Modern Technology's Problems and Promises
Patrick Mooney
June 6, 1998
This paper was presented at the First Annual Student Writing Conference on Culture, Environment, and Technology, at Southwestern Oregon Community College on June 6, 1998.
The question of whether modern technological development has been beneficial or detrimental to human beings is perhaps the most pressing question that faces our society. If technology is harmful, then we need to minimize or eliminate the danger. If technology is not the source of the problems and concerns that are frequently attributed to it, then we need to find another cause for the social and psychological pressures faced by our society, so we can address these problems. Ever since the advent of the Industrial Revolution, people have voiced complaints about the harmful effects of technology. Therefore, we need to examine what Martin Heidegger, a twentieth-century German philosopher, called "The Question Concerning Technology." In his introduction to Heidegger's speech entitled "The Question Concerning Technology," editor David Krell stated that on this question "hinges nothing less than the survival of the species man and the planet earth."
Martin Heidegger was one of the individuals who examined this question most carefully. However, groups such as the Freedom Club (or FC), of which the Unabomber is a member, have brought it to our attention most forcefully. Since Dr. Theodore Kaczynski has recently agreed to accept responsibility for the Unabomber crimes, this is also a particularly appropriate time to examine these problems.
FC alleges that the Industrial Revolution has brought about much psychological devastation and environmental destruction, while Heidegger warns against the possibility that man may be enslaved by technology. Not only ivory-tower intellectuals and maladjusted hermits spend time considering the problems posed by technology, however. Diverse popular fiction writers such as Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, and Walter M. Miller Jr. have also considered them. In his own way, each of these authors addresses the problems that technology poses our society. Entire genres of popular music with revealing names, such as "Industrial" and "Techno" have also arisen in recent decades. For example, "Industrial" music frequently deals with existential anguish, alienation, and meaninglessness of life as important themes. Some "Industrial" bands, such as Nine Inch Nails, have even produced multi-platinum albums and won important popular music awards.
These factors indicate that problem of technology pervades our society and culture, whether consciously or subconsciously. And yet, in order to consider the problems posed by technology, it is necessary to discover the nature of the problem. While examining arguments against modern technology, I have encountered two main strands of thought concerning its dangers.
Perhaps one of the best critiques of the modern technological-industrial system can be found in FC's document Industrial Society and Its Future, more commonly known as the "Unabomber Manifesto." Because this text has had such a wide-ranging impact on our society, I will examine it first. Although there are many discrepancies with the argument presented in the Manifesto, the concerns expressed within it are valid. For the sake of discussion, I will focus mainly on the issues presented in the Manifesto and the solution proposed therein, rather than on the argument itself.
In brief, FC's argument is that the present technological-industrial system functions to deprive individuals who live within it of their freedom, or autonomy, to influence their own destinies. Furthermore, according to FC, the technological-industrial system enables, encourages, and requires those select few individuals who do have power over others to deprive those others of their decision-making ability. Meanwhile, the system inevitably moves toward an ever-increasing degree of control over the lives of individuals, and cannot be reformed to prevent or correct this. To borrow a phrase from John Stuart Mill, the present social system "enslaves the souls" of individuals living under its authority. FC, therefore, advocates that the technological-industrial system should be overthrown so that it will no longer deprive those individuals of their ability to destine their futures. The technological-industrial system is to be demolished by destroying technology, technological knowledge, and the means of production required for a technological-industrial society.
Essentially, one of the greatest problems with FC's argument is the fact that every society has circumscribed the freedom of individuals to a greater or lesser degree. Historically, this interference has resulted from government intervention, religious intolerance, or simple disapproval from other members of society. In the words of Mill, this societal disapproval occurs when society issues "any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle."
Government intervention and religious interference are usually the more dangerous to liberty itself. A government has the ability to execute an individual for such vaguely defined crimes as "sedition" or for a false charge of, for instance, murder. Historically, many churches have executed individuals for crimes such as "heresy." These actions certainly circumscribe the freedom that an individual has to influence his or her own destiny: many who have not conformed have been killed.
On the other hand, "society" rarely executes individuals. There are exceptions, such as lynch mobs, but a government poses a greater physical danger to an individual than "society" does.
The central question, then, is whether or not FC provides an answer to the problem posed by the technological-industrial complex when the complex deprives individuals of the ability to make meaningful decisions.
