Samuel Florman, In Praise of Technology
(from Existential Pleasures of Engineering, 1975)
- Main point: Growing hostility toward and fear of technology is a
dangerous phenomenon
- Critics demonizing technology
- Anti-technologists yearn for simple solutions to our problems when
there is none
- HISTORY OF AND /MAIN FIGURES IN ANTI-TECH MOVEMENT
- Jacques Ellul (French), The Technological Society (1954)
- "Technique" has become a uncontrollable Frankenstein monster
- "Technique" is not just use of machines, but all deliberate,
rational, efficient organization
- Humans created technique in prehistoric times as needed it, but more
recently technique has been used by the well-to-do to make money,
masses accept it for its comfort
- Now search for efficiency via technique has become an end-in-itself,
dominating man and destroying quality of his life
- Lewis Mumford (leading historian of technology) Myth of the Machine
(1967 and 1970)
- Charles Reich Greening of America (1970)
- Spoke on behalf of youthful counterculture and its dedication to
liberating consciousness-raising
- Theodore Roszak Where the Wasteland Ends (1972)
- A primitive spiritualism
- A new "Arcadian" (=simple, innocent, untroubled) criticism of post-industrial society
- FLORMAN'S SUMMARY OF THE CRITICISM OF TECHNOLOGY
AND HIS RESPONSES TO THOSE CRITICISM
- Anti-Technologists (Luddites) Argue That Technology (P. 150)
- One: Is autonomous & beyond our control: "Tech is a (a) thing/force, (b)
escaped from human control ("technological determinism"), and is (c)
spoiling our lives"
- Florman's response
- Technology is not an independent force/thing, but merely an activity
that people engage in
- People choose to engage in technology; even if the choice might be
foolish or unthinking
- Even if this choice may be forced on some members of society by
others, this is different from technology itself doing this
- Florman's uses the automobile example to illustrate technology's
"deterministic nature" (meaning "it causes unanticipated things to happen,
some undesirable" )
- Invention of auto changed how people thought as well as act; changes
their living patterns, their values, their expectations in ways not
anticipated; some of its undesirable consequences are traffic jams,
accidents, pollution
- So tech advance seems independent of human direction; there are
a thousand other examples
- Two: Degrades work: "Forces man to do work that is tedious/degrading"
- People work because they have to in order to provide for themselves
- We both hate work and need it for our fulfillment
- Think of Winner's claim that "people are what they do"
- Florman's response:
- Work of earlier times was not any better than work in a tech
society
- Agricultural work-sounds appealing to armchair
intellectuals-in fact is "brutalizing in its demands"
- People prefer factory and office work to "drudgery of the farm"
- Three: Encourages/enables frivolous consumption: "Forces man to
consume things that he does not really desire"
- Florman's response
- But consumers who buy cars and electric can openers could--if they
chose to-buy oboes, oil paints, sailboats, hiking boots, chess sets,
Mozart records
- If they did not have real consumer desires, they could buy a kidney
machine to help their neighbor instead
- Perhaps people's consumer choices are vulgar, foolish, and selfish,
but it is a cop out to blame this on "the economy/society/technology"
- Is Florman's response sensitive to the power of advertising,
competitive consumption, and the consumer society in general?
