The sociotechnological triangle is a tool to enable [[Futures Exploration]] in [[Futures Studies]]. The basic idea is that "Society", "Technology" and "Environment" are tightly coupled concepts. In a way they behave like pressure, temperature and volume of a gas, where if you change one, the others will need to change as well. ![[Sociotechnological Triangle Variation.png]] Societal change might be changes in culture, values, forms of government and so on. The assumption here is that any large change in a society will also change their outlook on technology and the way they develop and utilize it. The same is true for the environment. Examples: * The cold war as a social construct led to large-scale technological projects like the Internet, the space race and so on. * The Chinese Communist Revolution led to a significant change how technology was utilized in China, with new approaches to agriculture, manufacturing and energy generation having massive effects on the environment. * The social and political system in North Korea has massive implications on the available technology. Significant changes in technology will ripple through society, changing professions and occupations of people, which can lead to complete societal shifts. These shifts can influence how people organize themselves in their environment. Examples: * Inventing writing, paper and the printing press each had massive influence on societies that could now document history, leading to bureaucracy, leading to new governmental systems. * Inventing steam engines & the industrial revolution changed models of society, creating new economic models. People moving into bigger cities changed the environment. If the environment changes, new technologies might be invented to either make the change manageable for humans, or utilize the new environment better in some way. In extreme cases, society has to develop new social norms and structures. Examples: * Global warming representing a change in environment is a threat to humans, sparking new kinds of technologies and implying future changes in societies. * Building a sustainable moon colony would require new technologies as well as more rigid societal structures to avoid catastrophic accidents. ## Extreme Exploration -> *I got this from Matt Webb, who talked about it during a Lift talk: [Matt Webb “Scientific fiction” (Lift09 EN) on Vimeo](https://vimeo.com/5608406)* The sociotechnological triangle can also be used in writing, consciously defining an extreme value in one dimension and then assuming that the other two must also have extreme changes as a result. To do this, Matt Webb proposed the triangle of "Society", "Things" and "Human Nature". ![[Sociotechnological Triangle.png]] Matt used the example of fantasy and science fiction writing, where the writer would assume that "dwarves, elves, aliens, .. (= extreme change to human nature) exist", so how would a society look that includes them and what things would exist to facilitate this? **Examples:** * In the talk, Matt gave "World War Z" by Max Brooks as an example: Zombies exist, which are essentially a significant change to human nature. As a result to that change, how would different societies react -> How would governments change? How would the economy change? And how would things change -> What weapons would they invent against Zombies? How would everyday-life objects change?