I’ve been tackling the subject of authority (who or what you trust when seeking the answer to a question) and knowledge (a working, true data set) for a while now. I haven’t really gone into ethics because it’s a sticky one. I’m going to try it now, in a couple of articles.
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I think it’s painfully apparent to everyone by now that technology itself is not a good thing.
Technology is merely a tool. Really, that’s all. Technology is a tool that can be used for good or bad. In the future, technology might gain sentience and become much more than a tool, but that’s outside the scope of this entry because… well… arguing something that may or may not come true is hard work. And I’m not a sci-fi author.
There’s an old, trite argument, but it illustrates my point: guns don’t kill people. People kill people. Technology is the same thing, but because inventions are new and shiny, people are mostly blind to its nefarious uses; it lacks the evil connotations of the gun that we’ve developed over hundreds of years. When the gun was first invented it wasn’t ‘bad’ either — just new, and very cool.
Technology — the idea of new inventions, modifications, enhancements – really is the same thing as the humble gun. I mean, if you want proof, a gun is technology. Weaponry is one of the longest chains of technological development in history! And it’s not abating either… it has a long way to go. I’m sure you’re aware of the tax money that goes into ‘defence’. Weapon technology has been the deciding factor of major wars and the continuation of empires and dynasties — having advanced weapons is (sadly?) probably the pinnacle of any given modern civilisation.
But because guns (and canons and muskets and rifles and…) have killed huge swathes of the population, does that make technology bad?
There are literally millions (billions?) of people that would say guns and weapons are Bad Things. They kill people, ergo… bad. Before guns, we had swords, spears, slings — were they also bad?
How about fire? Was Prometheus, the lad that stole fire from the Gods, the greatest war criminal of all time? Without fire, almost everything you see today wouldn’t exist. Chemical energy is the end of that technology chain, and we frickin’ worship chemical energy.
That’s the thing — without fire, that desk in front of you wouldn’t exist. That’s how technology works — it’s omnipotent and omnipresent. You can’t staunch the flow of one technology and expect to carry on living the life you live.
Without fire, we would have burnt out [hah -- frozen to death more likely] and gone extinct a long time ago. Without spears, we would’ve starved. Without guns we would’ve perished in wars.
You see how I keep using the word ‘we’? It’s a selfish thing, eh? Man makes fire because he doesn’t want to freeze. Selfish, selfish, selfish. Man fashions a spear because without it, he uses more energy hunting than he gains from the animal’s flesh. Man crafts a gun because it lets him kill — or threaten — at range, without putting himself at risk. SELFISH!
But what’s the other option? No technology? No fire? No human race? Just step to the side and make way for another master species? How on earth are we ever going to agree to that? No, we can’t stop progressing — that’s one thing we can’t do. We might nuke ourself in the process, like so many civilisations before us, but it’s better than standing still, stagnating, dying.
We can agree then that technology isn’t a good thing itself, but something so intrinsic to human survival that we can’t imagine life without it, without tools. But as always, when anything involves humans, it’s more complicated than that.
With technology we create both solutions and problems. One caveman uses fire to cook his food while another uses it to brand dissident villagers. You keep a gun in the house to dissuade burglars, I keep a gun to shoot Negroes. While one scientist is planning clean, sustained energy from nuclear fission, another is working under the duress of an evil mastermind that wants to nuke us to smithereens.
Thus there are some that think technology has lowered our quality of life — that technology is a bad thing — though that’s impossible if you take ‘technology’ to mean any and every tool we’ve ever fashioned. So they probably mean ‘recent technology’ — the atomic bomb, the Internet, sports cars, Facebook, etc.
And maybe they have a point. You’d never think of a telephone as a bad thing, right? But the Internet? Maybe. Fire’s a good thing — but weapons of mass destruction? Probably not. They’re both advancements on the same technological line
It’s too unknown. The rules are unknown, the lines are blurred. There have been failed technologies in the past
Melissa
Nov 24, 2009
I have to reject the idea that selfishness is bad. Selfishness is just the urge to survive, and that is GOOD. Sure, it can go wrong, but the basic assumption of selfish = evil is not there for me.
Eric
Nov 24, 2009
There’s a Nietzschean in our midst!
You touch on something I was thinking of today and yesterday: that if it isn’t you, it’s someone else. You can’t stop progress, and if you don’t make something, and make it first, someone else will take that upper hand. I was thinking along different lines, but on the same premise. (If “we” hadn’t come to America, if it had remained an untouched nation, some other colonials would have come around to wipe out the indigenous peoples.) I wonder about the inevitability of it. If we could freeze time, if we could halt human ingenuity, would it be a good thing?
sebastian
Nov 24, 2009
Hehe, yeah… the classic ‘only put off the inevitable’ train of thought. That you can change the course of time… but only temporarily. Key events are set in stone, by… the lords of reality. Or something!
Of course you’d say that, Melissa, you’ve read Atlas Shrugged
nicopolitan
Nov 24, 2009
I hear this argument end up unresolved a lot, so thanks for bringing some valid points to light.
I always vouch for prudence with technology since I’m such a fan, as in an “have we learned nothing from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein?” kind of way. That is, as you state in the beginning, technology is neither a good or bad thing. It’s just an idea. And only with careful consideration can we prevent it from turning on us and murdering everyone we know.
In short: more cautionary tales, plz!
Melissa
Nov 24, 2009
Oh, come on — give me a LITTLE credit. Ayn Rand is like the 1-dimensional version of what I was trying to express there. I don’t think selfishness is necessarily good, either. It’s just a fact of life!
Okay, let me clarify a little after looking up “selfish” in the dictionary. I was ignoring the part about caring ONLY about yourself. I guess I really meant self-interest. You ought to be interested in your own survival, right? Otherwise, well…. you wouldn’t survive!
sebastian
Nov 24, 2009
Just ribbin’ ya, Mel
I’d point out that I wasn’t passing judgement on selfishness, just stating it as a fact. Self-interest is a less-charged way of saying it I suppose!
I believe the argument in favour of socialism is that you don’t NEED various things to survive, while OTHERS might needs things (like shelter) to survive.
Damn it all for being way too complex to actually work with in your head though… damn it all.
Prudence sounds good, Nico. We move too quickly, I guess. Discussion of technology is nearly always in retrospect. It’s basically running unchecked.
I’m amazed we’re still here to talk about it, really