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Technological utopianism (often calledtechno-utopianism ortechnoutopianism) is anyideology based on the premise that advances in science and technology could and should bring about autopia, or at least help to fulfill one or another utopian ideal.
Atechno-utopia is therefore an idealsociety, in which laws, government, and social conditions are solely operating for the benefit and well-being of all its citizens, set in the near- or far-future, as advanced science and technology will allow these ideal living standards to exist; for example,post-scarcity,transformations in human nature, the avoidance or prevention of suffering and even theend of death.
Technological utopianism is often connected with other discourses presenting technologies as agents of social and cultural change, such astechnological determinism ormedia imaginaries.[1]
A tech-utopia does not disregard any problems that technology may cause,[2] but strongly believes that technology allows mankind to make social, economic, political, and cultural advancements.[3] Overall, Technological Utopianism views technology's impacts as extremely positive.
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, several ideologies and movements, such as thecyberdelic counterculture, theCalifornian Ideology,cyber-utopianism,transhumanism,[4] andsingularitarianism, have emerged promoting a form of techno-utopia as a reachable goal. The movement known aseffective accelerationism (e/acc) even advocates for "progress at all costs".[5] Cultural criticImre Szeman argues technological utopianism is an irrationalsocial narrative because there is no evidence to support it. He concludes that it shows the extent to whichmodern societies place faith innarratives of progress and technology overcoming things, despite all evidence to the contrary.[6]
Karl Marx believed thatscience anddemocracy were the right and left hands of what he called the move from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom. He argued that advances in science helped delegitimize the rule of kings and the power of theChristian Church.[7]
19th-centuryliberals,socialists, andrepublicans often embraced techno-utopianism.Radicals likeJoseph Priestley pursued scientific investigation while advocating democracy.Robert Owen,Charles Fourier andHenri de Saint-Simon in the early 19th century inspired communalists[who?] with their visions of a future scientific andtechnological evolution of humanity using reason. Radicals seized onDarwinian evolution to validate the idea ofsocial progress.Edward Bellamy'ssocialist utopia inLooking Backward, which inspired hundreds of socialist clubs in the late 19th centuryUnited States and a national political party, was as highly technological as Bellamy's imagination. For Bellamy and theFabian Socialists, socialism was to be brought about as a painless corollary of industrial development.[7]
Marx andEngels saw more pain and conflict involved, but agreed about the inevitable end.Marxists argued that the advance of technology laid the groundwork not only for the creation of a new society, withdifferent property relations, but also for the emergence of new human beings reconnected to nature and themselves. At the top of the agenda forempoweredproletarians was "to increase the totalproductive forces as rapidly as possible". The 19th and early 20th century Left, fromsocial democrats tocommunists, were focused onindustrialization,economic development and the promotion of reason, science, and the idea ofprogress.[7]
According to historian Asif Siddiqi, technological utopianism was a "millenarian mantra" in theSoviet Union from its inception.[8] TheBolsheviks imagined "a world of magnificent factories and mechanized agriculture that produced all of society's necessities," a new socialist machine age.[9] Siddiqi writes that "this obsession with the power of science and technology to remake society was partly rooted in crude Marxism, but much of it derived from the Bolsheviks' own vision to remake Russia into a modern state, one which would compare and compete with the leading capitalist nations in forging a new path to the future."[8] From the 1930s onwards, Soviet technological utopianism embraced a populist view of technological achievements, which Siddiqi summarizes as "technology for the masses."[8] Soviet science fiction was heavily focused on future technology, and often depicted a convergence between technological utopia and socialist utopia.[8]
Sovietologist Paul Josephson argued that most strains of Soviet technological utopianism emphasized technology was apolitical, "serving the profit motive and the industrialist under capitalism, but benefiting all humanity under socialism."[9] To avoid technological dependence on capitalist states, the Soviet Union and other socialist governments influenced by its narratives sought to create domestic technological innovations, supported by autarkic engineering communities and supply chains.[9]
Some technological utopians promotedeugenics. Holding that in studies of families, such as theJukes andKallikaks, science had proven that many traits such as criminality and alcoholism were hereditary, many advocated the sterilization of those displaying negative traits. Forcible sterilization programs were implemented in several states in the United States.[10]
