“The Machine is Ambivalent” – on “inherent” qualit... http://librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com/2013/07...

LibrarianShipwreck
Libraries, Archives, Technology, Impending Doom

About these ads

“The Machine is Ambivalent” – on “inherent”

qualities in technology
The question “is technology inherently evil or is the question a matter of how it is exploited and
distorted in contemporary capitalism?” (quoted from Heathwood Press), is the type of conundrum that
has lead to a torrent of books, articles, and debates. Indeed the easiest answer is not “technology is
inherently good” or “technology is inherently evil” but to answer with another question: “how much
time do you have? We could be here all week.”

Nevertheless, even if it is difficult to briefly sketch out a total answer, there are still points to be raised
that may point towards one answer rather than another. The term “evil” certainly only makes the matter
a bit more complicated, and thus it is easier to instead ponder Heathwood’s question: “is technology
inherently coercive or is there still hope?”

Before this matter can be entered into it is important to first recognize that it may be fairly problematic to
even speak of “technology.” What is meant by “technology?” The hammer? The steam engine? The
computer? All of these? Some of these? Without delving into it further it is worth at least mentioning
Leo Marx’s important paper on the topic “Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept” an
article which charts the difficulty of readily defining “technology.” For there remains much difficulty in
placing the word “technology” next to the word “inherently,” or, as Leo Marx put it (italics his):

Yet it is irresponsible to sidestep the question merely on semantic grounds.

Technology does not naturally exist in the world. Humanity did not one day cross a stream and discover
the phonograph or the airplane just sitting there waiting for them. Thus thinking of “inherent” qualities
of technology is difficult, for technology has no qualities that were not imparted to it in the act of a given
technology’s creation. True most technologies are made up of many “naturally occurring elements”
(wood, stone, metal) yet it was in all cases human intervention that selected and incorporated these
natural elements into a new (non-naturally occurring) creation, and the historical process by which
humans picked certain elements over others further plays into the human choices that inform
technology.

Thus, if it is fair to claim (as I think it is), that technology (still a “hazardous concept”) is always created
1 of
by4humans than it 02/07/13 15:30
is the humans who invest (through the act of their creations) values into these
“The Machine is Ambivalent” – on “inherent” qualit... http://librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com/2013/07...
technologies. These are values that can be further broadened or mutated as they are made use of by a
society, and herein arises the matter of “coercive” versus “non-coercive” societies. There is a long history
of the dream of technologies that would free humans from labor and lead to a utopia of leisure and
plenty, and yet there is an equally vast history of these same devices winding up being used to increase
the leisure and plenty of the wealthy and powerful while entrenching the poverty and destitution of the
less powerful.

What emerges in the history of technologies (as written about by the likes of Lewis Mumford, Jacques
Ellul, Langdon Winner, Neil Postman, etc…) is a historical march in which the types of technologies that
transform society are those that reinforce the prevailing value system of that society. Values that may
include keeping the current power structure in place, breaking down the resistance of workers, and
transforming a populace into ready consumers of cheap machine made tchotchkes. Or, to return to the
original question of “is technology inherently coercive?“ A simple answer may be, in an inherently
coercive society, the technologies championed by that society will be inherently coercive.

This does not mean that a technology may not also be used for subversive purposes (you can use Google
to search for anti-capitalist books, or you can use it to look up celebrity gossip) but such “subversive”
purposes still make use of a technology that has a more coercive bias (technology’s accept certain kinds
of uses, and a user must conform their activities to the demands of a given technology). Technology as a
broad category (still a hazardous concept) cannot be easily tagged as “coercive” or “liberating,” even if
certain technologies may more clearly lean in one direction than another. Furthermore this is made more
difficult by the way that “coercive” and “liberating” dance with each other; the automobile, for example,
may liberate an individual to hop behind the wheel and simply drive off, but at the same time it
coercively binds them to a system of gas stations, tune ups, and the modes of production that designed
and brought that car to market where this person bought (or stole) the vehicle. Coercive? Liberating?
Look not at the technology but at the society that created and champions this technology.

As Lewis Mumford wrote (in Technics and Civilization [which may be a more optimistic reading of
technology than his later works]):

Yet this is not to claim that technology (or “the machine”) is neutral, but to show that the values found in
a given machine and its use are always those invested in it by the human society that creates and uses
the device. Are there certain technologies that have an authoritarian or coercive bias? Certainly, but this
is not about “technology” but about the desire of societies to use technology for authoritarian and
coercive purposes and to design and build more technologies that amplify these coercive and
authoritarian tendencies.

To return to the question again: “is technology inherently coercive or is there hope?” The answer is a
difficult one, and it suggests that a coercive society will make use of technologies that can be deployed
for coercive purposes thereby strengthening this coercive society. If there is hope (of which Walter
Benjamin said “it is only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us”) than it is not to be
found in some gadget brought to market in our coercive society (even “ethical technical alternatives”
like the Fairphone), but in the struggle to create a non-coercive society. And such a society will have
much to overcome in terms of the “coercive” biases that have been built into much modern technology.
2 of 4 02/07/13 15:30
“The Machine is Ambivalent” – on “inherent” qualit... http://librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com/2013/07...
Technology has no qualities except those that are invested in it by the society that creates and uses it
(which is not the same as “neutral”). “Inherently evil?” “Inherently coercive?” These are questions
answered by a given society, though history (longstanding and contemporary) provides plenty of
evidence that it is not only capitalism that can use technology for coercive and authoritarian purposes.
“Technology” is too broad a category to label all of it as “coercive” or “authoritarian,” what is needed is
to look honestly at technologies and see whether the balance of biases built into them tilt towards
coercion or, perhaps if we are romantic, in another direction.

Technology may not be “inherently coercive” or “inherently evil” but that is no reason to place any hope
in technology.

[NOTE - this brief {haha} piece was written to contribute to a discussion taking place in one of the
forums at Heathwood Press {a group doing excellent work to advance Critical Theory for the current
age}, the forum arose from a back-and-forth exchange on Twitter that revealed the poverty of that
service for lengthy debates]

Works Cited

Marx, Leo. “Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept.” Technology and Culture, volume 51,
Number 3, July 2010, pg. 561-577

Mumford, Lewis. Technics and Civilization. University of Chicago Press, 2010.

About TheLuddbrarian

"I won't explain myself because I hate common sense." librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com

@libshipwreck
View all posts by TheLuddbrarian →
3 of 4 02/07/13 15:30
“The Machine is Ambivalent” – on “inherent” qualit... http://librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com/2013/07...

One Comment on ““The Machine is Ambivalent” – on “inherent”

qualities in technology”

N Filbert
July 2, 2013

remarkable postings of late! Thanks for thinking through these things for/with us

Reply

This entry was posted on July 2, 2013 by TheLuddbrarian in Civil Liberties, Culture, Government,
History, Philosophy, Society, Technology, The Internet and tagged Heathwood Press, Lewis Mumford,
Wplongform.
http://wp.me/p38S12-da
Previous post
Blog at WordPress.com. The Suburbia Theme.

Follow

Follow “LibrarianShipwreck”

Powered by WordPress.com

4 of 4 02/07/13 15:30