This essay first appeared in Philosophy Today, Summer 1982 (103-17). It describes the four main philosophies of technology in our culture; engages in a process of creative inquiry; and outlines the interconnection between conception, action, and social process.
Outline
There are four different “developmental stages/processes” in attitudes toward tech. They can be viewed as stages of maturation of industrial society’s views toward tech. Healthy social change is fostered by a balance between these attitudes.
Each stage is useful in the development process and has its limits(e.g., tech anarchy usefully led to the industrial revolution).
The advance towards technological maturity involves gradual transformation of our society into mature, post-industrial culture. It is characterized by human-scaled, ecologically sound, appropriate technologies, consciously designed to fit our moral values.
Developmental Stages
I. Technological anarchy
- Dominant during 19th century, industrial development
- Tech is seen as good as instrument to pursue wealth, power, and taming of nature
- If tech aims to tame nature, then tech and respect for nature would seem to be in tension.
- Whatever can be done to pursue these ends should be done
- Fewer government regulations of tech and market the better
- Market alone determines which techs will prevail
- Helped stimulate rapid tech development and tech diversity
- After a while, tech becomes an increasingly powerful social force, becomes autonomous, becomes an goal in itself (instead of a means)
- More tech for its own sake instead of to help us achieve other goals we have
- Psychological characterization of this attitude toward tech: exuberance, youthful curiosity, self-centeredness, optimistic self-assertion and individual opportunism
II. Technophilia (love of tech)
- Psychological characterization: like adolescent love, identifying with object of love
- Humans become enamored with our mechanical cleverness, techniques, and tricks
- Tech not just productive instruments, but toys
- Tech becomes our life game: Pursuit of tech becomes main end of life
- Tech starts to control us, as we can’t disassociate ourselves from our loved technologies
- Loss of ability to see both positive and negative features of tech
- Tech is applied to everything: education, government, trade, office work, health care, personal psychology (drugs), sex (Viagra), etc
- Human biotec—engineering human life
- Results in technocracy: Government by technicians, management of a society by technical experts
- Where tech is a governing force
- Rule by and for tech processes
- Humans become technologized by own love of techniques
- Unlikely society will ever get this far, for such extension of tech to everything will stir counter forces
- People begin to realize that tech is becoming an autonomous force threatening human and nonhuman values
- Even biosphere as whole becomes threatened by products/processes of tech activity
- The technological fix reaction: A first typical reaction to these threats is to try to attempt to control technology and its hazards by more technology
- Love affair with automobile as an example of technophilia:
- So infatuated with our cars they become extension of our selves
- Insults to them become personal affronts and treats to self esteem
- Auto at first a means to an end-transportation-now end in themselves
- Autos and their infrastructure become a dominant feature of culture as a whole
- Cities, land use, econ well-being become entangled with technology of the automobile
- Ends up frustrating many of original values for which auto meant to serve (e.g., freedom)
- Finally tech of auto can become a threat to life, health, economy and environment, and even our way of life
III. Technophobia (fear of tech)
- Sees that romantic entanglement with tech threatens human integrity and survival
- Realization that only human and humane values can keep tech under human control
- At its extreme, attempts to de-technologize human life
- Desire to return to human autonomy (one of the original motives in pursuing technology)
- Such autonomy achieved by revitalizing crafts and arts and use of simpler “neo-primitive” technologies
- A reaction that tries to revive simple, “primitive” technologies that preserve certain cultural values
- Do-it-yourself attitude is present
- Aims at self-sufficiency
- Distrust of complex technologies; aims to bring large scale tech to an end
- Desire to bring tech under local human control
- Tech doesn’t always make life easier and safer because those who design and implement it lack understanding of what these powerful tech can do
- Psychological characterization:
- Technophobia is like disenchantment of early adulthood
- Learn that romantic and erotic identification can frustrate growth and generate suffering, grief, fear of loss
- Suffers disappointment and pledges to avoid such relationships in future
- A step toward more mature relationships with others
- Technophobia as a stage of growth that involves becoming aware of the use of tech in a consciously reflective and critical way
IV. Appropriate Technology (technological appropriateness)
- Introduces moral and ecological values into design and application of ecologically sound technologies
- Appropriate design: Right/artful fit between technique, tool, and human, and includes moral and environmental limits
- Move away from overly centralized tech, to decentralized, human-scaled techs that preserve local community values
- Values simple technologies
- Reflect on ends/values before we commit ourselves to develop new tech or continue to use older ones
- Tech mastery: Master our tech as instruments to ends & values about which we are clear and freely choose
- Transcend tech as a force in human life that lies beyond our control
- Tech need not be an alien power that overrides responsible human choice
- Design requirements of appropriate tech:
- Diversity in technologies to keep options open
- We all shouldn’t be dependent on same tech
- Ecologically sound: Promote benign & symbiotic interactions between humans, machines, and biosphere; necessary for sustainable economies; compatible with ecosystem principles
- Thermodynamically sound in generation/use of energy
- Unsound: If it took more energy to produce ethanol than was in the ethanol
- Consider all the costs (measurable and non-measurable)
- Promotes human development through their use:
- Use of tech becomes part of life-enhancement
- Labor becomes meaningful work
- Tech designed to respect value of and to enhance individual person, eco integrity (communion with nature), and cultural health (creative community)
- How can a tech enhance eco-integrity? Restoration tech?