H. G. Wells in works such asThe Shape of Things to Come promoted technological utopianism.
To many philosophers, the horrors ofWorld War II and theHolocaust, asTheodor Adorno underlined, seemed to shatter the ideal ofCondorcet and other thinkers of theEnlightenment, which commonly equatedscientific progress with social progress.[11]
The Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip.[12]
— Ronald Reagan, 14 June 1989
A movement of techno-utopianism began to flourish again in thedot-com culture of the 1990s, particularly in the West Coast of the United States, especially based aroundSilicon Valley. TheCalifornian Ideology was a set of beliefs combiningbohemian andanti-authoritarian attitudes from thecounterculture of the 1960s with techno-utopianism and support forlibertarian economic policies. It was reflected in, reported on, and even actively promoted in the pages ofWired magazine, which was founded in San Francisco in 1993 and served for a number years as the "bible" of its adherents.[13][14][15]
This form of techno-utopianism reflected a belief that technological change revolutionizes human affairs, and that digital technology in particular – of which theInternet was but a modest harbinger – would increase personal freedom by freeing the individual from the rigid embrace of bureaucratic big government. "Self-empowered knowledge workers" would render traditional hierarchies redundant; digital communications would allow them to escape the modern city, an "obsolete remnant of theindustrial age".[13][14][15]
Similar forms of "digital utopianism" has often entered in the political messages of party and social movements that point to theWeb or more broadly tonew media as harbingers of political and social change.[16] Its adherents claim it transcended conventional "right/left" distinctions inpolitics by rendering politics obsolete. However, Western techno-utopianism disproportionately attracted adherents from thelibertarian right end of the political spectrum. Western techno-utopians often have ahostility toward government regulation and a belief in the superiority of thefree market system. Prominent "oracles" of techno-utopianism includedGeorge Gilder andKevin Kelly, an editor ofWired who also published several books.[13][14][15]
During the late 1990s dot-com boom, when thespeculative bubble gave rise to claims that an era of "permanent prosperity" had arrived, techno-utopianism flourished, typically among the small percentage of the population who were employees of Internetstartups and/or owned large quantities of high-tech stocks. With the subsequentcrash, many of these dot-com techno-utopians had to rein in some of their beliefs in the face of the clear return of traditional economic reality.[14][15]
According toThe Economist,Wikipedia "has its roots in thetechno-optimism that characterised the internet at the end of the 20th century. It held that ordinary people could use their computers as tools for liberation, education, and enlightenment."[17]
In the late 1990s and especially during the first decade of the 21st century,technorealism andtechno-progressivism are stances that have risen among advocates oftechnological change as critical alternatives to techno-utopianism.[18][non-primary source needed][19][self-published source?] However, technological utopianism persists in the 21st century as a result of new technological developments and their impact on society. For example, severaltechnical journalists and social commentators, such asMark Pesce, have interpreted theWikiLeaks phenomenon and theUnited States diplomatic cables leak in early December 2010 as a precursor to, or an incentive for, the creation of a techno-utopiantransparent society.[20]Cyber-utopianism, first coined byEvgeny Morozov, is another manifestation of this, in particular in relation to theInternet andsocial networking.