The answer is that it certainly does not. One important consideration is the method that FC advocates for the overthrow of the present technological-industrial system. FC claims that those who wish to overthrow the present social system should intentionally deceive others to involve them in the movement. Given the fact that FC's false information may prevent people from making well-informed decisions about their lives, which is the problem that FC wishes to address, this idea is patently absurd.
This advocacy of intentional dissemination of false information occurs in several places throughout the Manifesto. Perhaps the most glaring example occurs in the paragraph that states that it may be beneficial to create an earth-centered religion to further the destruction of the technological-industrial system. (Manifesto 184) However, obscuring the truth through the spread of false propaganda for social purposes is one of the central crimes of which FC accuses the present technological-industrial system of committing.
FC also advocates emotionally motivating individuals to rebel against the technological-industrial system, rather than presenting them with the truth as seen by FC and allowing each individual to make an autonomous choice for him or herself. This occurs in section of the Manifesto entitled "Strategy." For instance, the author states:
On a second level, the ideology should be propagated in a simplified form that will enable the unthinking majority to see the conflict of technology vs. nature in unambiguous terms. (Manifesto, sec. 188)
Although FC encourages this only for "the unthinking majority," since they want to preserve a "core of intellectual respectability," they still champion the deception of individuals. (Manifesto sec. 187-188) At the very least, they advocate that those who wish a certain social system to be dominant should deprive other individuals of information, even though it may help them to achieve their freedom to affect their own futures. According to FC, this is also a central crime committed by the present technological-industrial system.
The most important issue here, however, is that FC has failed to adequately consider the fact that the Industrial Revolution has had not only negative, but also positive, effects on society. However, before we examine the benefits of the Industrial Revolution, I intend to discuss Heidegger's analysis of the problems of technology. Heidegger's analysis is similar in some ways, but approaches these problems from a different angle and perhaps achieves a deeper level of understanding. Heidegger's examination of these problems, possibly the best explanation of the promises and dangers inherent in modern technology, appeared in a speech he gave to the Bremen club in 1949. He entitled this speech "the Enframing." This speech was later expanded and retitled "The Question Concerning Technology" when he presented it to the Bavarian Academy of Arts in 1950.
In summary, Heidegger states that technology recreates the essence of humanity and that it encourages us to think of all things in the world as standing by, ready for our consumption. While he discourses on how this affects the environment itself, he also discusses how this affects our perception of the natural world. Heidegger gives the example of the development of our perception of the Rhine river, in which the poet Hölderlin saw a stunning display of natural beauty, and which we now see as a resource which is standing by, waiting to be dammed and used to produce electricity. Heidegger points out that, although society still sees the Rhine as beautiful, it no longer sees beauty as the essence of the Rhine. In Heidegger's words, the beauty of the Rhine is now seen in "no other way than as an object on call for inspection by a tour group ordered there by the vacation industry." (Heidegger 297)
Essentially, Heidegger states that not only is technology a means to an end, but that the means and the end reflect upon each other and interact in a complex way; we create technology, but technology also creates us. He calls this process "the Enframing," and it is one of the ways for the inmost nature of things to reveal themselves. And for Heidegger, the central danger of technology is that not only will we grow to perceive ourselves in the same way that we now perceive all other resources -- as things which stand by, waiting to be needed -- but that this scientific-technological way of looking at things, or Enframing, will prohibit us from viewing these things in any other way. Heidegger states that eventually, we may be to technology what technology has caused the natural world to be to us: a group of resources that are consumable and waiting to be consumed. Technology may eventually deny us the ability to reveal our inmost selves and to become what we are capable of becoming. We may lose the ability to destine our own futures and to affect our own destinies.
At this point it is important to note that the problems presented by FC in Industrial Society and Its Future and by Heidegger in "The Question Concerning Technology" are not really completely different from each other. They are different aspects of the same problem, and either problem can be explained in terms of the language in which the other problem is presented, although to do so is to lose some of the specificity of the individual presentation. The "enslavement of soul" which FC describes as occurring through loss of freedom and psychological manipulation may be explained in terms of Enframing. Conversely, the Enframing may be explained in terms of the loss of autonomy that FC describes. Both problems, rather than being separate, are reflections of each other. I will examine Heidegger's solution because his understanding of the problem is richer and deeper than that of FC, and because I judge his solution to be better using several criteria. It seems to be more practical, more probable, and would allow us to rid ourselves of many of the problems associated with technology while allowing us to retain many of its benefits.
