Breaking down the question
This twenty-mark question asks you to comment on the proposition that science and technology are major forces accelerating social change. The instruction to comment invites a considered position rather than a flat endorsement: you should agree that science and technology are among the most powerful engines of modern social transformation, while showing sociological sophistication about how that influence works and where its limits lie.
The key terms are science and technology as forces and social change as the process they accelerate. Science refers to systematic knowledge of the natural and social world; technology to the practical application of that knowledge in tools, techniques and machines. Social change means significant alterations in social structure, institutions, relationships and culture over time. The examiner is testing whether you can move beyond the obvious observation that technology changes society to a reasoned account of the mechanisms — and whether you can avoid the trap of crude technological determinism by acknowledging that technology is itself shaped by society. A strong answer affirms the proposition, explains it theoretically, and qualifies it.
How to approach it
Open by affirming the proposition and defining the terms. Then demonstrate the accelerating influence of science and technology across the major domains of social life — the economy and work, family and community, stratification, communication, values and worldview — using industrialisation and the information revolution as your two great illustrations.
Give the argument theoretical depth with William Ogburn's concept of cultural lag, Marx on the forces of production, and Manuel Castells on the network society. Then introduce the necessary qualification: reject naive technological determinism by showing that technology is socially shaped, that its effects depend on the social context, and that it can deepen inequality through the digital divide as well as spread benefits. Conclude with a balanced verdict. Anchor the discussion in your notes on the theories of social change.
Model answer
Few propositions in the sociology of change command as much support as the claim that science and technology are major forces accelerating social transformation. Science is the systematic pursuit of knowledge about the world, and technology is the application of that knowledge in tools, machines and techniques. Together they have reshaped human society more rapidly and more profoundly in the last two centuries than in all the millennia before, and any account of modern social change must place them near its centre.
The clearest demonstration is the Industrial Revolution. The application of scientific knowledge to production — the steam engine, mechanised manufacture, the factory system — transformed not merely how goods were made but the entire architecture of society. It shifted populations from countryside to city, created new classes of industrial capitalists and wage labourers, dissolved the extended household economy in favour of the nuclear family, generated new patterns of work, time discipline and consumption, and gave rise to modern institutions of education, law and administration. Karl Marx captured this dynamism in his argument that changes in the forces of production — pre-eminently technology — drive changes in the relations of production and hence in the whole social superstructure. For Marx, the hand-mill and the steam-mill each gave society a different form.
The point generalises across every domain of social life. In the economy, successive technological revolutions have redefined labour, from agriculture to industry to services and now to knowledge work. In the family and community, contraceptive technology, domestic appliances and medical advance have reshaped fertility, women's roles and the life course. In stratification, control over advanced technology has become a decisive source of power and inequality between and within nations. In communication, the printing press, then telegraph, telephone, television and now the internet have repeatedly transformed how people relate across distance. And in the realm of ideas, science has secularised worldviews, promoted rational and empirical modes of thought, and altered humanity's very conception of itself and its place in nature.
The contemporary information and communication revolution has intensified this acceleration to an unprecedented degree. Manuel Castells argues that we now inhabit a network society in which digital information technologies restructure the economy, politics and culture around flows of information and networks that transcend national boundaries. The speed and scope of change have themselves increased: transformations that once unfolded across generations now occur within a single lifetime.
Yet the proposition must be handled with sociological care rather than accepted as crude technological determinism. Three qualifications are essential. First, technology does not change society in a uniform, automatic way; its effects depend on the social, cultural and political context into which it is introduced. The same technology can liberate or oppress, integrate or divide, according to who controls it and how it is used. Second, technology is itself socially shaped — it is invented, funded, adopted and regulated by societies with particular interests and values, so that society and technology stand in a relationship of mutual influence rather than one-way causation. Third, William Ogburn's concept of cultural lag reminds us that the material culture of technology often changes faster than the non-material culture of norms, laws and values, producing a period of maladjustment. New technologies — from nuclear power to artificial intelligence and biotechnology — repeatedly outrun the ethical and legal frameworks needed to govern them, and much modern social strain arises from this lag rather than from technology as such.
The benefits of scientific and technological change are also unevenly distributed. The digital divide between those with access to advanced technology and those without can widen existing inequalities of class, region and gender even as it opens new opportunities. Technological change thus accelerates social change but does not by itself determine whether that change is equitable or humane; those outcomes depend on social choices and political arrangements.
On balance, the proposition is sound. Science and technology are indeed among the most powerful accelerating forces in modern social change, reshaping economy, family, stratification, communication and culture, and doing so ever faster in the information age. But their influence operates through, and is conditioned by, the social order — technology and society make one another. The sociologically mature position is therefore to affirm the enormous force of science and technology while insisting that its direction and its consequences are ultimately shaped by human society.
Examiner's perspective
The examiner is watching for two things at once: a firm grasp of how science and technology drive social change, and the theoretical maturity to avoid crude determinism. Weaker scripts simply celebrate technology and list its effects; stronger scripts explain the mechanisms across several institutional domains and then qualify the thesis. Marx on the forces of production and the Industrial Revolution provide the classic case, Castells on the network society brings the argument up to date, and Ogburn's cultural lag supplies the essential nuance that material change outpaces normative adjustment. Marks are gained by acknowledging that technology is socially shaped and that its benefits are unevenly spread — the digital divide is a ready illustration. The best answers close with the reciprocal formulation that technology and society shape one another, demonstrating to the examiner a command of the debate rather than a one-sided enthusiasm.