Technology & Society: An Interknit Relationship
By: K. Tejas
Tags: Technology, Society, Netflix, India, Sociology

I always believed Technology and Society are not just interdependent but causal and one cannot exist in the absence of the other. For example, think of technology as just a tool and nothing more. A tool is effectively an article which helps us perform our daily chores with ease and efficiency. What if we invest our time into making more efficient tools? It will end up in greater efficiency but to use this new tool there maybe be certain requirements (inevitable), which means that the consumer or the society will have to adapt to it in order to yield better results. Long story short, it is a recursive cycle where the advancements in one lead to changes in the other and it just goes on.

The course has helped me get a theoretical background to most of my intuitions in terms of technological determinism [1], social constructionism [2] and most importantly the technological transfer [3]. I will briefly put forward my understandings from the course in a couple of examples below. One would be Netflix and the other being Uber.

Netflix has changed the way we consume media. For two decades it has been at the forefront of consumer research, recommendation systems and quality content [4]. When it finally decided to expand its services to the Indian market they faced many setbacks. This is a classic case of technology transfer as well as the social construction of technology in the Indian context. India is a land of diverse languages and cultures so, their expectations from a player like Netflix would be to introduce a good amount of quality regional content at an affordable price like the homegrown Hotstar and Voot. The Indian market demographics forced Netflix to release Netflix specials like Sacred Games, Lust Stories, Ghoul, Selection Day, etc. [5] Not only that, in order to survive the Indian competition they even partnered with Google Pay for subscription payment services along with the usual debit/credit cards. Understanding the Indian market which mostly comprises of youth they even released a plan worth Rs.200 per month which allows one mobile screen per account. Keeping in mind the Indian telecom network speeds Netflix has been able to provide Standard Definition content in just 500Kbps speed [8]. What started as an uncensored platform may soon be regulated in India because of the recent outbreaks in various parts of the country because of the vulgarity and nudity in many shows like Sacred Games and Leila [6]. All these sociological factors have led to major technological decisions in Netflix, especially in the Indian subcontinent. In my previous article, I discussed another aspect of how Netflix has shaped our perspective of self and acts as a soft power shaping our thoughts and ideologies [7] but for Netflix to exist in such an ecosystem it has to shape itself to fit in.

Previously I used to think that Netflix observes our streaming patterns to suggest as well as put in/suggest more shows of our interest but now (with the help of the course) I realised that in order to do so it should make shows which connect to the demographics. For example, they made Selection Day which captures Indians’ love for cricket, Sacred Games which captures the rawness and ‘desi-masala’ etc. In the end, it’s the audience that decides the direction of Netflix’s progress. Similarly Uber had to partner with Paytm for payments and also in order to bridge the gap it followed Ola into incorporating autorickshaw services as well because autorickshaws are still a large section of how we commute in India unlike other countries in the West. All of this is possible because of the huge market that India has to offer and hence these technologies have been trying to understand the market and provide services accordingly.

It is quite evident from the above examples that society plays a huge role in the development and design of technologies and technologies don’t just push it on to society to adopt. There is a smooth synergy between technology and society which may sometimes be latent to the consumers. The evolution of technology and society is like a loop which means that the decisions in one lead to the changes in the other.

PS: This blog post is my reflection of the HSS course called Technology and Society where we try to understand the emergence and structure of different technologies and societies and how they influence each other.

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