 On
Contemporary Philosophies of Technology
by
Frank H. W. Edler
Copyright
© 2000-2001 by Frank Edler
We
are on the threshhold of crossing human being with
technology in a way hitherto unimagined. Whether it is
using DNA coding as a biological microchip or the
invention of three-dimensional digitalization, we are on
the way towards that crossing, that is, translating human
being into digital being. We can't yet say, "Beam me
up, Scotty!" but three-dimensional digital
reconstruction of objects has been tested and patented by
Stanford University.
If
Carl Mitcham is right in his book Thinking
throughTechnology, we have, broadly
speaking, two approaches to the philosophy of technology:
the tradition in engineering and the tradition in the
humanities. This may be somewhat reductive on Mitcham's
part, but it offers us a good place to begin. I would add
the further complexity that philosophy itself is in
question and in the process of transformation. Given the
considerations of postmodernism, multiculturalism, and
feminist criticism, there is no consensus at present on
what the role of philosophy is. However, philosophy is
not the only discipline affected by these questions of
diversity, relativism, and truth; all other disciplines
are affected as well. Thus, Mitcham's two approaches to
the philosophy of technology has to be placed in the
context of the present crisis in epistemology.
Donna
Haraway's claim, "I'd rather
be a cyborg than a goddess" and
Sherry Turkle's essay title, "Cyborg
Babies and Cy-Dough-Plasm" are both
representative of the engineering tradition laced with a
good dose of postmodernism. Both assume the value of
technology and both accept the claims that the concept of
human being becomes fluid in the context of technology
and that the hallmark of this fluidity is the ability
" to hold incompatible things together." The
question is whether they are using the notion of differance
selectively in relation to human being. My sense is that
both start from the position of materialism and
materializing the context which tends to be
characteristic of the engineering position and then apply
the notion of differance selectively to human
being without applying it back to their own assumption of
materialism.
As
an aside here, I would add Heidegger's notion of the
mathematical project, begun by Galileo and Descartes, as
an avenue that needs to be explored more fully. Michael
Heim in his book The
Metaphysics of Virtual Reality discusses
both Heidegger and Leibnitz but does not investigate the
importance of this project as a necessary basis for the
information technology revolution. In his essay " From Essentialism
to Constructivism: Philosophy ofTechnology at the
Crossroads," Andrew Feenberg gives us a
critique of Heidegger, but he too provides no discussion
of the mathematical project. Actually, Feenberg's own
notion of recontextualizing technical objects with
ethical and aesthetic dimensions can be seen as a
continuation of the mathematical project in the social
dimension. The whole flow-charting of systems and systems
analysis which is so in vogue today is a direct
descendant of the mathematical project.
Systems
are changing at an incredible pace and woe to those who
do not have knowledge of the system. I was reminded of
that last night when I arrived in Washington. Instead of
landing at National, we were diverted to Dulles. I don't
know about you, but I'm here on a shoestring budget and
had about forty dollars in my pocket. I'm an old New
Yorker and figured that as long as I could get to the
subway, I could find my way around pretty well. After
using most of the forty dollars just to get to the
subway, I thought I was home-free.
I
walked down into the subway and found the booth closed.
In New York I'm used to buying tokens from a booth and
putting them into the machine to go through the
turnstile. "How do I get a token?" I thought to
myself. Luckily, an attendant entered the booth so I
asked him how to get a token. "Use the
machines," he pointed. I looked back at a whole wall
of fare machines. I took out the last ten-dollar bill I
had and put it into the machine. The small screen
presented two choices: "Pass" or
"Fare." Here I was at midnight with no money
left looking at this machine trying to figure out what
the difference is between a "Pass" and a
"Fare." At that moment with everything else
that had gone wrong that night, I felt I had truly
arrived at Kafka's castle! The first rule of translation
into digital being, it seems, is that you must translate
your praxis so as to conform to the flow of the system
which presumably is designed for efficiency as well as
for ease and convenience. For me in front of that
machine, it was none of the above.
