When has Society Willingly Abandoned a Technology?

Okay, so in another thread, there's a kind of nodding agreement going on about what we want and don't want from the overarching idea of "technology," which got me to thinking: when have humans abandoned a technology without something "better" coming along to replace it?  I don't mean stuff like the Antikythera Mechanism or other various and sundry ancient inventions that we have a record of, but that never caught on in the wider culture, or knowledge/ lifeways lost to colonization, but things that were used for a while and people decided "nah, not for us."

Some examples I can think of:

-Great Lakes-area Indigenous/ First Nations people using copper for blades, but then going back to flint (this happened a few times over the centuries, as I understand it; both seem to have comparable durability and sharpness)
-Roman cement (I mean you lose a lot of things when civilization collapses, but that one seems like it would have been something they'd want to hang on to), same with Chinese mortar used in the Great Wall
-Arguably, chemical agriculture (obviously still in wide usage, but "organic"/ natural/ whatever is on the rise at least)

I know there are way more, but I'm blanking.  

Do you want to define technology for your purposes?

Is slavery a technology? Or feudalism? (I think they obviously are, but I could imagine you meaning something more tightly focused.)

In The Dawn of Everything, they discuss cultures that adopted and then chose to give up agriculture, which seems like a pretty big deal.

Christopher Weeks wrote:Do you want to define technology for your purposes?

Is slavery a technology? Or feudalism? (I think they obviously are, but I could imagine you meaning something more tightly focused.)

In The Dawn of Everything, they discuss cultures that adopted and then chose to give up agriculture, which seems like a pretty big deal.

I mean I guess slavery and feudalism could be considered technologies, though that doesn't ring true with me because it's more of a cultural thing?  I wasn't going in with any kind of strict definition in mind, just using the word "technology" in the most nebulous and conversational way, so I guess it's whatever people want it to be for the purpose of the thread.

Re: abandoning agriculture, I was thinking of Cahokia, where they abandoned their version of "big ag," but (to my understanding) still practiced subsistence-level farming in decentralized locations, so I didn't count it.  Is city living a technology?  To me it's more of a social structure.  I don't know what the line is and I dropped out of college 25+ years ago, so I don't even remember what my anth and soc courses had to say about it.

I think of New Zealand, which has banned all forms of nuclear weapons since 1984, and which has no nuclear reactors of any kind.

Possibly one of the bigger success stories on this would be stopping the use of chlorofluorocarbons with the ozone layer.

It isn't a complete success as not everyone signed up to the Montreal protocol. But a lot of countries did and that was costly for them, most of the replacements are less efficient.

The Amish are pretty much known for having decided, about 120 years ago, to become very judicious about which technologies they would adopt on a community-by-community basis.

There are lots of people who have sworn off social media. Not a majority, obviously, but enough that I was able to enlist a few dozen people to participate in a study on that topic (which I didn't complete) maybe ten years ago just by putting word out on a blog. (Blogs are not social media as I was defining it, or according to most mainstream definitions.)

What about long-standing laws getting repealed? Prohibitions on various things might be considered a technology, so their repeal constitutes the giving up of a technology.

The Japanese gave up gunpowder weapons for about 200 years. It wasn't a choice, the government basically killed anyone who was caught with a gun, and kept a few for themselves too.

Germany gave up nuclear power in the last few years. Not sure they are happy with the result though.

How about most countries agreeing not to use chemical or biological weapons?  Like the tech to create them exists but most of us have agreed its a no-no, even in wartime.

I don't think DDT is still used, because it was so dangerous.  Maybe things like that would count as giving up types of technology.

Riona Abhainn wrote:How about most countries agreeing not to use chemical or biological weapons?  Like the tech to create them exists but most of us have agreed its a no-no, even in wartime.

I don't think DDT is still used, because it was so dangerous.  Maybe things like that would count as giving up types of technology.

Yeah, this is a great example, as is an even more glaring one: the fact that no nuclear weapons have been detonated with the intent to kill (so, only tests and flexes) since WWII four score years ago, despite massive proliferation in nuclear armament. In fact the universal symbol for peace (the peace sign) began as a call for nuclear disarmament--a superposition of two nautical semaphore signs for N and D.

Restraint in general, especially when practiced by large organizations such as governments and corporations against what might be considered their more basic incentives, fits the thread category. Everything from not using certain tactics to businesses being closed on Sunday.

End of Life technologies like the Hoverboard ...

Riona Abhainn wrote:How about most countries agreeing not to use chemical or biological weapons?  Like the tech to create them exists but most of us have agreed its a no-no, even in wartime.

Landmines would also fall into this category. However, considering how effective they still are at slowing down advancing modern armies I wouldn't be surprised if a few countries have secretly started producing them again.

I think the general answer is... only when either the cost to continue using it is too high, or a better alternative comes along.

The key term here is "willingly" I think. Many specific technologies get legislation passed to restrict them - I'm not sure that this counts as "willingly". For example, many countries have laws that restrict or ban technologies because their environmental impacts are too severe. Short of the legislation the companies/individuals benefiting from the technology would usually be delighted to carry on. It's the classic case of "the tragedy of the commons" where the cost is born by the wider community, but the profit is in the hands of those who exploit it. Everyone has an incentive to run an extra cow on the common land, even if that makes the land overgrazed and unproductive.

Other examples given above - like use of nuclear weapons - are also not really "willingly". They are agreements that have been reached due to international treaties, where huge amounts of political pressure have been a factor.

On the "what is better" angle - "better" is highly subjective. There was a comment above about societies abandoning agriculture. I haven't read that literature but I might suggest that it was "better" for their circumstances.

One specific case I do know of where societies have abandoned technologies is in early human history. So communities - particularly those living on islands or otherwise remote populations - lost their technology over subsequent generations. The theory was that a certain population size is needed to maintain skills and specialisation, and when populations were too small technological innovation stopped or went backwards. The book "The Rational Optimist" explores these ideas (I have issues with some of the authors conclusions about more modern events).