Heidegger's solution to this Question Concerning Technology is a "more primally granted revealing [than technology itself] that could bring the saving power into its first shining-forth in the midst of the danger." In other words, Heidegger suggests fine art, the "bringing-forth of the true into the beautiful," as his solution to the problem inherent in technology. (Heidegger 315)
For Heidegger, art is capable of saving us because art, in a broad sense, originates from the same source as technology, which Enframes us. The word "art" can mean many things, and one of these definitions, according to my dictionary, is "a system of principles and methods employed in the performance of a set of activities." Technology is, in this sense, an art form.
It might be argued that technology, as an application of a system of principles, is not an art in the same sense as, for instance, literature or painting. Technology falls under definition 6a in my dictionary, while literature and painting are encompassed by definitions 2a and 2c. It is clear, or at least it seems to be clear, that the two are different.
However, for Heidegger, no definition of a word ever exists separately from any other definition of that word. Nor can a word ever exist completely separated from its origin and history. So, to Heidegger, technology is another form of art springing from needs in the human consciousness similar to the needs from which poetry and music spring. Moreover, both technology and fine arts are inherent in the word "art" -- they are both different elements of the same thing.
For Heidegger, it is true that the growth of technological dominance over humanity includes the growth of technology's essence, which is the Enframing. However, as technology and fine arts are both elements of "art," the growth of the Enframing (which is the essence of technology) also entails the growth of that which is capable of saving us from Enframing: the fine arts.
The fact that this "saving power," as Heidegger calls it, undergoes a hand-in-hand growth with the spread of technological dominance does not itself guarantee that we will be saved from Enframing. It merely means that as the danger of Enframing -- the danger that we will come to see all things, ourselves included, from this scientific-technological standpoint -- grows greater, the potential of salvation from this danger also grows in the form of fine art.
The overriding question, then, is how the growth of Enframing allows us the possibility of salvation from Enframing in the form of the fine arts. At the center of this crucial question is how the "saving power" grows with the Enframing. To answer this question, it is important to remember that technology is not merely something that we use or something that we create -- it is also something that uses and creates us. To see technology simply as a tool is to miss not only the danger of Enframing, but also the possibility of salvation from the growth of that all-encompassing viewpoint.
Heidegger states that as the Enframing creates us in its own image during its growth process, it reveals certain aspects of our essence. There are many other processes of revealing that may occur, but the Enframing is unique because it does not merely grant an understanding of ourselves -- the Enframing challenges our essence to reveal itself. This is an important distinction, because when a revealing process challenges an essence to become known, the process of challenging determines which aspects of the essence are revealed. This is exactly why the Enframing is an Enframing. By the way we reveal ourselves -- using modern physics, an exact science which is intertwined with modern technology -- we reveal only those aspects of our essence which modern physics can reveal and arrive at the mistaken conclusion that only these aspects (and nothing else) are our entire essence.
However, as this challenging progresses, it forces us to become accustomed to revealing our inmost essences. As we become accustomed to revealing ourselves, we acquire the option of revealing ourselves in other ways than those that we have grown accustomed to through the process of Enframing.
One of the paths that we may take in our self-revealing process proceeds from the understanding and practice of the fine arts. Indeed, as the Enframing grows, the essence of art grows with it. The possibility of revealing ourselves through the fine arts grows greater as the dominance of the Enframing continues to overshadow the way that we understand ourselves. Heidegger states explicitly that as the Enframing grows, it shines a light on this path of fine arts that we may take to reveal ourselves.
Heidegger also notes that we may still miss this path of self-revealing which has the potential to save us from the Enframing. Indeed, from what Heidegger states at the end of his essay, it seems that we still may miss this path. The mere existence of a few practicing artists in a society is not enough. We must embrace the process of that which is artistic and poetic in the same way that the ancient Greeks did.
In ancient Greece, according to Heidegger, the fine arts were not simply examples of artistic matter, nor were the arts merely a "sector of cultural activity." Heidegger also states that art was not appreciated on an aesthetic level. (Heidegger 316) Rather, the arts were the essential cultural structure that revealed the essential natures of things.
