Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry Read online

  The two groups of chapters that outline the pattern of technology (Chaps. 9–12) and examine its social and political setting (Chaps. 13–16) provide a fairly balanced and comprehensive view of the character of technology, but a view that lacks depth as well. This I try to remedy through a discussion of labor (Chap. 17) and of leisure (Chap. 18). My reasons for this move are two. First, it seems to me that technology is most consequential in the inconspicuous dailiness of life. And second, the labor-leisure distinction has a privileged tie to the character of technology; it represents the split of the technological device into machinery and commodity writ large. The transition to the reform of technology in Part 3 is conveniently made by investigating the stability of the rule of technology. Such an examination draws the previous findings together and begins to ask what openings for a reform we can count on.

  8

  The Promise of Technology

  The concern of the present study is modern technology. We have tentatively and formally defined technology as the characteristic way in which we today take up with the world. This approach to reality, I have said repeatedly, is guided by a basic pattern. By this I mean that the pattern of technology is fundamental to the shape that the world has assumed over the last three or so centuries. But to speak of a deeply ingrained pattern is also to say that the pattern may be difficult or perhaps impossible to see. It reigns as common sense, as the obvious way of doing things which requires no discussion and, more important, is not accessible to discussion. It is understood in the sense of being taken for granted. It is only when a pattern of procedure or a paradigm, in Kuhn’s term, begins to fail and be questioned and perhaps challenged by a new procedure that the paradigm emerges as such.1 Precisely when we assume that there is a definite and well-entrenched mode to our dealings with the world, we must also reckon with the possibility that we may be unable to bring it to the surface.

  To lift this concealment it may be well to step outside of the rule of the dominant pattern and to return to the period where the pattern was first articulated. This is to go back to the founding event of the modern era, to the Enlightenment and to its first beginnings in the early seventeenth century. In this way we can hope to obtain a first and unrestricted, though also unfocused, view of the character of technology. The Enlightenment is known to us primarily as an intellectual and cultural revolution, a breaking of the fetters of religious superstition and ancient dogma. The Enlightenment was the original liberation movement of our time. It is generally accepted that it had reverberations beyond the realm of culture and the intellect, but these are almost exclusively seen in the political area, especially in the rise of the liberal democracies of the West. Technology is sometimes, in an aside, mentioned as an offspring of the Enlightenment, yet its significance is thought to be inconsiderable. It is taken as an essentially uninteresting if powerful tool, neutral in its relation to cultural values and subservient to political goals. In fact, however, technology has become the decisive current in the stream of modern history. But how could it be so concealed and so consequential at once? It is the promise of technology that has both fueled and disguised the gigantic transformative endeavors that have given our time its character.

  The promise of technology was first formulated at the very beginning of the Enlightenment. It was not at the center of attention but rather put forward as the obvious practical corollary of intellectual and cultural liberation. Thus both Bacon and Descartes saw themselves as initiators of a new era in which human reason was to attain self-determination.2 Reason would exercise its power in part by wresting from nature its secrets through scientific investigation. The resulting knowledge would in turn increase the power of reason and allow it to be asserted in the material realm. “. . . I am laboring,” Bacon wrote, “to lay the foundation, not of any sect or doctrine, but of human utility and power.”3 And Descartes, speaking of his insights in physics, said:

  . . . they have satisfied me that it is possible to reach knowledge that will be of much utility in this life; and instead of the speculative philosophy now taught in the schools we can find a practical one, by which, knowing the nature and behavior of fire, water, air, stars, the heavens, and all the other bodies which surround us, as well as we now understand the different skills of our workers, we can employ these entities for all the purposes for which they are suited, and so make ourselves masters and possessors of nature.4

  The main goal of these programs seems to be the domination of nature.5 But we must be more precise. The desire to dominate does not just spring from a lust of power, from sheer human imperialism. It is from the start connected with the aim of liberating humanity from disease, hunger, and toil, and of enriching life with learning, art, and athletics. Descartes says further of his project just quoted: “This would not only be desirable in bringing about the invention of an infinity of devices to enable us to enjoy the fruits of agriculture and all the wealth of the earth without labor, but even more so in conserving health, the principle good and the basis of all other goods in this life.”6 And in Tommaso Campanella’s City of the Sun of 1623, new machines and more efficient labor lead to a greatly enriched life where leisure is spent in “learning joyously, in debating, in reading, in reciting, in writing, in walking, in exercising the mind and body and with play.”7 Bacon’s New Atlantis represents the most influential picture of the liberated and enriched life in a society based on science and technology. These visions preceded reality by more than a century.

