Description

Course Project

 Analysis of Impact Draft

This week, you will submit your Analysis of Impact draft (roughly four pages, using APA

format).

This portion of the Course Project provides an analysis of the chosen technology’s

influence on society considering all of the following components: 

 Social

o How has this technology been received, accepted, or rejected? Why? Is it feared or

favored? What is the attitude toward change? How are the developers trying to sell the

technology to the general public? Look at attitudes, feelings (emotions), behaviors,

personality, and the ways humans change as a result of this technology. What is being

thought, and why? Is the human mind impacted? How? Are interactions between people

changing as a result? Who is included or excluded, and why? Use Maslow’s hierarchy

of needs, Piaget, or some other theorist. What psychological needs are met by the

technology (e.g., cell phones once granted status and now promote a sense of

belonging or connectedness) or created by the technology? Consumerism?

o Look at groups and organizations that have arisen and prospered because of this

technology. Are these groups supportive or antagonistic, and why? (An example is

genetically modified foods [GMOs] and the backlash against the Monsanto corporation.

Another is cochlear implants that allow the deaf to hear yet reduce the deaf population

that calls itself a community.) How does the technology change society, or how does

society change in response to the technology? What factors in society led to the

development in the first place? What do class, gender roles, race, norms, and the like

mean in this context? Who will benefit from the technology, and who might be harmed

(this might also belong in the ethics and morals section)? For example, prosthetics

enable people to participate more fully and actively in society (some people compete in

triathlons and marathons), and war has brought about the need for advances in

prosthetic technology as casualties with missing limbs return home to the United States.

Look at the workplace, new companies, and/or jobs created, jobs lost (or save this for

the economics section, perhaps). Look at roles—subgroups, people’s interpersonal and

intrapersonal relationships. Consider crime, healthcare, and schools. Surveillance

cameras, for example, have recently been installed in New York City, and the result has

been a decrease in the amount of crime, purse-snatching, pickpocketing, and so forth.

Yet some fear the big-brother effect of always being watched and tracked, as well as

concerns over “who will guard the guards.”