Modern technology has extended human life spans and levels of comfort. But it also destroys thousands of remote cultures. Today the world's people speak about 6,000 languages, a good measure of diversity; by the year 2100 the number of languages could drop to 3,000 as traditional cultures change. According to convergence theory, modernization will bring Western and non-Western countries together by breaking down cultural barriers to produce a global society. Countering this view is divergence theory, which emphasizes the growing separation between Western and non-Western cultures. Loss of traditional cultures means loss of knowledge too. These changes to the world cultures and societies did not happen overnight, they came through what is called the evolutionary theory. The evolutionary theory is a theory that states that societies change gradually from simple to complex forms. Social Change is the alteration of society over time. Many cultures have insight into nature that still defy modern science. These traditional cultures have identified plants that counteract snake venom as well as most of our modern medicine is derived from plants found in remote jungles of the world. Modernization, which is the form of social change that involves the transformation of an agricultural society into an industrial one, has destroyed thousands of precious jungle acreage per day. We are eradicating potential cures to disease's that kill us today. Human societies have always mixed and changed, but goods, people, and ideas move farther and faster today, spreading an urban-oriented, technology-based culture around the globe. English, now spoken by more than one-fifth of the world, is an essential element of the new global culture. Some argue that this change is creating a sensate culture. A Sensate culture according to Sorokin, is a culture that stresses empirical evidence or science as the key to knowledge and urges people to favor a pra...