Nick Bostrom contends that the rise ofmachine superintelligence carries bothexistential risks and an extreme potential to improve the future, which might be realized quickly in the event of anintelligence explosion.[21] InDeep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World, he further explored ideal scenarios where human civilization reaches technological maturity and solves its diverse coordination problems. He listed some technologies that are theoretically achievable, such ascognitive enhancement,reversal of aging,self-replicating spacecrafts, arbitrary sensory inputs (taste, sound...), or the precise control of motivation, mood, well-being and personality.[22]
InNorth Korea, technological utopianism remains one of the key themes of the state'sJuche ideology.[9] The pursuit of advanced strategic technologies is promoted as an integral part of autarkic economic development.[9] North Korean technological utopianism essentially rests on three narratives: the rejection of consumer society and culture, an emphasis on heavy industry, and a belief in the ability of the masses of workers to make great technological achievements under theWorkers' Party of Korea.[9] In practice, this has resulted in most of North Korea's technological resources being utilized for large scale, resource intensive, infrastructure and military projects, many of which have primarily symbolic importance.[9] Domestic innovations in nuclear and space sciences continue to play a major role in the state's propaganda narratives, which seek to portray North Korea as a modern regional power.[9]
Bernard Gendron, a professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, defines the four principles of modern technological utopians in the late 20th and early 21st centuries as follows:[23]
Rushkoff presents us with multiple claims that surround the basic principles of Technological Utopianism:[24]
Critics claim that techno-utopianism's identification ofsocial progress withscientific progress is a form ofpositivism andscientism. Critics of modern libertarian techno-utopianism point out that it tends to focus on "government interference" while dismissing the positive effects of theregulation ofbusiness. They also point out that it has little to say about theenvironmental impact of technology[27] and that its ideas have little relevance for much of the rest of the world that are still relatively quite poor (seeglobal digital divide).[13][14][15]
In his 2010 studySystem Failure: Oil, Futurity, and the Anticipation of Disaster,Canada Research Chairholder in cultural studiesImre Szeman argues that technological utopianism is one of the social narratives that prevent people from acting on the knowledge they have concerning theeffects of oil on the environment.[6]
Another concern is the amount of reliance society may place on their technologies in these techno-utopia settings.[27] For example, In a controversial 2011 article "Techno-Utopians are Mugged by Reality", L. Gordon Crovitz ofThe Wall Street Journal explored the concept of the violation of free speech by shutting down social media to stop violence. As a result ofa wave of British cities being looted, former British Prime MinisterDavid Cameron argued that the government should have the ability to shut down social media during crime sprees so that the situation could be contained. A poll was conducted to see if Twitter users would prefer to let the service be closed temporarily or keep it open so they could chat about the famous television showThe X-Factor. The end report showed that every respondent opted forThe X-Factor discussion. Clovitz contends that the negative social effect of technological utopia is that society is so addicted to technology that humanity simply cannot be parted from it even for the greater good. While many techno-utopians would like to believe that digital technology is for the greater good, he says it can also be used negatively to bring harm to the public.[28] These two criticisms are sometimes referred to as a technological anti-utopian view or a techno-dystopia.
According to Ronald Adler and Russell Proctor, mediated communication such as phone calls, instant messaging and text messaging are steps towards a utopian world in which one can easily contact another regardless of time or location. However, mediated communication removes many aspects that are helpful in transferring messages. As it stands as of 2022[update], most text, email, and instant messages offer fewer nonverbal cues about the speaker's feelings than do face-to-face encounters.[29] This makes it so that mediated communication can easily be misconstrued and the intended message is not properly conveyed. With the absence of tone, body language, and environmental context, the chance of a misunderstanding is much higher, rendering the communication ineffective. In fact, mediated technology can be seen from a dystopian view because it can be detrimental to effective interpersonal communication. These criticisms would only apply to messages that are prone to misinterpretation as not every text based communication requires contextual cues. The limitations of lacking tone and body language in text-based communication could potentially be mitigated byvideo andaugmented reality versions of digital communication technologies.[30][dubious –discuss][dead link]
In 2019, philosopherNick Bostrom introduced the notion of avulnerable world, "one in which there is some level of technological development at which civilization almost certainly gets devastated by default", citing the risks of apandemic caused by aDIY biohacker, or anarms race triggered by the development of novel armaments.[31] He writes that "Technology policy should not unquestioningly assume that all technological progress is beneficial, or that complete scientific openness is always best, or that the world has the capacity to manage any potential downside of a technology after it is invented."[31]
