Question of demographic structures in the world, leads to possible future improvements in a society. Taking prediction of the future into account, only past numbers and graphics related to the issue can give us rational clues yet none of them would be equal to unpredictable certainty. Thus reams of research on this regard takes tons of different factors into consideration to achieve a better understanding. Main factors are listed as; Distribution, migration, birth and death rates, epidemics, changing biological features, capacity of resources in the living environment, wars, natural disasters, technology and more so. All these elements affect the increase and decrease of numbers. Which undoubtedly penetrates the economy, social balances and global warming. In other words, world order is under a direct link with population. So what we will focus on this article is the correlation between technology, population and how they structure digital society.

   Word technology usually first connotates nuclear weapons, AI technologies, high-tech cars, and etc. Though from a historical perspective, even the primitive populations were highly influenced by improving technologies. For primitive societies improved food technology was one of the main reasons their population had increased; however health, transportation and war technologies were also really important. Even the simplest improvements in technology can make a huge influence on population numbers. For instance building a wall to protect a living environment from enemies or predators would be a development for war-tech nevertheless it will increase the risk of an epidemic which will lead to a decrease in population numbers. From a more optimistic point of view, a possible epidemic will kill lots of people but health-tech and transportation systems will become more elaborated and it will be an investment for future issues. In the long-term these investments it will increase the population numbers.

   Technology is the effection of humankind. So shaping and changing technology is also in our hands. Yet we shouldn’t forget the fact that technology also shapes our societies. Living in Information Age means having technological features in every area of our lives. So technology also successfully tackles problems related to population. In our day, technology enabled people to have healthier lives, increased the fertility levels and life expectancies, added simplicity in our lives and increased the welfare levels of most people around the world, made agriculture dependent from climate and seasonal changes, ensured people have easy access to food, healthcare and transportation… All these improvements resulted in huge leaps in population numbers. 

   Though it shouldn’t be forgotten that population is described as “all the people living in a particular country, area, or place” ( taken from Cambridge dictionary); so considering the accelerated increase of  population in the last two centuries, it is almost impossible to overlook the negative effects of having lots of people in an area that cannot provide necessary living conditions. This situation will bring about the over-consumption of world resources that will end with destroying the ecological system of the world, non-ending epidemics, destruction of world economic balances which will result in inflation, decreased welfare, increase in the number of homeless people… To sum it all up humanity will be back on step one. However technology is like an organism that always changes and improves itself. It is quite obvious that the population change in digital society has its ups and downs. In order to establish a better society and keep the population change stable we have to understand how to control it. Since we are in a digital society we muse search for new technologies that will help us to shape a destiny for better futures. 

Zehra GARİP

Works Cited: 

• Boserup, Ester. “Environment, population, and technology in Primitive Societies.” Population and Development Review, vol. 2, no. 1, 1976, p. 21, https://doi.org/10.2307/1971529. 
• Kelly, Frank. “Population and Technology” https://www.jstor.org/stable/45029956
• Hall, Ray. “Population and the future”, Geography Vol l Part 1 Spring 2015 https://www.jstor.org/stable/43825412
• https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/population