The Perennial River of - Change

When human race started studying, it started studying nature.

Only later did the incomplete attempts of drawing partitions began.
May be, such is the vastness and the intimidation
of the nature.

When given this task of writing something about the political, social and
technological changes that have occurred over the existence of mankind, we
got pulled into a discussion of philosophical nature.
We initially wanted a point of origin: a point on the infinite stretch of time
from where our story can begin; a point, to whose left theres nothing relevant
left for us. We surfed the Wikipedia and came across this line: The first states of
sorts were those of early dynastic Sumer and early dynastic Egypt, which arose from the Uruk
period and Predynastic Egypt respectively at approximately 3000BCE.

Then we searched on google: what is the age of the human race, and landed
up into a string of conversations at www. answers.yahoo.com, part of which
was as followings:
1.

If you mean anatomically modern humans than that would be around 200,000 years ago. If

you mean the genus Homo than that would be around 2.5 million years ago, or the ago of the
first stone tools. And if you mean when we diverged from the apes that would be around 7
million years ago.
2. Well, if you mean "Modern Man" here is the most recent from :
http://www.archaeologica.org/NewsPage.ht...
Using argon-argon datinga technique that compares different isotopes of the element
argonresearchers determined that the volcanic ash layers entombing the tools at
Gademotta date back at least 276,000 years. This is 80,000 years earlier than previously
believed.
3. About 200,000 years ago when Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderhalensis branched from
Homo Heidelbergensis. But we as a species left Africa about 70,000 years ago. Read
Spencer Wells book. the Journey of Man: A genetic odyssey

Well, then we asked ourselves, Can we actually study the course of change
separately for politics, society, and technology? The answer is an obvious
no. But, even then, as all do, even we attempt here to capture the essence of
these broad and blur-bounded classes as they witnessed the flow of time.

Human being, since ages, has been moving and settling in groups.
Interdependence and association are two of those rare things that have not
witnessed change. Moving in herds during nomadic age made man follow a
leader. This was probably the beginning of politics. He started using stones as
tools and much later discovered fire and invented wheel. Technology thus was
initiated.
The characteristic feature till the Indus valley civilization was a very slow
creep of development in technology. Socio-political fabric though remained
dynamic, but they existed for sure. Earliest civilizations were that of China,
Mesopotamia, Harappa, Ancient Rome, etc. We lack concrete political
structure of that era, but are sure that they had a well-developed social fabric.
Concept of families, mass congregations, public recreations, well organised
wars, distant geography based trades and exchanges of metals, alloys, clothes,
and agricultural produces were in place. Agriculture was the primary activity
with trade and military activities taking shape. Each civilization had barter
system with some most probably using coins of some sort.
We now skim through history further. The world saw then the concept of
kingdoms in most of the parts with least majority participation. In the
medieval age, kingdoms had well defined administrative structures, but high
instability themselves. Invasions, expansions, and with them new set of rules
were frequent. Not a lot of movement was there between two countries.
Societies were developed, and their essential knitty-gritty hasnt changed since
then.
Early 15th to early 17th century is considered as Renaissance Technology.
Printing Press, Compass, Newspapers were the major breakthroughs.
The Industrial Revolution was a period between 1760 and 1840 in Europe
which marked the shift of manufacturing processes from manual to mechanical
and mass production way. The setting up of factories divided the societies into
rich capitalist and poor worker class.
As the productions increased, increased need of raw materials, and need of new
markets led to the beginning of merchants from European nations venturing
into other continents. This soon took the form of colonialism. There was a
turning point in the political system. From the kingdom style, the world in
majority entered Imperialism. Eventually, Britain became the largest colonial
power. Majority of the world was under British empire, where the sun never
set.
With colonialism, the world saw a rapid industrialization and introduction of

new technologies. The world got adapted to this new form of economics soon.
With this, even management as a profession started to take shape. The money
and resources of India and rest of the world were getting sinked into European
bags. Societies had now started living for a greater cause Freedom!
Independence! Politics now shaped up and started getting discussed among
masses. Movements happened! Countries started idealising America which
had achieved independence from British rule in 1776 itself. Revolutions took
place in France and Russia. India too got inspired and freedom movement
started here under many heads and principles. Societies, from their traditional
learnings, shifted towards English learning system. They, by now have
become consumers in modern terms. Railways, Postal services, Telephone, etc.
were great technological leaps that world saw.
Many countries had gained independence by early 1900s and increased
international political interactions started happening. Countries started
adopting common standards in various fields. The two World Wars marked
the peak of international politics and political interferences. Economies now
got ready, and at some places started, to interact with ease.
The shift of global power happened from Britain to USA. It was this time
when countries had already experimented extremes of socialism and
capitalism, and now started adopting different proportioned mixtures of the
two.
Democracy had covered more than 75% of the globe by 1960s. International
organizations in various fields emerged up. Technology was speeding up and
man was travelling in space now. Society and economy now shifted from
agrarian to agrarian plus industrial plus servicing. Service sector brought in a
lot of modernisation and professionalism.
Introduction of computers in late 1940s, the internet in 1980s, and personal
computers in late 1980s changed the world altogether. Societies and economies
were drastically affected. The world accelerated at a new pace. We, the Gen-Y,
are amazingly tech-savvy. We are tech-dependent. Social networking and
internet as a whole is integrated into our lives. Society is now facing problems
of terrorism, global warming, and exhaustion of energy resources.
The world economy is almost seamlessly globalised and dominated by
capitalist principles.
This is how the river of change has flown till now!

Gen-Y
Is characterised by:
1. Tech-dependence! (Yes! More than tech-savvy)
2. Instant gratification
3. Only generation in the workforce that has never expected to work for one
company their entire lives.
4. Open minded, global citizens!
5. Challenging every stereotype.
The list goes on

Source: www.wikipedia.com

Thank you for your patient reading!

-Group-11:

Himanshu Kishore
Maria Xavier Rinaldis A
Rahul Reddy Boya
Sreehari R
Divya S
Arjun Suresh