Chapter 1 - The New Nature of Technological Progress

Summary

The Brazilian anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro (1968) demonstrated, in his great work O Processo Civilatorio (The Civilizational Process), that changes in societies begin with the introduction of new technologies, which change the dialogue between the society and the world and between the various agents of that same society. Without a doubt, we are currently living through an accelerated process of technological change. Let us now consider this in finer detail.

From the Neolithic Age to the 1950s, humankind knew and made use of two characteristics of matter, namely its mass and its energy. In particular, mass has been researched and used by the classical physics of Newton and Galileo since the 16th century. Energy became the object of much research during the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Mass and energy, and more specifically electric and nuclear energy, enabled projects of industrialization and of technological advancement, which have created all kinds of devices that facilitate and improve living conditions.

Nature, however, contains another characteristic which up to now has been unexplored, namely information. All beings, alive or not, are the carriers of particular data that can be assessed, measured in bytes (binary digit), and stored in computers. This data is built into machines as commands and used by us in our daily life as we deal with domestic digital devices (such as TVs, telephones, computers and even washing machines) and seen by us in artificial communication satellites and space exploration ships.