Transformation of Culture - Technological Impacts

Technological Impacts

Technological innovations can enhance, displace or devalue human existence and culture. Advances in medical technology have contributed to demographic changes, including increased longevity and decreasing fertility. For example, although China has slowed its population increases through a one-child per family policy, the median age of its people will soar in the next 35 years. In some Third World countries, kidneys, eyes and skin are sold in a flourishing market for body parts. There is also rising concern amongst many indigenous people groups over the interrelated issues of genetic patenting and biopiracy. For example, a Guaymi woman was diagnosed with leukemia in 1991. Whilst in hospital in the city of Panama she had blood samples taken and without her knowledge or free, prior, and informed consent. The cell-line enclosed in these samples was stored, "immortalized", patented, and put up for sale at a price of $136 US dollars. The scientists involved in this process claimed to have "invented" this woman's cell-line. Their rationale for taking the samples and processing them for patenting was that these samples held "commercial promise" in the scientific world for the discovery of potential medical breakthroughs and that the government encourages the patenting of anything which may have a link to such a discovery. The main contention in the debate apart from ethical dilemmas over genetic research is the fact that the woman from whom the samples were taken was never consulted about the process, so in effect, the whole process was done without her knowing it was going on or understanding what was happening to her. This presents an additional dilemma alongside the issue of genetic manipulation: freedom of information. There is also the implication of "why her", "why an indigenous Guaymi woman and not a Euro-American". This type of technological case-in-point presents as a more recent dilemma for indigenous groups because commonly, such failure to properly inform insofar as the impact of either scientific research endeavours or corporate-style development schemes are concerned has historically tended to coincide with policies and paradigms of practice which have their basis in racial discrimination.

On the more positive side, certain technological innovations such as computers, the Internet, and miscellaneous sound and visual recording media have been welcomed and embraced by indigenous peoples as a means of communicating to wider society their concerns about the dilemmas not only faced by them but by the whole world in view of the extent of socioeconomic, cultural and political transformations that have continued to evolve and impact global diversity in far-reaching and often unpredictable ways.