  In fact the properly scientific grounding of technology did not begin until the middle of the nineteenth century. Until then, the scientific spirit was technologically fruitful in hybrid and approximate forms, in boldness of experimentation, in care of observation, and in the joys of discovery and accomplishment. When in the second half of the eighteenth century the Industrial Revolution began to employ new machines and more efficient methods of production, it at first increased the common toil and misery.8 But gradually in the nineteenth century and even more dramatically in the twentieth century, the citizens of the advanced industrial countries began to reap the fruits of the new order. The splendor of the promise of technology appears bright to this very day when we remember how recently misery and deprivation have been shaping human life, especially in the newly settled West of this country. In the older cemeteries of Montana one can find tombstones from the early part of this century that record the deaths of siblings two, three, or four years old who died within a few winter weeks, weakened from poor food and shelter and taken away by a contagious disease. Granville Stuart speaks eloquently of how he and his brother “were famished for something to read” in their camp on Gold Creek in Western Montana in the Winter of 1860.9 They heard of a trunk of books in the Bitterroot Valley. “. . . we started for those books’ Stuart wrote, “a hundred and fifty miles away, without a house, or anybody on the route, and with three big dangerous rivers to cross. . . .”10 They spent half of all the money they had on five books. “. . . but then we had the blessed books,” Stuart says, “which we packed carefully in our blankets, and joyfully started on our return ride of a hundred and fifty miles. Many were the happy hours we spent reading those books. . . .”11

  The argument that the conquest of nature has liberated us from toil and misery is strong, and it covers, of course, many more aspects of life than have become apparent so far. Eugene Ferguson gives a more detailed view of the matter.

  Relief became possible from the drudgery of threshing wheat, digging dirt, carrying water, breaking rocks, sawing wood, washing clothes, and, indoors, spinning and weaving and sewing; many of the laborious tasks of living were being made easier by the middle of the 19th century. Relief from toil does not necessarily mean a better higher life; nevertheless, any attempt to get at the meaning of American technology must give a prominent place to machines that have lifted burdens from the shoulders of millions of individual human beings.12

  The liberating and disburdening character of certain phases and forms of technology is obviou
s and significant. Ferguson is a little more guarded but still confident as regards the enrichment that comes from technology. He says:

  The democratic ideal of American technology shone brightly, too, as countless low-priced pictures, books, lamps, rugs, chairs, cookstoves, and musical instruments served to lift hearts and reduce boredom and despair. The mail-order catalogs that appeared at the end of the 19th century epitomize the democratization of the amenities that has marked the rise of American technology. Rail, if you will, at the decline of taste; but look first at the real alternatives of bare walls, dirt floors, and minds untouched by the imaginative works of writers, poets, painters, and sculptors.13

  The promise of technology is being reiterated and reformulated in countless ways. It dominates implicitly the one truly national debate that we have every four years during the presidential campaigns. Occasionally the promise is made explicit, and a locus classicus of such explicitness is found in the April 13, 1976, issue of the Wall Street Journal where United States Steel in a fullpage advertisement asked “a prominent American to speak out.” The invitation was issued to Jerome B. Wiesner, then president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His statement begins with this paragraph:

  More than any nation in the world, the United States has the opportunity to lead mankind toward a life of greater fulfillment. This opportunity is based on benefits from our continuing advances in science and technology. It is significant that people everywhere look to the United States to provide the science and technology which they need as they, too, seek to improve their condition.14

  These remarks are typical not only in asserting a tight connection between a life of fulfillment and technology but also in their implication that the mature technology in an advanced industrial country is identical or continuous with the liberating technology needed to improve one’s condition, presumably one of illiteracy, starvation, and disease. But while Wiesner’s high seriousness is appropriate to the liberation from such misery, it becomes questionable, if not macabre, when we consider the language of liberation and enrichment that daily addresses us in advertisements such as these:

  Learning languages is not easy. It takes books, classes, cassettes, and hard work. Now, however, you have a choice. You can communicate in a foreign country without speaking the language, or you can learn the language more easily thanks to a new electronic miracle.15

  Now you can have some of the world’s best dishes. Without leaving home. Without waiting. Without cooking.16

  There is now a new, fun way to jog. The new IS&A Computer is a solid-state system that lets you jog in place in the comfort of your own home. . . . In just one week you’ll notice the difference, feel great, have greater endurance, and you won’t tire as easily.17

  The promises that are made here regarding liberation from toil and the advancement of literacy, eating, and health seem to be the direct descendants of the promises that one would want to make to the starving people in the Third World. But beneath that semblance is a radical shift in the character of the promise of technology. That shift must lead one to doubt the soundness of the promise.

