Technology and

the Good Life

Rona Mae Oquindo
Is there good life in technology?
Can we use technology in the pursuit of a good life, or are we doomed to having our
lives organized and our priorities set by the demands of machines and systems? How can
philosophy help us to make technology a servant rather than a master?
PHILOSOPHICAL VIEWS
The Rise of the Interface

In today’s affluent technological societies most of us spend much of the day interacting with interfaces
that present a range of flexible functionality. Computers, cars, phones all present us with a simply user interface
behind which is hidden a myriad of complex operational elements, a separation that has received attention
from philosophers of technology (Borgmann 2000; Verbeek 2005; Ihde 1999).

Modern mobile phones demonstrate probably the most rapid evolution in design. What is particularly
impressive about some of these modern interfaces is their functional flexibility. While riding on the train, the
IPhone presents the user with a wealth of handy applications from email and remote login to my desktop
computer, to news, weather and travel reports, to decibel monitors, spirit levels and so on. Rather than join the
queue the traveller can opt to buy a train ticket through a touch screen device. At home dinner is prepared on
an induction hob and microwave; in recent years the modern kitchen has been transformed into a veritable
technical console. Similarly the car presents the user with a console of functions which conceal the ‘engine’ of
the functionality ‘under the bonnet’.
 Modern devices are sufficiently complex that any relation that users are to have with them
must be kept strictly superficial. Ed Van Hinte observes that the modern device presents two
separate territories: the ‘skin’ or covering which the user is invited to look at and interact with, and
the interior which is accessible only to trained technicians.

In the modern age we are surrounded by devices that force us into the lowly status of the mere
‘user’. This process deskills us such that we can only consume the technological artifact rather than
engage with it. Robert Pirsig’s classic philosophical novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
shows that while modern technology can bring about a profound engagement with devices, its
general tendency is to leave human beings disengaged.

Technology systematically withdraws devices or their machinery from our competence and care
by making technological objects maintenance free, discardable, or forbiddingly intricate. When a
great number of motorcycle functions are regulated by microelectronic rather than mechanical
devices, the thoughtful inspection and tuning of the cycle beside a shady curbstone will have become
a thing of the past. (Borgmann 1984, p. 161)
Borgmann: Availability and Disengagement
For Borgmann it seems that the very increase in availability through technological means is an
essential aspect of the consumptive attitude that leads to disengagement. The capacity of technology to give
us what we desire is limited only by the range of desire itself, which, it turns out, is a real problem. The
attainment of human desires through modern technology does not bring about human enrichment because
desire fails to aim at the enriched good life. Rather it tends towards sustained but meaningless
consumption. Borgmann supports this claim with evidence from social psychology that shows how much
time we spend consuming entertainment rather than engaged in enriching activities (1984, pp. 128-9).

Engagement is fundamentally oriented to the ‘good life’, which, although a contested concept, can be
broadly defined as entailing happiness rather than satisfaction, fulfillment rather than pleasure. However
the picture is made more complex if we concede that the more ultimate the goal, the less clearly defined it
is. We may believe, for example, that our happiness lies in something definite, such as a certain income, or a
particular house. But it is important to notice that often our happiness proves more elusive than this. This is
most obvious when we achieve what turns out to be a preliminary end such as some new technical device
or a great job. It is common to observe that our desire is not entirely satisfied by this particular outcome
and recedes to a more elusive object for its fulfillment. Should this subsequent desire, say for the latest
tablet computer, be fulfilled, then we soon discover that desire itself is not vanquished but redirected. This
indefinite regress of desire suggests that the most fundamental elements of the good life elude any sharp
definition or determination as we struggle to define what we really want. The problem here, then, is not the
technicalities of getting what we desire, but knowing what we desire.
 Contrast this to the imperative of technological society. Here we notice that technology makes a vast
range of commodities available to us. The more clearly we can define our desires, the more sharply
technological thinking can be applied to finding the best solution to fulfilling those desires. The imperative
towards ever greater availability turns out to rely upon the capacity to define the attributes of what is desired.
Borgmann considers the example of wine (Borgmann, 1984). Increasingly we seek wines that are consistently
grapey, light and smooth, while also being invulnerable to the vagaries of a particular year’s weather. This
leveling of flavor to consistently achievable attributes irons out the great and the awful, thus offering a scalable
recipe that maintains and increases leveled consumption. Furthermore, chemical analysis can be employed to
maintain this consistency rather than relying on tasters who might struggle to match the objectivity offered by
modern science and technology. The identification of chemical attributes seems to have supported a bland
consistency that the mass of consumers are happy with.

