Eric Mullis
(Associate Professor of Philosophy, Queens University of Charlotte)
What is the essence of technology? What do the automobile, laptop computer, and communications satellite have in common? How does that essence pertain to users of those technologies? Understanding three dynamics helps answer these questions.
The first relationship concerns self and other. Habits are functional structures that allow us to incorporate technologies into our bodies. Learning to type on a computer keyboard, for example, entails allowing its spatial and linguistic ordering into the fingers and hands. In turn, the keyboard becomes a transparent medium through which, as with the hands, intentionality flows. The device becomes “quasi-I” when the border between the body and the device is blurred and when one thinks “through” it—by typing thoughts into an email or word processing software. At the same time, when a key on the keyboard malfunctions or when the software crashes, the device rather dramatically becomes a mute object that blocks one’s intentions. It stands out in experience as other. Emerging technologies often appear other because one does not yet have the habits that are necessary to incorporate them into activity and also because, in many instances, they are increasing responsive to user behavior. The video game which continually responds, adapts to, and learns from one’s actions seems to have human-like agency to the extent that it is easy to attribute dispositions such as willfulness, wiliness, or spitefulness to it.
The second relationship concerns enhancement and limitation. Among other things, your cellphone amplifies your abilities to communicate with other people, it helps document and important events, and allows you to buy and sell goods. Every technology is something of a prosthetic which supplements or augments perceptual faculties, cognitive processes, or physical capabilities but, at the same time, it always limits or constrains experience. Communicating through a cell phone can bridge vast geographical distances, but it also rules out touch, smell, and feeling the other person’s physical energy. Every technological device is a medium which performs a specific function and frames the users’ experiences. This becomes especially apparent when one considers what some philosophers of technology call “vulnerability relations” (Coekelberg 2013). Synthetic fertilizers dramatically increase crop yields but degrade the soil over time. The automobile increases mobility and is a significant contributor to global warming. Internet technologies allows us to quickly purchase goods from around the globe but entail the risk of having privacy invaded. Nuclear power generates vast amounts of electricity and radioactive waste. And so on. It is tempting to focus solely on the way technologies magnify abilities and improve quality of life, but there inevitably are tradeoffs and costs.
The third relationship concerns causation and control. Karl Marx observed that the inventions of the printing press and the industrial loom dramatically changed social relations in Europe, specifically by challenging the authority of the Catholic church and the craft guilds (2005: 825-835). More so than institutional or political reforms, increased access to books undermined the church’s monopoly on literacy and, therefore, its claim to performing a necessary role in religious salvation. Marx’s conclusion was that the Protestant revolution had less to do with the emergence of a new theology, and more to do with a new technology. This is easy to see in retrospect after the social effects of the technology have had time to play out, but those effects are impossible to accurately predict when the technology is new. No one could have known how the automobile would transform economies and societies, nor that it would eventually factor into the climate crisis. Further, the issue of control pertains to the individual user of technology because they have the capacity to change perceptual abilities and embodied experience. Photography and film trained us to see, both in terms of how fast our eyes move and in terms of what is seen. The mass production of military uniforms—and clothing more generally—fueled the development of forms of physical training which created uniform bodies for standardized designs. Hence, technologies are developed to address specific problems, they come to take a life of their own, and we come to adapt ourselves to them.
Historically, there are two distinct cultural attitudes towards emerging technologies. The skeptical view dismisses technology because it threatens to undermine cultural traditions and negatively impacts individuals. On this view, technology is inherently artificial and therefore unnatural. It disconnects us from what is fundamentally real, whether each other, nature, or the divine. On the other hand, the more optimistic view is that technology has dramatically improved the quality of human life and revealed a great deal of information about the world and the universe. It is the key to a better future.
Given the preceding, we can see that these two views take specific positions on the self-other, enhancement-limitation, and causation-control relationships. The skeptic would focus on how interactive technologies are becoming too human-like, on the vulnerabilities they create, and on how we will come to submit to their control while, vice-versa, the optimist would focus on the exciting possibilities of autonomous technology, how it can magnify human abilities and improve life, and how its development can be intelligently guided. As with many contemporary ethical and sociopolitical issues, it is tempting to avoid ambiguity and to reduce complex issues such that one’s existing view will be supported. As we have seen, technology is fundamentally ambiguous, and consequently wariness is warranted when it is portrayed as inevitably deleterious or as a saving force.
Like so many of us, contemporary artists are continually thinking about emerging technologies, with some highlighting possible negative implications, others focusing on positive ones, and others encouraging audiences to consider ambiguities. Whatever stance the art takes, it is essential because creating it entails taking a step back from everyday life and then thinking about and creatively experimenting with a technology. In turn, it encourages us to think critically about technology and to more generally consider what we want our relationship to technology to be.
Reference:
Coeckelbergh, M. (2013). “Human Being@ Risk: Enhancement, Technology, and the Evaluation of Vulnerability Transformations.” New York: Springer.
Marx, K. (2005). “Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy.” Translated by Martin Nicolaus. London: Penguin