Impact of the Industrial Revolution

From the Industrial Revolution, there came a lot of misfortune and bad circumstances. By changing the very concept of work, the social, political, religious, and economic aspects of people's lives worsened. In the case of economy, as technology becomes more integrated, there is less work because the machines alone are able do what various humans cannot. For example, in China, the working class lost value because of the better technology that replaced workers. For social aspects, the technology integration makes the family life worse. For example, families became less unified because the males needed to leave farther away from their homes for work. For political aspects, the change doesn't just occur in America, it happens even in places across the world. However, some places didn't have an Industrial Revolution and never developed. In Africa for example, since there wasn't any political unity, there wasn't any Industrial Revolution that occurred because government never stabilized as it did in the U.S. For religious aspects, the integration of technology made a lot of people from different cultures move because work required them to, which caused more diverse cultures to appear. Technology is a negative aspect because it makes the lives of people harder than it already is and it changes the structure of life. For example, you see women beginning to work in textile factories, which is a man's job. For the concept of wealth, land is no longer very important because of agriculture being controlled by a minority of people; this in turn causes the demand for land to decrease.

The Industrial Revolution was responded by in various ways. For example, the Luddites were shocked and afraid by the new advances of technology in the work places. They thought the new technology would become a major obstacle to the textile craftsmen. In class last week, we learned about the spectrum of positions that people were catogorized in. In this case of the Luddites, they would be placed in the reactionary category because they did not want change.