Philosophy of Technology

[devonin]

The cavalcade of essays continues. This one was written in my second year as an analysis and exposition of the position of philosopher Hans Jonas on the subject of the need for philsophers to develop a philosophy of technology, as a means of helping to ensure future developments remain grounded in an understanding of the consequences and implictions of the development.

In his article Toward a Philosophy of Technology, Hans Jonas writes of the concept of a philosophy of technology, whether such a thing exists, and what it would entail. One of the first things he does in this article is to draw a distinction between Classical and Modern technology. This distinction is vital because Jonas claims that the two are fundamentally different. His article, and this paper will deal mostly with Modern Technology, including the ways Jonas claims we must undertake to understand it, and an explanation of what he feels are its defining traits, as well as a critique of his arguments.
Jonas begins his article, as stated above, by a discussion of the differences between Classical and Modern technology. Classical technology was defined by the idea of X for Y. A job needed doing, or doing more easily; so a technology was devised through luck or incident, to do it, or to simplify the process of doing it. Examples of such technologies would include the plough, or pulley systems. The defining trait of Classical Technology in this context is that each new discovery was a means to satisfy an end, and that was that. Once created, the end was met, and no further improvements were required, or sought after. (Jonas, Pg 18)

Conversely, Modern Technology operates on the theory of X replacing Y for Z. For any technology to be seen as useful in the modern age, it must be either a direct improvement of an existing technology, or else a new means of satisfying an end. When describing the way in which we must understand technology, Jonas refers to two qualities of technology, namely it’s formal dynamics and its substantive content.

By formal dynamics Jonas refers to technology “as a continuing collective enterprise, which advances by its own ‘laws of motion.’” (Jonas, Pg17) Here he is referring to the concept of knowledge for its own sake. It is driven forward by a simple desire for more knowledge as a means to an end in itself, with no particular drive to satisfy any specific practical end. This is the manner in which Classical technology operated. Practical discoveries were often accidental, rarely sought after, and accepted as likely the best that was to come along for a long time after its creation.

The term Substantive content references the practical side of technology, the things it produces, puts into use, or the powers it confers. (Jonas, Pg 17) This is the driving force of Modern technology, that no advancement, or improvement is ever considered to be something to stay with for any length of time. The drive is ever towards a new production, a new use, and a new power. Jonas lists four defining qualities of Modern Technology that support this viewpoint.

The first quality Jonas enumerates is that “every new step…tends not to approach an equilibrium or saturation point in the process of fitting means to ends.” (Jonas Pg 19) That is to say that any advancement in technology, rather than meet the Classical requirement of satisfying an end, and then ceasing as a path of investigation, instead creates new ends in directions sometimes completely unforeseen in the original intent of the technology.
Next, Jonas claims that “Every technical innovation is sure to spread quickly through the technological world community.’ (Jonas, Pg19) This spreading is the result of technology itself ensuring near instant communications between groups no matter how distant geographically, and the pressures of competition demanding that every new discovery be held up for all to see as proof of advancement.

Thirdly, Jonas describes the means-ends relationship of Modern technology as “not unilinear, but circular.” (Jonas Pg 19) Formerly, technology worked in a line. A need existed; a means was devised to meet it. Under Jonas’ theory of Modern technology, new means created for existing ends tend to create either a desire for yet new means, or an entirely new end that now needs meeting. Technology becomes a desire itself, rather than a means of achieving desires, as it feeds into itself: A need demands a scientific solution, the scientific solution creates a new need, which in turn requires a similar solution and so on ad infinitum.

The final trait Jonas presents is essentially a corollary to the third, expanding upon the idea of progress in technology as something which cannot be stopped “short of a stop by the fiat of total political power, or by a sustained general strike of its clients or some internal collapse of their societies, or by self-destruction through its works.” (Jonas pg 19) As each new technology comes into existence, there is no way to stop its creating new questions, new ends and desires to be met. The very nature of technology has become self-sufficient, growing not even in linear fashion, each new end creating a new means, but exponentially, spawning many new desires from any given accomplishment.

