it was relatively easy to bridge the gap for those who worked hard. However, technology has made this even more difficult for people to bridge the gap because the rich can keep the whole of their wealth if they can afford the technology. Big data makes it difficult for the Elite members of the society to own and keep what they have without sharing it with others. At the same time, artificial intelligence has replaced many people in the field where the demand was relatively high. Today, industries can apply robots and automate various processes making it unnecessary for equal distribution of resources.

Role of Technology in Inequality and Unemployment

Various authors have criticized the start and the ongoing issues in the ICT Revolution. Is introduced Technologies that demanded excellence that could not be made by many individuals. Job polarization is one of the issues that has been attributed to their poor performance by technology. It has also led to the reduced demand for the medium-skilled, thereby resulting in a considerable wage gap in the economy. The polarization concept leads to the changes in the Labour market that also contribute to the decline in the social welfare institutions.

Also, countries have been experiencing a decline in the Returns that they get for education because there is less employment security and the possibility of having less job Tenure. Over the past ten years and particularly after the global financial decline, they have been excessive demand for skilled labor that even increases inequality. It has also been argued that the world is at the beginning of the new industrial Revolution. Even the Industrial Revolution created numerous jobs in manufacturing and manual labor; this new Revolution makes it difficult for such jobs to be created (Bock, 2016). The new Revolution has made it easier for the alleged members of the society to replace jobs such as packaging and inspection with the machines. For a long time, many people have questioned the role of technology in the lives of people. According to many, technology has improved the quality of life and has made life more comfortable. However, from a social perspective, technology has resulted in numerous disadvantages in the globe

Increasingly, robots are becoming smarter each day. They have been given new models of learning and advancements in artificial intelligence that has accelerated the value that the robots play research companies (Ahlborg, 2017). Many companies are increasingly preferring to use robots rather than human beings because of the increasing dangerous demands and routinized jobs. Robots are better at manly all types of jobs and those that are dangerous and dirty as well. It was also chief because it has been approximately that the hourly wage of a ranger boat is roughly $4 per hour, which is highly less than the $23 day to the human beings who work in the manufacturing firms in the United States (Bock, 2016). Currently, robots perform more than 80% of the manufacturing jobs in the whole globe (Ahlborg, 2017). Opportunities such as taxi drivers, the introduction of autonomous self-driving cars have increasingly replaced the need for human drivers in the transport industry. Taxis and truck companies will be hiring fewer women drivers because most of their ideas will be automated. There are many transport service giants such as Uber that have ordered more than a hundred and thousand autonomous cars that have been manufactured by Mercedes-Benz. Such initiatives by technology are increasingly becoming a concern to the human sociologists who say there is as a massive disadvantage in the increasing Social gap and will continue to make it difficult for individuals to bridges the gap between the rich and the poor. Many Industries are also affected, especially those that are susceptible to machine needs (Henry & Powell, 2015). Generally, more than 47% of the jobs will be replaced by machines over the next 20 years just because of advancements in technology (Ahlborg, 2017).

Role of Technology in Inequality in The Social Lifestyle

Technology has also differentiated the living standards of the people. Even though the root cause of inequality cannot be directly traced to one source, many studies have connected them to the institutions and witnesses within the government. These are some of the cases in Europe and the United States. Policies and regulations favor intrapreneurial elite members of the society that makes it easy for the rich to own large shares of capital. The trend of social structures is not confined to the United States alone (Brown & Duguid, 2017). This can also be observed in other emerging economies. In developing countries, the problem is even more significant, with 66% of the jobs that are available in the developing countries being at risk with the ongoing improvements and the impacts of technology (Ahlborg, 2017). Developing countries have not been passive to the current new Revolution. India and China form the majority of the market for the robots that are manufactured in developed countries. Such countries import robots and technologies to reduce the cost of production that is needed by the manufacturers.

Conclusion

In conclusion, technology has improved the lives of many people. However, it has led to inequality in the social structures and the lives of many people. It has led to people losing jobs, and individuals disintegrating themselves from the rest. This research paper has shown that despite the advantages that people have realized from technology, it has done severe damage to the unity of society as well. It has contributed towards the ongoing social imbalance and the increasing gap between the rich and the poor. Currently, the majority of the wealth and resources in the whole globe is owned by the elite members of society who are very few people. Technology has contributed to this feat by improving on the ongoing differences in social status and class. For a long time, the Industrial Revolution created employment opportunities for non-elite members of society. People were employed in manufacturing companies to perform manual labor so that they can get paid. However, technology has discouraged the employability by making it easier for the company owners to employ and buy robots which are cheap as compared to human labor. Many companies are there for resorting to employing robots and using technologies such as artificial intelligence to cut the cost. Such technologies can also use other ideas such as big data to manage most of the operations that could have been done by human beings; hence, despite the life improvements, the existing social inequalities and injustices have been contributed by technology.

References

Ahlborg, H. (2017). Towards a conceptualization of power in energy transitions. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 25, 122-141. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2017.01.004

Bock, B. B. (2016). Rural marginalization and the role of social innovation; a turn towards exogenous development and rural reconnection. Sociologic Rurales, 56(4), 552-573. https://doi.org/10.1111/soru.12119

Brown, J. S., & Duguid, P. (2017). The social life of information: Updated with a new preface. Harvard Business Review Press.

Henry, N., & Powell, A. (2015). Embodied harms: Gender, shame, and technology-facilitated sexual violence. Violence Against Women, 21(6), 758-779. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077801215576581

Selwyn, N. (2015). Data entry: towards the critical study of digital data and education. Learning, Media, and Technology, 40(1), 64-82. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2014.921628Appendix