During
the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries the rise and spread
of democracy was flourishing due to the destruction of the gap in political
culture between the masses and the ruling class. The printing press
and the spread of Protestant Christianity were some things that helped
to demolish the gap between the rich and the poor, helping to provide a
significant growth in popular literacy. The improvement and
expansion of roads and postal systems, new tools and techniques, the number
and variety of merchants, and the invigorating town life all helped to
bring the upper and lower classes closer together. Similarly larger
numbers of people grew richer in their social experiences allowing them
to be more on a level with the ruling class and contest their control.
Technology, however, is reversing the direction and there is now a growing seperation between ruling and lower classes. First there has been a decline in popular literacy which bear upon the political and social character of the new technology. Very few people are aware of and even less understand the nature of such highly advanced technological systems such as the Vietnam bombing programs. Second social inequality develops when those in control of systems (such as in Vietnam) deny to the general population the experiences that will help qualify them socially. Modern day technological organizations,for example, define a member's behavior and values, not the member's definining the technological organization. Social irrationality has become the norm among the lower and middle.
The definition of technology (the organization of knowledge for practical purposes) therefore, assumes that the actual base and creative role behind the process of technological change is limited to the technical elite. So then are the masses, the common man, just a hindrance and a burden to the social good?
Technology is therefore impeding the creation of a more egalitarian society. Technology is one of the main factors contributing toward a widening gap between the cultures of upper and lower class Americans.
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