Alan Drengson, Four Philosophies of Technology, 1982
- Four different "developmental stages/processes" in attitudes toward
tech
- Stages of maturation of industrial society's views toward tech
- Each stage is useful in the development process and has its limits
- E.g., Tech anarchy usefully led to the industrial revolution
- Health social change is fostered by a balance between these attitudes
- Technological maturity
- Involves gradual transformation of our society into mature, post-industrial culture
- Characterized by human-scaled, ecologically sound, appropriate
technologies, consciously designed to fit our moral values.
- I. TECHNOLOGICAL ANARCHY
- Dominant during 19th century, industrial development
- Tech is seen as good as instrument to pursue wealth, power, &
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 biotech--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 "neoprimitive" 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 env. 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 nonmeasurable)
- 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
- Appro 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
- 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
- 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
- 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, thermo unsound
- Appro tech: diversify and decentralize use and production of energy
- Don't' use vast power grid
- Variety of small scale photovoltaic, hydroelectric and solar
tech
- Cogeneration 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
- 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 4 phil 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
- 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