Impacts of Technology on Folk Culture

Technology is not just cell phones, computers, mp3 players, and plasma TVs. Technology is anything from making the first wheel to the light bulb to a new way to farm. The definition of technology is “the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes.” Technology has been growing in almost every area, medicine, agriculture, etc. but this growth of technology could be a problem for folk culture. How does technology impact a folk culture?

“A folk culture is a small, self-reliant community that is technologically simple and traditional in nature.” as stated by the article, Survival of a Folk Culture: the Old Order Amish.  According to this article the Amish have successfully resisted the pull of new technologies and have kept a modest and simple lifestyle. The Amish have not let newer technology disrupt their folk culture. They use basic technologies, horse and buggy, plows, candles, etc. as a simple way to keep their folk culture alive and thriving.  Seventy percent of the Amish people living in the USA are considered Old Order Amish because they have kept every tradition alive, no new technology whatsoever. They preserve their folk culture by excluding the outside world and everyone associated with it.  They speak their own unwritten Pennsylvania German dialect, which only the Amish speak and they only speak English to outsiders. This is one of the ways the Amish are a folk culture and have stayed that way for around three centuries. The Amish have split into other groups because they Old Order Amish never add new technology, the other groups weigh the pros and the cons of getting a tractor, for example, and they realize that getting a tractor would be better, and so they split from the main group of Amish to accommodate their new ideas. This example of splitting from the main group is an impact of technology. The new technology that might have been more convenient caused the folk culture to split and now we have the Old Order Amish and different subgroups of the Amish.

The impact of technology on folk culture may not be all bad or destructive, but seeing how there are more people wearing jeans and using tractors and owning smart phones, I’d say that technology is more destructive than helpful.  The Amish ended up splitting into different groups to have different technologies being produced. In Africa businessmen wear the Western ‘business suit’ instead of a traditional African dress as said in AP Human Geography textbook. New technology had helped in the workforce by making it easier to gain information, send information, etc. But what happened to folk culture? Progressing information technology, as mentioned in the article The Impact of Information Technology, it has helped tremendously in jobs in America and in accessing information on a daily basis. But folk culture is becoming less and less folk culture and more of a popular culture. What happened to wearing traditional dress? The Amish wear a traditional dress, but not all subgroups do. The Western clothing is being used, jeans, T-shirts, business suits/dress instead of traditional clothing used centuries (or a century) ago. 

Folk culture is slowly fading away due to new technology, traditions and values are fading because of new technology. Will there even be folk culture in the next century? Or will folk culture be ‘the good old days?’ We all say that we keep family traditions and values and that we’ll always celebrate Thanksgiving or New Years. But will we? Or will those celebrations turn more into a popular culture than it already is?  Technology is growing and advancing at a quite rapid pace and that is good for popular culture, but it is also destroying what little folk culture we have left. So in conclusion, technology does have an impact on folk culture, a pretty big impact, in my opinion, but an impact all the same.