Philosophy of Technology

[devonin]

I think the distinction he makes between Classical and Modern technology is this:

"Classical: It's really hard to plow the fields by hand...maybe if we tried to make something we could have pulled by a horse, we could make plowing easier!"

"Modern: We're going to just keep fiddling with this, for no better reason than to see if something come out of it that we can use"

I suppose another way to look at it is that they are stage 1 and 2 of development. Classical technology allows us to do X. Modern technology replaces how we were already doing X with a new way X.

Once the emphasis moves away from "How can I do a, b, c" to "Now that we do a, b, c how can we do it -better-" we've entered, to Jonas, the second stage of the development.

Or even better, I guess: His distinction is that in Classical technology, once the means you were looking to find to get an end is met, you're done. While later improvements may come along, your prime goal in the research was "Finding out how to do X" and once you do, that's it. Whereas in Modern technology, assuming you were even looking for something specific, once you find it, you just go "Oh that was neat" and keep on going, to see what else is implied by that advance.

The one valid example of a problem resulting from rapid technological growth was environmental problems, and if technology is capable of solving its own problems; "feeding back on itself after new needs have been created"; what is the issue?

The impression I got from doing the reading (And I freely admit that some of the problems here are my failure to communicate his position as well as he did) is that his concern is more that we as a people are advancing faster than our ethics, morals and philosophy can keep up, and that we risk advancing into technologies that we are unprepared to use properly.

He's calling for the philosophical community, basically, to start paying more attention to the world of technology to inform society's decisions on technological advancement. Yes you've seen Gattaca, but if you look at a concept like genetic manipulation or copy-cloning (IE. as opposed to the current, "make a new thing with old DNA" instead the sci-fi concept of "Man walks into machine, Man1 and Man2 walk out) there are many far -far- less desireable possibilities for that technology than the kind of things in Gattaca, etc.

He seems mostly to be worried that such might happen if we aren't more cognizant of the consequences of our actions.