The drive to satisfy human desire is circumscribed by the attributes that define the being of the thing, and
so the wine that once gathered the fourfold becomes a device for commodious consumption.
 Noticing Borgmann’s tendency towards a technological essentialism (Hickman 2000, p.
93), commentators have been keen to criticize the one-sided nature of Borgmann’s analysis
first by the use of counter-examples (Verbeek 2005, pp. 188-195). For example, if we follow
Borgmann’s approach we would understand the car as a device that displaces us from our
local environment bringing with it an impoverished world engineered for drivers: out of
town shopping malls; distant commutes to work; poor public transport infrastructure. But
there are always two sides to such an analysis as Verbeek is keen to point out:
An automobile allows us to travel longer distances in shorter periods, and therefore
makes it possible to live at greater distance from work…Without the automobile, for
instance, our everyday social ties would be restricted to a much smaller geographical area.
(2005, p. 43)
Two Kinds of Engagement
Borgmann defines engagement in the following terms: the acquisition of skills, the
fidelity of a daily discipline, the broadening of sensibility, the profound interaction of human
beings, and the preservation and development of tradition. These traits we may bring
together under the heading of engagement. (1984, p. 214)

As examples of this kind of engagement Borgmann cites running, literature, the culture of the
table, and music. But it is hard to see how these examples of post-technological engagement relate
to the necessities that are entailed in the engagement of pre-technological action. Within the
context of pre-technological action, necessity could be characterized as the mother of
engagement. We were engaged because we needed to be, because the focal thing would not
function without this kind of relation. The father would chop the wood for the hearth on which the
mother would cook for the family. No one here is consciously engaged in focal things and practices,
rather the gathering of the hearth engages the family as a by-product of the relations established
therein. Surely this would disabuse us of the tendency to romanticize the efforts required to procure
the goods that constitute the good life, in this case warmth and cooked food.
 We would generally suppose that the millions of people who walk daily for clean water are
gathered to their wells not primarily by the desire for engagement, but by necessity. That something
socially meaningful is offered by these visits to the well is no doubt important. It is true that the
pre-technological technology of the well might not be viewed merely as the means to the end of
procuring water. The meetings and networks that are gathered by the well are part of the means-end
nexus that binds communities together. But in such cases the existential and instrumental meanings
are not distinct. Despite a certain lack of consistency concerning the nature of engagement,
Borgmann’s challenge to the radical separation of means and ends that characterizes contemporary
life is an important connection within these observations (1984, pp. 57-68). It may seem that the work
of the hearth was oriented to generating warmth, an attribute essentially reducible to a more
functional technology: the thermostat controlled central heating system. But it is not so simple. Many
of the aspects of the hearth (e.g. networks of social relations; gathering of wood) turn out not to be
mere means, but are part of a network of ends that support engaged social life (Higgs and Strong
2000, p. 29).
 Borgmann draws attention to the unintended effects of these focal
practices; that they gather a web of relations that are not reducible to ends
and means. The radical separation of means and ends, on the other hand,
brings with it the “unwitting disruption of fertile interdependencies.” Indeed
Borgmann’s project seems centrally concerned with addressing the way that
contemporary society has separated means and ends to the extent that things
exist only insofar as they offer mere ends that can be consumed (Higgs and
Strong 2000, p. 29). As far as possible, means are abolished and ends are
made available. Thus availability occurs but only within the limits of intentional
subjective desire.
 Borgmann is trying to say, is that the affirmation of technological life is equivalent to the
rejection of all things that make demands upon us, thereby precluding all activities that really
engage us.

