Criticism of technology is an analysis of adverse impacts of industrial anddigital technologies. It is argued that, in all advanced industrial societies (not necessarily only capitalist ones), technology becomes a means of domination, control, and exploitation,[1] or more generally something which threatens the survival of humanity. Some of the technology opposed by the most radical critics may include everyday household products, such asrefrigerators,computers, andmedication.[2] However, criticism of technology comes in many shades.
Overview
editSome authors such asChellis Glendinning andKirkpatrick Sale consider themselvesNeo-Luddites and hold that technological progress has had a negative impact on humanity. Their work focused on seeking meaning out of technological change, specifically wrestling with the question of "how tools and their affordances change and alter the fabric of everyday life."[3] Ellul, for instance, maintained that when people assert that technology is an instrument of freedom or the means to achieve historical destiny or the execution of divine vocation, it results in the glorification and sanctification of Technique so that it becomes that which gives meaning and value to life rather than mere ensemble of materials.[4] This is echoed byrhetorical critics who cite the way technological discourse damages institutions and individuals who make up those institutions due to its idealization and capacity to definesocial hierarchies.[5]
In its most extreme, criticisms of technology produce analyses of technology as potentially leading to catastrophe. For instance, activistNaomi Klein described how technology is employed by capitalism in its commitment to a "shock doctrine", which promotes a series of crises so that speculative profit can be accumulated.[4] There are theorists who also cite the cases of theglobal financial crises as well as theChernobyl andFukushima disasters to support their critique.[4] Critiques also focus on specific issues such as how technology—throughrobotics,automation, andsoftware—is destroying people's jobs faster than it is creating them, contributing to the incidence of poverty and inequality.[6]
In the 1970s in the US, the critique of technology became the basis of a new political perspective calledanarcho-primitivism, which was forwarded by thinkers such asFredy Perlman,John Zerzan, andDavid Watson. They proposed differing theories about how it became an industrial society, and not capitalism as such, that was at the root of contemporary social problems. This theory was developed in the journalFifth Estate in the 1970s and 1980s, and was influenced by theFrankfurt School, theSituationist International,Jacques Ellul and others.
The critique of technology overlaps with thephilosophy of technology but whereas the latter tries to establish itself as an academic discipline the critique of technology is basically a political project, not limited toacademia. It features prominently inneo-Marxist (Herbert Marcuse andAndrew Feenberg),ecofeminism (Vandana Shiva) and inpost development (Ivan Illich)
See also
editReferences
edit- ^Lorenzano, Pablo;Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg; Ortiz, Eduardo; Galles, Carlos (2010).History and Philosophy of Science and Technology. Oxford: EOLSS Publishers Co. Ltd. pp. 124–125.ISBN 9781848267763.
- ^Glendinning, Chellis.Notes towards a Neo-Luddite manifesto. Utne Reader, 1990.
- ^Watson, Sara (October 2016)."Toward a Constructive Technology Criticism".Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved2018-10-19.
- ^abcJeronimo, Helena; Garcia, Jose; Mitcham, Carl (2013).Jacques Ellul and the Technological Society in the 21st Century. Dordrecht: Springer Science+Business Media. p. 116.ISBN 9789400766570.
- ^Enos, Theresa (2013).Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition: Communication from Ancient Times to the Information Age. New York: Routledge. p. 619.ISBN 978-0824072001.
- ^Rotman, David."How Technology Is Destroying Jobs".MIT Technology Review. Retrieved2018-10-19.
Further reading
edit- Wendy Hui Kyong Chun,Control and freedom (2006)
- Donna J. Haraway,A Cyborg Manifesto (1985)
- Gilles Deleuze,Postscript on the Societies of Control (1992)
- Lewis Mumford,Technics and Civilization (1934)
- Layla AbdelRahim,Children's Literature, Domestication, and Social Foundation: Narratives of Civilization and Wilderness, Routledge, 2018 paperbackISBN 9781138547810; 2015 hardbackISBN 9780415661102
- Michael Adas,Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance, Cornell University Press 1990
- Braun, Ernest (2009).Futile Progress: Technology’s Empty Promise, Routledge.
- Jacques Ellul,The Technological Society, Trans. John Wilkinson. New York: Knopf, 1964. London: Jonathan Cape, 1965. Rev. ed.: New York: Knopf/Vintage, 1967. with introduction by Robert K. Merton (professor of sociology, Columbia University).
- Jacques Ellul,The Technological Bluff, Trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990.
- Andrew Feenberg,Transforming Technology. A Critical Theory Revisited, Oxford University Press, 2nd edition 2002,ISBN 0-19-514615-8 - Feenberg offers a "coherent starting point for anticapitalist technical politics"[citation needed] to overcome what he considers to be the "fatalism" of Ellul, Heidegger, and other proponents of "substantive" theories of technology.
- Martin Heidegger,The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays, B&T 1982,ISBN 0-06-131969-4
- Huesemann, Michael H., and Joyce A. Huesemann (2011).Technofix: Why Technology Won’t Save Us or the Environment, New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, British Columbia, Canada,ISBN 0865717044.
- Derrick Jensen and George Draffan,Welcome to the Machine: Science, Surveillance, and the Culture of Control, Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2004,ISBN 1-931498-52-0
- Mander, Jerry (1992).In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations, Sierra Club Books.
- Postman, Neil (1993).Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, Vintage.
- David Watson,Against the Megamachine, Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 1998,ISBN 1-57027-087-2 - The title essay is available onlinehere
- Joseph Weizenbaum,Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgement to Calculation, W.H.Freeman & Co Ltd, New Edition 1976
- Langdon Winner,Autonomous Technology: Technics-Out-Of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought, MIT Press 1977,ISBN 978-0-262-23078-0
- Peter Zelchenko (1999).Exploring Alternatives to Hype.Educational Leadership 56(5), pp. 78–81.
- Theodore John Kaczynski,Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How, Fitch & Madison, 2016
External links
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