Social Change
Perhaps Ogburn's most enduring intellectual legacy is the theory of social change he offered in 1922. He suggested that technology is the primary engine of progress, but tempered by social responses to it. Thus, his theory is often considered a case of Technological determinism, but is really more than that. Ogburn posited four stages of technical development: invention, accumulation, diffusion, and adjustment.
Invention is the process by which new forms of technology are created. Inventions are collective contributions to an existing cultural base that cannot occur unless the society has already gained a certain level of knowledge and expertise in the particular area. Accumulation is the growth of technology because new things are invented more rapidly than old ones are forgotten, and some inventions (such as writing) promote this accumulation process. Diffusion is the spread of an idea from one cultural group to another, or from one field of activity to another, and as diffusion brings inventions together, they combine to form new inventions. Adjustment is the process by which the non-technical aspects of a culture respond to invention, and any retardation of this adjustment process causes cultural lag.
Read more about this topic: William Fielding Ogburn
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