Whatever is meant by the good life, the foregrounding of circumscribed functionality does not
seem to achieve more than a preliminary good and thus cannot seek beyond itself, an ultimate
destination beyond any circumscribed goods. The fundamental point is to show that what is ultimate is
not some derived, contingent concern, but something that animates those preliminary concerns. The
ultimate concern is itself the ground of those concerns which later are discovered to be preliminary; we
are beings that are concerned, even though the precise nature of that concern remains always already
only partially disclosed or dimly understood. Paul Tillich’s theological analysis of faith provides a
developed account of ultimate concern (2001) and though philosophers of technology may be hesitant
to draw from such explicitly theological thinking, Tillich’s influence on Borgmann cannot be ignored, nor
can the evident relevance of Tillich’s analysis for the question at hand. But before examining Tillich’s
significance directly, it will be worth considering in more detail the limitations of a purely pragmatic
philosophy of technology.
Hickman’s Pragmatic Approach
Larry Hickman’s pragmatic philosophy of technology argues that ends are contained within a
rational, definable and coherent structure. Ends may be complex but it is the function of human intelligence
to render “goals and ideals (what Borgmann calls ‘focal things’) testable in the same way that other technological
tools and artifacts are” (Hickman 1992, p. 342). Here Hickman is arguing that Borgmann’s attempt to locate
ultimate values outside the scope of the technological thinking of the device paradigm, denies the place of
human intelligence to discern an appropriate ground of action.

Hickman is uncomfortable with Borgmann’s attempt to place ultimate concerns beyond the scope of the
device paradigm because of the threat to human intelligence, and to human responsibility and freedom. If
ultimate concerns are somehow beyond the scope of human activity, then they seem to elude human agency
and seem rather more like a ‘given’, than something actively established. To avoid locating ultimate concern
beyond human agency, Hickman wants to maintain what he calls the ‘testability’ of ultimate concerns while
pragmatically ensuring that those concerns are not presented as final. The pragmatic non-finality of Hickman’s
approach allows him say that “What is of ultimate concern to the pragmatist may change over time as new ideas
and new ideals are generated” (2000, p. 101).
 Of course new ideas and ideals will come and go. This is precisely why
reifying the ultimate concern to something finite, to this or that concern
(democracy; environmentalism) is problematic. Of ultimate significance is that
we are concerned at all, in the sense that Heidegger once identified as worries
(1996, pp. 169ff), though for the most part that condition attaches itself to
those finite, preliminary concerns, despite the fact that those concerns point
beyond themselves to a source that remains on the horizon. The consistent
pragmatist should really deny the existence of an ultimate concern since the
concept of ultimacy would be empty of pragmatic content and though
Hickman does speak of various ultimate concerns (e.g. faith in democracy), his
anti-foundationalism (Hickman 2000, p. 100) demonstrates that he is not open
to an ontology of ultimacy that would legitimize his use of this discourse.
The Theological Dialectic of Ultimacy
God is, by definition, beyond definition. Yet this statement is either a flat contradiction
or a metaphor. The pattern of the theological utterance that falls silent, followed by denial
and then a deeper affirmation, is a spiritual dialectic with a distinct structural similarity to
the manner in which concerns present themselves: initially as legitimately ultimate, followed
by a dissolution and denial of that ultimacy, only to have desire redirected towards a deeper
object. I want to call this process the perpetual dialectic of concerns towards ultimacy. This
perpetual dialectic of ultimacy is fused in its mystical form where our knowledge of God and
our desire for God are indistinct: the paradox is expressed where St Augustine asks, “What,
then, do I love, in my loving God? Who is he that is above my soul?” (2001, p. 221) And the
unceasing, impossible, desire beyond desire is clearly illustrated in Augustine’s famous
restlessness: “our heart is restless till it finds its rest in you” (2001, p. 5). Paul Ricoeur also
strikes a similar note when considering the essentially theological nature of anthropology in
his book Fallible Man: “One might say that the infinitude of happiness descends into the
indefiniteness of restlessness” (1986, p. 130).17
 We maintain our preliminary concerns as if they were ultimate. And they
keep us in their grasp if we try to free ourselves from them. Every concern is
tyrannical and wants our whole heart and our whole mind and our whole
strength. Every concern tries to become our ultimate concern, our god. The
concern about our work often succeeds in becoming our god, as does the
concern about another human being, or about pleasure. The concern about
science has succeeded in becoming the god of a whole era in history, the
concern about money has become an even more important god, and the
concern about the nation the most important god of all. But these concerns
are finite, they conflict with each other, they burden our consciences because
we cannot do justice to all of them (2005, p. 157).
 As intellectual beings we do not measure up to this omnipotence of ours.
In other words: by way of our technology we have gotten ourselves into a
situation in which we can no longer conceive (vorstellen) what we can produce
(herstellen) and do (anstellen). What does this discrepancy between
conception (Vorstellung) and production (Herstellung) signify? It signifies that
in a new and terrible sense we ‘know no longer what we do’ (Nordmann, 2005)
This is not to negate our capability, agency or responsibility, but simply to
assume proper responsibility by giving thought to the context in which our
activities arise. Only by giving thought to such a context is it possible to gain
what Heidegger famously called a free relation to technology (1977, p. 3).
T0 AN ORDINARY PERSON…
“I personally believe that technology is a tool to build a good life. But, is technology always leads us to good life?