- Four: Creates unjust class divisions: "Create an elite class of technocrats
and so disenfranchises the masses"
- Divides society into a class of a few elite & powerful technocrats and
the rest of society who are powerless
- A tech elite is taking control of society and exploiting them
- Reich "decisions are made by experts, specialists, professionals who
are safely insulated from feelings of people"
- Florman's response
- At least this avoids the foolish idea of a demon technology
compelling people to act against their own self-interest
- Sure people try to take advantage of other people
- No reason to think such exploitation has increased as the result of
technology
- But if technology enhances power, then those who have it have
increased power over others who lack it
- From earliest history, peasants been exploited by nobleman; bankers,
merchants, landowners, kings have exploited the masses in virtually
every large human groups
- In fact historically, exploitation has lessened with increases in
technology; in advanced tech societies average citizen is freer than
ever
- Abolished slavery, rigid class structures are going away, equal
rights for women, etc
- Look at underdeveloped nations (those w/o tech) to see how
technology lessens exploitation: with less tech, more exploitation
- Jared Diamond's response? (Florman agrees that in small tribes less
exploitation than in large ones and agrees tech played a role)
- Five: Separates man from nature: "Cripples man by cutting him off from
the natural world in which he evolved"
- Catastrophic consequences when humans are cut off from the natural
world
- Rene Dubos (a research biologist who won a Pulitzer Prize for So
Human an Animal, 1968) claims that (like Paul Shepard):
- Man is an animal whose nature (physical & social) formed
during course of his evolution
- This basic nature-molded in fields and forests-not suited to life
in tech world
- Man's ability to adapt to almost any environment is his
downfall
- Little by little he has accommodated himself to
physical/psychic horrors of modern life
- Must choose a different path or we are doomed
- Florman's response (1)
- Uses Daniel Callahan (a well-respected philosopher and founder of
the Hastings Center) on relation of humans/technology
- False dualism man/technology; not two separate kinds of realities
- "Man by nature is a technological animal"
- "To be human is to be technological"
- Technology is just man in one of his manifestations
- Thus the creation and use of technology is not contrary to--but rather
essential to-the flourishing of human nature
- This is the homo faber" idea
- Florman's response (2)
- True, we as a society are less in touch with nature
- But not due exclusively to tech
- Tech could be used to put people in very close touch with nature,
if they wanted that
- Vacation homes for wealthy in wilderness; people could live in
highest jungle treetops with birds if they wanted
- But people want penthouses in NY city instead
- Rural people could stay on farms or in small towns and live
spare/simple lives if they wanted
- Instead they tire of loneliness and tedium and hard
physical labor and succumb to allure of cities
- Sees no evidence that frequent contact with nature is essential to
human well-being (as Luddites and environmentalists claim)
- Even if our complexity as a species is due to evolving in a
diverse natural environment, why must we continue to reside in
landscape in which we evolved?
- Diversity of city and cultural life is equally stimulating?
- Millions of people lived entire lives in cities with little contact
with nature and why think led inherently inferior lives?
- Six: Alienates man from himself: "Provides man with technical diversions
which destroyed his existential sense of his own being"
- Anti-tech movement tries to discredit modern leisure activities, for
this is one thing technology supposedly gives us: more leisure
- When ordinary person thinks she's happy-going to a ball game,
watching TV, listening to jukebox, playing a pinball machine, eating
hot dogs, Luddites say not really happy
- Florman's response
- Anti-technology movement manifests a disdain/pity/disrespect for
ordinary person
- Completely discounts integrity/intelligence of ordinary person;
- Discounts choices and desires of ordinary people, and thinks their
Luddite opinion is superior
- ADDITIONAL CRITICISMS OF TECHNOLOGY THAT FLORMAN
CONSIDERS AND RESPONDS TO
- Technology destroys nature
- Florman's response: Humans have destroyed their ecology
(converted forest to pasture) for all of recorded history
- Technology destroys communit
- ADDITIONAL CRITICISMS FLORMAN MAKES OF LUDDITES
- Florman claims that anti-technologists falsely romanticize "primitive" cultures
- Contrast our abysmal technocracy with supposedly preferable
cultures: the primitive tribe, the peasant community, medieval
society (?)
- Anthropologists find this harmony of life only in a few primitive
cultures, others display anxiety, hostility, and all the ills Luddites see
in our modern society
- Primitive cultures are likely to be unpleasant, as almost totally
vulnerable to every passing hazard of nature, best, disease and human
enemy
- Typical primitive man was brutal and brutalized, materialistic,
suspicious
- Middle ages as illustration-time of pestilence, public tortures
- Callous brutality, unrelievable pain, ever-present threat of untimely
death are realities our ancestors lived with
- Luddites recognize we can't return to earlier times, but want us to
recapture values of these cultures
- Florman thinks doing so would involve a change in human nature
(though he knows that Luddites see this as a return to true human
nature)
- Florman claims he is not saying that our lives are better, just because we
live longer and in greater physical comfort than earlier peoples.
- Today we do have problems that are unique in degree if not in kind
- Have a vague generalized feeling of discontent much more
widespread than a generation ago?
- Cause? Too many people wanting too many things
- Not caused by tech
- Due to kind of creature man is
- A few are willing to turn to the past
- Do w/o disposable bottles
- Move to counter-cultural communes
- Vast majority of people in world want to move forward, whatever
the consequences
- Not ignorant of problems; disturbed by crowding and pollution
- Recognize that "progress" in not necessarily taking them from
worse to better
- Despite misgivings, they are pressing on with an awesome and
(praiseworthy?) determination