Heidegger also points out that, in ancient Greece, the arts were simply referred to as techne. This single word encompassed all forms of art -- and it is the root of our word "technology." Remember that, for Heidegger, a word's meaning can never be separated from its origin and history. (At least in the case of technology as an art form, the dictionary confirms this in its definitions.) To repeat, then, technology is merely one type of what we refer to as "art" -- specifically, it is the form of art that reveals itself, and us, through the process of Enframing. We can escape this process of Enframing by embracing a view based upon other forms of art -- the fine arts, in this case.
As I mentioned before, FC's argument in the Unabomber Manifesto can be explained in terms of the process of Enframing. This is because the processes of psychological control which concern FC are similar to what Heidegger calls "the Enframing." And a consequence of Heidegger's Enframing is the loss of personal autonomy that FC describes throughout the Manifesto. Heidegger, however, has examined the question more deeply and carefully than FC has: the essential nature of technology has revealed itself to him, as a result of his questioning process. The Freedom Club, on the other hand, notes only its outward manifestations and explains these manifestations in simplistic terms. Therefore, the solution Heidegger proposes will work as well for the FC's problems as for his own.
All that remains, then, is to determine exactly how this embracing of fine arts as a cultural structure can save us from the process of Enframing. The answer, surprisingly enough, is quite simple. Fine art, as a human activity that is related to "technology," is a type of activity in which we can combat this Enframing enforced upon us by technology. By engaging in the creation of these fine arts, we can escape from a world-view that forces things to reveal their essences in certain ways. The fine arts are a way of seeing the essence of a thing in which this essence not only reveals itself, but "shines forth most purely"; that is, more fundamentally than any other way of revealing, technology included, can allow. (Heidegger 316)
The final question is why the fine arts allow the "purest shining-forth" of truth. Heidegger does not provide an explicit answer to this question, but he does give us several clues within his speech. The first is his claim that art is a "more primally granted revealing" than technology is. (Heidegger 315) The second is that technology, as its essence grows, also fosters the growth of the fine arts. Finally, Heidegger states that "a painstaking effort" to think more primally is "the sober readiness to be astounded." (Heidegger 303)
Although there are more clues throughout the speech, these are all the clues that we need. Now that we have traced the essential points of Heidegger's argument and wish to apply it, we have the final steps in front of us. The process of engaging in the fine arts, I may argue for Heidegger, is the method by which we return to a state in which the "essential mystery" (as he puts it) of things may be revealed to us in such a way that we are "amazed."
In a nutshell, the practice of fine arts returns us to a state of innocence -- they provide a structure which allows us to look out at the world and be amazed as the mysteries of things are revealed to us. This state of innocence is (I believe) a way of viewing reality and the way that it is unfolded to us, rather than a summation of what we have or have not experienced. By achieving this state, the view of reality now grows beyond the possibility of Enframing and includes other forms of revealing. Once this state of innocence is achieved, the creative process in which one engages when creating fine art will become the way in which truth is revealed. In Heidegger's words, it will do for us that which it did for the ancient Greeks: it will "illuminate the presence of the gods and the dialogue of divine and human destinings." (Heidegger 315-316)
However, even art, by itself, is not enough. We must also reflect upon -- and question -- the creative process and the fine arts themselves. Only by engaging in the creative process, by revealing the truth in the way that only fine art can reveal the truth, and by questioning this process and this art, can we escape the danger of Enframing and come to a new viewpoint which allows us to put technology in its proper place -- to engage in technological activity without being Enframed. These processes also allow us to escape from the dangers of psychological manipulation and loss of personal freedom against which FC warns. For Heidegger, this questioning process is the most important part of the artistic process. For, as Heidegger states, "questioning is the piety of thought." (Heidegger 317)
References
Heidegger, Martin. "The Question Concerning Technology" in Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings. Ed. David Krell. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. New York: Perennial, 1969.
Mill, John Stuart. "On Liberty" in Classics of Western Philosophy, ed. Steven M. Cahn. Indianapolis, 1995.
Miller, Walter M., Jr. A Canticle for Leibowitz. New York: Bantam, 1968.
Orwell, George. 1984. New York: Plume, 1983.
Unabomber. Industrial Society and Its Future. Online. Internet. 3 June 1998. Available http://www.thecourier.com/manifest.htm
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. Player Piano. New York: Dell, 1952.
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