Technology leads us to a good life and the same time it doesn’t lead us to a good life either. It depends on how we define a
good life.

Technology can affect us if we misuse it. So, balance between technology and human labour is essential, technology never
should overpower humans.”
To a parent…
“We all have reason to like technology as well as dislike to technology. It depends on how we think
about it.

For example, if we ask a student, he will say that, technology is very good and very helpful.
Because it makes their education far easier. If you ask a parent, they will say, before their kids buy
phones, they used to sit and talk with them. But now they are busy exploring cities in GTA V.”
From a Google Software Engineer
“I personally believe that technology is just a tool, and people use that tool to build a good life. A car shortens your 10
hours long way to 20 minutes long way, and internet makes searching, learning and communicating much and damn much easier
than it used to be. Laundry machines in your house help your cleaning clothes a lot. I can’t imagine an single American locking
themselves in the bathroom and washing their clothes in the sink with their hands. No way, right!! All of them bring you
productivity, comfort and much easier way of living that is defined as a good life by some people. Personally, I would prefer the
presence of advanced techs as in our current life than not in many decades ago.

However, there are also some people that define a good life in different way such as living in mountains in harmony with
nature, and bhla bhla, and some people think that people are becoming extremely lazy and that laziness is causing many health
problems in society. As the coin has two sides, every single thing in the world has pros and cons.

So once again it entirely depends on your definition of a good life. And I believe that people at the moment is entirely
un-separable part of technologies, and no going back to non-existing technologies era. And accepting technologies as a way to
make your life good is also actually another way to make your life good.”
MOST SEARCH IN GOOGLE
Sources:
Borgmann, Albert. Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry. University of
Chicago Press, 1987.

Higgs, Light and Strong (2000) . Technology and The Good Life?.

Lewin, David. (2011). Technology and the good life: Suggestions for a theological turn in the philosophy of
technology. 15. 82-95.

Verbeek, P. 2005. What Things Do. University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press.

Lewin, D. 2010. “‘They know not what they do’: the Spiritual Meaning of Technological Progress” in
Journal of Contemporary Religion, 25 (3): 347-362.
END