  Wiesner acknowledges such difficulties. His statement continues:

  Yet the survival of our own abundant society is being doubted by many thoughtful people who share a powerful concern, a reasonable apprehension about the impact of technology.18

  But such doubt can spring from very different concerns. One may be concerned whether technology can hope to be successful on its own terms, whether liberation in one place will not impose new burdens in another. This is Wiesner’s concern when he says: “In this enormously complex world, each large-scale technological advance has costs, side effects often unanticipated.”19 One may further doubt whether technology can make good its promise in a socially just way, nationally and internationally, and Wiesner alludes to this problem when he speaks of “the more equitable and humane society which we all seek.”20 But there can also be a much more radical doubt about the promise of technology. One may ask not just whether the promise can be kept but whether it is worth keeping, whether the promise is not altogether misconceived, too vaguely given at first and harmfully disoriented where technology is most advanced.

  We return here to the peculiar way in which the promise of technology guides and veils the shaping of the modern world. The promise presents the character of the technological enterprise in broad and ambiguous outline, i.e., as the general procurement of liberty and prosperity in the principled and effective manner that is derived from modern science. Thus it keeps our aspirations present and out of focus at the same time. The general obtuseness is not due primarily to the program of technology but arises from its execution. And at least part of the reason why the implementation of the promise of technology has become so clouded lies in the character of its development. As the preceding discussions and illustrations have suggested, the initial genuine feats of liberation appear to be continuous with the procurement of frivolous comfort. Thus the history of modern technology takes an ironical turn. We can shed light on the force and the consequences of the irony of technology by first delineating the pattern of technology more sharply and by showing then how the pattern has informed our understanding of the world and the world itself. This is the task of the following chapters.

  But first I want to consider briefly one plausible way in which one might hope to advance a clear understanding of technology. This is to raise the historical question and to ask: What is the origin of (the promise of) technology? Where and how did it first arise? What were the various stages of articulation? We have given some fragmentary answers in this chapter with regard to the beginning of the modern era, and a few more details will be filled in when we turn to the relation of liberal democratic and Marxist theories to technology. But for two reasons these questions must remain essentially unanswered. The first is the enormity of the task, forbidding even if restricted to the philosophical dimension.21 The second appears from a brief glance at the most ambitious attempt to do justice to the philosophical-historical task. Martin Heidegger has interpreted the history of the Occident as the rise of metaphysics which culminates in technology.22 He has tried to show how the profound vision of the world that the pre-Socratic thinkers had articulated came to be restricted to the foreground of things and projects in the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. The ground on which everything rests and the light in which everything appears moved into oblivion. Heidegger traces this movement through the stages of thought that were advanced by Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche. In Nietzsche’s will to power Heidegger sees the final and extreme attempt on the part of Western humanity to establish itself absolutely, i.e., independent of any ground or illumination that would be other and greater than human existence. Modern technology, then, is just the enactment of the final stage of metaphysics as it is prefigured in Nietzsche.

  Heidegger’s project is beset with external problems. His view of the history of Western thought has been challenged from many sides. But there are equally severe problems at the center of Heidegger’s thought that are unresolved. Heidegger does not tire of warning us not to think of technology as a human fabrication. The attempt to overpower everything is said to be the response to a destiny. When Heidegger talks this way, he seems to be an extreme proponent of what in Chapter 2 was called the substantive view of technology. That view of his position, however, Heidegger also calls into question by emphasizing that humans are not helpless victims but more like partners in the issue of their destiny. It now appears as though either Heidegger’s position is inconsistent or our common views of freedom and determinism are unequal to the explication of Heidegger’s thought. The problems that arise here, I believe, are not due to a quirk in Heidegger’s approach but will occupy anyone who philosophically investigates the origin of technology and is not concerned merely to chronicle the factual stages of technological development but wants to find out how at bottom human existence is engaged in this development and how this engagement i
s worked out in the history of philosophy.

  To come to the final point, it is not simply that these questions are enormously demanding. They have a way of diverting the attention and energy of the philosophy of technology from the task at hand: the problem of attaining a careful and resourceful vision of the crucial features and dimensions of our world and of our place in it. A philosophical inquiry of the origin and development of technology is to set the stage for this task, but setting the stage becomes so difficult and controversial a project that the curtain never gets raised. I do not want to dismiss the historical task. But I think that to get on with the systematic contemporary problem we can fruitfully bracket the historical dimension.23 To bracket is not to erase. We can with frequent backward glances analyze the character of today’s technological world. Then it becomes a question in its own right of how this analysis is to be related to the history of technology. At any rate, what needs to be done is to carry out the analysis carefully and in detail.