FOR MORE CLASSES VISIT www.tutorialoutlet.com Approaches to Measuring Technological Progress Sociologists, anthropologists, and other scholars and intellectuals have developed distinct approaches to understanding the nature of technological progress. We’ll discuss four important theorists in this section of the lesson. They represent four perspectives on the relationships between technological development and our social world.

1. Approaches to Measuring Technological Progress
Sociologists, anthropologists, and other scholars
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Approaches to Measuring Technological Progress
Sociologists, anthropologists, and other scholars and intellectuals
have developed distinct approaches to understanding the nature of
technological progress. We’ll
discuss four important theorists in this section of the lesson. They
represent four perspectives on the relationships between technological
development and our social
world.
Gerhard Lenski
Sociologist Gerhard Lenski maintained that technological progress
has been the driving force in the evolution of human civilization. In
effect, civilization and
technological progress go hand in hand. In this regard, the key to
human progress is information. In particular, the more we know about
how to harness and utilize the

2. resources of the natural world, the greater our ability to advance the
interests of human societies. He recognized four stages of
communication.
Stage 1 is the passing on of genes from generation to generation. You
might call this biological communication.
Stage 2 is sentience. As we develop our abilities to understand and
become aware of the world around us, our adaptation to Earth’s
environments is facilitated. We
are able to share our experience.
In Stage 3, we become capable of logic. Now we can serve collective
goals based on observation and factbased analysis. For example, if
dark clouds gather on
the horizon, we can normally assume that rain can be expected.
In Stage 4, humans master language, writing, and the capacity for
creating symbols. At this stage we have the foundation of civilization.
Lenski also proposed four levels of technological development.
At the huntergathering level, existence is a handtomouth effort to
reduce food insecurity.
At the next level, part of the food supply comes from what amounts to
horticulture.
At the next level, we have organized agriculture. Food surpluses
allow for the rise of complex social orders, including social class
inequality and a complex division
of labor that lends itself to technological advances in arts, crafts,
architecture, and civil engineering.
With the industrial revolution, the foodbased economies are replaced
by a new kind of social class inequality and revolutionary advances in
the means of
production.

3. Reference: Elwell, F. W. (2013). Lenski’s Evolutionary Theory.
Retrieved from
http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/users/f/felwell/www/Theorists/Essays/Len
ski2.htm
Leslie White
Anthropologist Leslie Alvin White focused on the harnessing and
control of energy. For White, controlling energy is the primary
purpose and function of any culture.
White differentiated five stages of human development.
Stage 1: Human muscle power is the source of energy.
Stage 2: Humans harness the energy provided by domesticated
animals. Humans raise and herd livestock for food energy while using
some animals, especially
the horse, to provide transport and mounts for warriors and hunters..
Stage 3: The agricultural revolution provides surplus food energy to
extend the value of Stage 2.
Stage 4: Especially as expressed in the Industrial Revolution, humans
harness the power of natural resources, such as coal, oil, and natural
gas.
Stage 5: Nuclear energy is harnessed. (White was perhaps a bit too
optimistic about nuclear energy, given its dangerous drawbacks.)
White developed a formula that remains useful in our day: P = E*T.
Here “E” is a measure of energy consumed and “T” is the measure of
efficiency respecting
technical factors utilizing that energy. “P” is what we get when
calculate “E*T.” For example, in comparing early steam engines with
steampowered turbines, the
efficiency of the latter will increase the value “P.” In White’s words,
“culture evolves as the amount of energy harnessed per capita per
year is increased . . . or as the

4. efficiency of the instrumental means of putting the energy to work is
increased.”
Reference: White, L. A., Energy and the Evolution of Culture.
American Anthropologist, Vol 45, JulySeptember, 1943, No. 3, Part
1. Retrieved from:
https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/99636/aa.19
43.45.3.
02a00010.pdf?sequence=1
Alvin Toffler
Alvin Toffler is a journalist, social critic, and futurist. While various
intellectuals are associated with ideas and prognostications about
what we have come to think of as
the postindustrial era, Toffler stands out. That’s because what he had
to say reached a large audience. Here’s a quote that gives you a good
sense of Toffler’s view of
our current era.