- Examples of appropriate tech developments:
- Revolution in modern electronics
- Miniaturization of technologies
- Emerging solar techs
- Improved organic agricultural technologies
- Hybrid (gas/electric) cars
Examples of different approaches of technophilia and appropriate tech
- One: Resolving interpersonal conflicts
- Technophilia:
- Try to control other through use of tech
- Warfare; use modern techs that could destroy both sides; This tech power undermined
- original rationale for war
- Appropriate tech: Aikido
- Japanese art of self defense, using locks and holds and principles of nonresistance to cause an opponent’s own momentum to work against him
- No aggression/competition
- Resolve conflict before progress to fighting
- Instead of trying to manipulate and control others via tech, it resolves conflicts via self-mastery, self-correction and understanding
- Technophilia:
- Two: Alpine hiking
- Technophilia hiker: Loaded with every conceivable outdoor device of modern tech and using it all; weekend pack weighs 100 pounds, uses tech to have a “comfortable camp”; lots of nailing, chopping and building; loads gear up every morning after flipping pancakes on fancy griddle
- Equipment isolates from nature
- Appropriate tech hiker: travels light, though does not live off of wilderness (living off roots or berries); there to celebrate joy of being alive and know nature in intimate way; listens to softer voices in world and deeper voices in herself
- Equipment is simple, light, durable, minimally polluting, harmless to produce and use;
- Comfortable but not isolated from nature; rain not enemy;
- Eats simple food, breakfast of homemade granola, minimal cooking, but nutritious and aesthetically satisfying
- Equipment is a minimal intrusion which enhances enjoyment of natural world
- Technophilia hiker: Loaded with every conceivable outdoor device of modern tech and using it all; weekend pack weighs 100 pounds, uses tech to have a “comfortable camp”; lots of nailing, chopping and building; loads gear up every morning after flipping pancakes on fancy griddle
- Different approaches to nature of technophilia and appropriate tech
- Technophilia:
- Tech used as a means to control nature and other humans
- Sees nature as having only instrumental value
- Impose our values on the world
- Manipulate and control the other
- E.g., industrial agriculture? (Poison bad bugs)
- Appropriate tech: Applies tech to nature in way that respects its intrinsic values
- Work with nature, instead of imposing powerful tech on nature trying to master and overwhelm it
- To achieve goals in use of nature, blends tech and eco processes
- E.g., organic agriculture (leave hedge rows so beneficial insects can control troublesome bugs)
- Sees values in the world; Wonder, delight, compassion
- Wants to understand world and appreciate it, so humans can interact with it to realize maximum reciprocal benefits
- How is our tech to benefit nature?
- E.g., techs that allow us greater appreciation of nature
- Technophilia:
- Three: Generation and use of energy
- Technocratic approach: Nuclear power
- Highly capitalized, subsidized and centralized tech, difficult security problems, thermo pollution to rivers
- Environmentally, economically, thermodynamically unsound
- Appropriate tech: diversify and decentralize use and production of energy
- Don’t’ use vast power grid
- Variety of small scale photovoltaic, hydroelectric and solar tech
- Co-generation and conservation within communities
- Local communities more control over future; more public participation, instead of large scale bureaucracies
- Take advantages of natural sources of energy locally available
- Technocratic approach: Nuclear power
Miscellaneous
- Humans are born as nature and through technology and other cultural activities they modify themselves
- Nature of philosophy (three levels of maturation)
- Initial stage: A non-explicit (implicit) framework that structures one’s experiences
- A way of life formed by conditioned emotional responses/ attitudes and unquestioned judgments/assumptions that structure how one sees the world
- Culturally four philosophies of tech at this level
- Consumerism as a lifestyle
- When invest our identities in beliefs we resist reflecting on them and resist changing them as can threaten self-identity and sense of reality
- A way of life formed by conditioned emotional responses/ attitudes and unquestioned judgments/assumptions that structure how one sees the world
- Intermediate stage: Explicit elaboration that spells out these assumptions and argues for conclusions
- Mature stage: Conceptual inquiry that frees us from attachments to doctrines/belief systems so we can develop more appropriate ways of thinking and behaving
- Creative like jazz?
- Playfully adopting a variety of perspectives to free us for creative thought
- Initial stage: A non-explicit (implicit) framework that structures one’s experiences