The term Social Technology was first used at the University of Chicago by Albion Woodbury Small and Charles Richmond Henderson around the end of the 19th century. Small and Henderson were close colleagues, and it is hard to tell who used the term first. At a seminar in 1898, Small spoke of social technology as being the use of knowledge of the facts and laws of social life to bring about rational social aims[1]. In 1895 Henderson had coined to term “social art” for the methods by which improvements to society are and may be introduced. Social science makes predictions and social art gives directions[2].
In 1901 Henderson published an article titled “The Scope of Social Technology”[3] in which he renamed this social art as 'social technology', and described it as 'a system of conscious and purposeful organization of persons in which every actual, natural social organization finds its true place, and all factors in harmony cooperate to realize an increasing aggregate and better proportions of the “health, wealth, beauty, knowledge, sociability, and rightness” desires.' In 1923, the term Social Technology was given a wider meaning in works of Ernest Burgess and Thomas D. Eliot[4][5], who defined Social Technology to include the application, particularly in social work, of techniques developed by psychology and other social sciences.
Closely related to Social Technology is the term Social Engineering. Thorstein Veblen used 'Social Engineering' in 1891, but appeared to take its meaning for granted, suggesting it was used earlier [6]. In the 1930's both 'social engineering' and 'social technology' became associated with the large scale socio-economic policies of the Soviet Union. The Soviet economist Yevgeni Preobrazhensky wrote a book called “Novaya Ekonomika" – New economics [7] in which he defined Social Technology as the science of organized production, organized labour, and of a system of production-relations.
Karl Popper discusses Social Technology and Social Engineering in his famous book “The Open Society and Its Enemies”[8][9] and in the article “The Poverty of History” [10], in which he criticized the Soviet political system and the marxist theory (Marxism) on which it was based. Popper distinguished two forms of Social Technology. Utopian Social Technology strives to reach an ultimate utopian end state by wholesale social reform. In the process, this kind of Social Technology inevitably leads to human suffering. Communism is an example of Utopian Social Technology. The other form he called Piecemeal Social Technology, which has the more modest aim to bring about improvements in social circumstances, and depends on a critical, scientific attitude. The use of Piecemeal Social Technology is typical of the democratic system.
In 1966, the term Social Technology was used as the title of the book Social Technology by Olaf Helmer, Bernice Brown and Theodore Gordon, from the Rand Corporation. [11] It has acquired an expanded range of meanings as a result of Facebook and other Social Utilities. In current usage social technology is technology for social purposes, but originally it meant applications of the social sciences for various purposes, especially the selection and exploitation of experts for decision making. Social Technology includes Social Software which is not confined to computer software but also includes Social Procedure. It also includes Social Hardware which began with the telegraph and telephone, long before those utilities used computers. Social Technology also includes old technologies such as the postal system and other means of interpersonal communication which long predate telephones, computer networks or social networking tools.
A recent popular book on the subject is Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff.[12]. This use of the term is slightly out alignment with other words based on the same Greek roots. From consideration of the root words themselves and by analogy with Psychology and Sociology, Technology should be a discipline, and a person who has received formal education in that field should be a Technologist. But in popular usage a Technology is an Invention or product. The term Social Technology is most commonly used to refer to social utilities such as Facebook, rather than whatever theorical work might have preceded them. But this common usage has become part of the language and as such cannot be disputed except by the pedantic.
Technology has an intimate with Invention insofar as the inventor studies the subject as well as applying ingenuity to it. Many of the inventions described in The History of Invention by Trevor I. Williams[13] are social inventions. For example, writing is a social invention, involving both hardware and software—writing implements and the system of symbols inscribed with them. The printing press was also social technology, but it was Social Hardware, hardware used for communication within society. It served and continues to serve a great role in the organization of society. Use of the printing press itself involved no software in the modern sense of computer software Social software but it did involve a lot of Social Software in the sense of Social Procedure, since intellectual property rights needed to develop. Copyright is an invention given the force of law.
There are at least two main divisions of Social Technology, one concerned with the public sector and one concerned with the private sector of our society and economy. For the public sector the main areas of study are human rights and governmental policy. Sometimes a single work, like Psychological Solutions to Social Problems: An Introduction to Social Technology by Rainer Knopff and Thomas Flanagan, [14] will address both human rights and government policies which ensure them.
Public policies include aspects of the criminal justice system as well as governmental programs. Perverse incentives: the neglect of social technology in the public sector by Theodore Caplow, discusses a wide range of topics, including use of the death penalty to discourage crime and the welfare system to provide for the needy. [15]
Private sector uses of social technology include the organization and management of private companies, and are often taught under the auspices of university business schools. One book with this orientation is The social technology of organization development by Wyatt Warner Burke, Harvey A. Hornstein. [16] The current use of the term Social Technology as in Chi and Bernoff, op. cit. is entirely consistent with this much earlier book, since both address the use of social technology with a corporate framework.
The term Technology is often associated with Engineering. For example one significant role of the Massachusetts Institution of Technology, MIT, is the training of engineers. But a very derogatory name for social technology is Social Engineering. [17] There seems to be no modern course on Social Engineering except the historical study of social engineering as used by the Nazi government of Germany, but there have recently been courses on Social Technology as a positive thing taught at universities including Stanford and the London South Bank University, which offers a full-time 3-years BA (Hons) Social Technology program.