Community Impacts of Technological Change: Toward a Longitudinal Perspective

Although sociologists have made advances in understanding the community-level impacts of technological and environmental change, attention to date has focused almost exclusively on the relatively brief development stage of construction and rapid expansion. Significant social changes can also take place both before and after the phases of the most intense physical activities (construction, production, expansion), and pathways of influence can be social as well as physical. At the outset, during the "opportunity-threat" stage, most social and economic impacts are associated with opportunities and/or threats to biophysical, economic, social, cultural, and psychological systems of the human environment. If development proceeds, the opportunities and threats are joined by the impacts of visible, physical perturbations that have received most of the attention to date. Over time, both of these sets of impacts are increasingly joined by the accumulation of experience. While human systems do adapt to changes or impacts, even apparently functional short-term responses can lead over the longer term to overadaptation.