POL 507 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Neolithic Revolution, Stone Age, The Information Society
6 Feb 2017
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Document Summary
Technology is seen as a key mechanism of social change, moving society forward into new social, cultural, political, and economic milieus. Technology makes it possible for humans to subsist in megacities. The creation of megacities was possible only through the constant advancement of technology over centuries. Evolutionary model of technological development: tools build upon existing knowledge, making their development incremental. Two key issues make understanding the history of technology difficult: gap in time that exists between when an inventor first develops a technology and when it is revealed. Stone age began 2. 6 million years ago: our reliance on artifacts as evidence. Artifacts can be considered the basic components of material culture and are contrasted with elements found in nature. Using artifacts as the sole evidence of how societies evolved is limiting. The stone age: the early beginnings of technological ingenuity. Earliest evidence of technology is in the stone age.