Jonas, having given his explanations, now turns to several claims he feels follows from these assumptions about technology and the way it effects our lives. This section of the paper will list some of the more cogent of those claims, and offer a critique of said claims.

One of the first among these, and a patently valid claim, is the idea that technology has created its own new type of commodity, namely those things required for the creation and support of that technology, completely apart from its intended purpose. In much the same way that sending an object into space is not a simple matter of how much fuel is required to lift the object (You now need enough fuel to lift the fuel, and enough fuel to lift that fuel and so on) So to has technology created its own self-sustaining drain on natural resources. (Jonas Pg 25)

Something as seemingly simple as a chair requires wood and nails to construct it, which requires the need for a factory to construct the chair, which requires the materials to build the factory, and harvest the materials and so on back, so that one simple chair generates a fantastic drain on natural resources, to the point where it becomes impossible to actually see as the consumer, where hands were laid on primary materials. This is a worry to me, as it should be to anybody interested in ecology and the environment, as natural resources are hitting a critical mass of scarcity to where new methods will need to be developed not out of convenience, but of necessity.
Another claim of Jonas is the inherent difference in modern technologies as compared to their classical counterparts, to the point where we aren’t even beginning to experience things in the same way. Jonas’ example here is the end of ‘getting from one place to another.’ There is no way any human previous to the invention of the steam engine could imagine something such as a jet aircraft, and even then such a person would likely be thought crazy to suggest the idea. The end remains the same, but there is a fundamental difference in the means that defies comparison. (Jonas, Pg 26)

Jonas, here makes one claim of which I’m not positive I agree with, namely that there is one field in which changing means has not affected the end in the same way, that being agriculture, or as Jonas puts it, “We still eat the meat and rice of our ancestors.” (Jonas, Pg 26) My issue with this is that the changing means of growing, harvesting and transporting agricultural goods has made available to us goods that were simply not accessible to our ancestors. In the same way that Jonas claims that the airplane provides transportation in ways unthinkable to our ancestors, I would argue that the mere fact that we in Canada can consume foods imported from all over the world the same day they were harvested, that we have indeed created an end unthinkable to our ancestors. We aren’t eating their meat; we’re eating someone else’s meat entirely.

Perhaps the claim that I identify most with in support of Jonas is the idea that we as a society have become irrevocable mechanized in our daily lives. (Jonas Pg 26) North American society has become so technology oriented that advances even unique to the previous decade are considered standard. It took a very long time for television or automobiles, to say nothing of indoor plumbing or electricity, to become ubiquitous in our society as compared to cell phones or computers. In 1990 computers were still relatively rare things to own in ones own household, now it surprises people to discover that you don’t own one.

The drive to possess the latest in technological advancements has increased exponentially in Modern society to the point where one of Jonas’ final points: the potential obsolescence of man as man currently is, through genetic engineering, becomes more and more like something humanity will need to deal with within the next half century if not sooner.

Science is already at the point where unborn children can be analysed to determine if they will be born with any defects. Expanding to the point where unborn children can have such errors edited out entirely, perhaps even replaced with other, desirable traits cannot be far away, and Jonas is absolutely correct to point out that philosophical thought is essentially ill-equipped to deal with this issue. (Jonas, Pg 28)

We need not look hard or far to find examples of how this could go. Works of literature such as Brave New World, or 1984, to say nothing of the motion picture The Matrix, more than adequately display the dangers of letting this constant drive to improvement turn to self-improvement in ethically unsound ways, and it is to the prevention of this precise eventuality that Jonas appears to be arguing, and which needs to be the focal point of everyone of a philosophical bent, as the very relevance of mankind seems to be at stake.

There's all kinds of good stuff in his arguement to talk about: Whether technology is advancing as quickly as he seems to say, whether that development has less, as much or more potential for disaster as he implies, whether or not society is properly equipped to actually deal with the rate at which technology is advancing, and so on.