I
recalled those voters in Florida who thought they were
free to vote and thought that ballots were designed not
only for efficiency but also for clarity to promote the
free exercise of choice. David Letterman last night sided
with those who thought it was each person's
responsibility to figure out the ballot. Of course it is
our responsibility to figure that out, but if I can't or
I'm confused about it, then the design of the ballot is
impeding my right to vote and clarification should be
given. If I can't read, does that mean I forfeit my right
to vote because I can't read the written ballot? I think
not. Some one should read the ballot to me.
The
instrumentalization of systems is coercive. Usually we
don't feel it as long as it's transparent. When it isn't,
it's like going down the stairs quickly and catching
yourself midstride about where your foot is supposed to
go next. When that happens, we usually trip. Of course,
the Constitution does not give me the right to go down
the stairs smoothly, but it does guarantee me the right
to vote. That right to vote puts a duty on others not to
impede my free exercise of that right. If there is a
conflict between the efficiency of the ballot and the
clarity of the ballot in terms of design, then efficiency
must give way to the priority of clarity. It is more
important to meet the criterion of clarity in the
exercise of the right to vote than the criterion of
efficiency in terms of counting.
My
right to vote is not dependent on whether I can satisfy
some minimum requirement of knowledge management. As
Langdon Winner says in his draft of a chapter on
resisting technoglobalism's assault on education:
The
promise of steady employment, advance up the ranks,
gradually rising wages,
adequate
benefits, and a reasonably secure life for oneself and
one's children --
all
of this is in jeopardy. What is emerging in its place is
a social contract founded
on
the premises of renewed Social Darwinism in which
everyone is defined as an
entrepreneur
who must struggle to get ahead in the dog-eat-dog world
of the
"free"
market. ("The
Handwriting on the Wall," 1)
Let's
be honest with ourselves: systems designed to promote the
survival of the fittest do not care one wit about
multiculturalism and diversity. Whatever happened to
Daddy Bush's kinder and gentler America? The emergence of
this lean-and-mean attitude should not come as a complete
surprise given the way people are beginning to be
characterized as components in software development, that
is, as "non-linear, first-order
components" of the system.
It may seem we have strayed from our topic, but we
haven't really. What I've been discussing has to do with
the other tradition mentioned earlier, the humanities
tradition in the philosophy of technology. This tradition
begins, as Mitcham says, with the attempt to define,
explore and investigate what it means to be human first
without immediately accepting the value of technology. It
starts, for example, with Walden , not Walden
II . I have to agree with Terry Winograd when he
argues that " technological designing is ontological
designing," (from the end of Feenberg's "From
Essentialism to Constructivism")
which brings us back to the crossing or translating of
human being with technology -- and education.
However
we cross over, the notion of place becomes extremely
important. This is precisely where the danger lies. The
economic and management conditions of education are
becoming more and more entrenched as the primary context
in which education should be defined. After all, in order
to remain competitive, education must become more
efficient, more productive, and more
"consumer-oriented." Education, then, is being
"leveraged" from one topos or place to another,
from one definitional site to another. In that shift, the
educational process may lose the very place that sustains
it. I'm not talking about the shift from "bricks and
mortar" to "silicon and fiber"; education
can take place in either one. The topos or site without
which education would no longer be education is the
openness of questioning for truth within a community of
learning. The traditional university tried to preserve
this openness by making itself a place apart. Although
the university may not always have served this function
well, I think we must recognize the fact that there
is no other institution whose main purpose is to preserve
and encourage the openness of questioning as such. Journalism
assumes it and publishes the results of practicing it,
but the main purpose of journalism is not to encourage
the openness of questioning.
It's
time we brought back the other Socrates, the one that was
thrown out with the Platonic one. This other Socrates is
not one who deserved the boot by feminism,
multiculturalism, and postmodernism. The Socrates I mean
is the one who is genuinely humble in his questioning,
the one who does not feign ignorance simply to snare his
opponents in some logical noose, the one who pursues the
necessity of questioning even if it doesn't result in a
universal concept, the one who listens to the arguments
of Diotima, learns from her, and concedes that she has
greater wisdom.
This is the rigor of questioning that must be maintained
in the crossing with technology or we will lose an
essential aspect of human being in that process of
translation.
Frank
Edler
Copyright © 2000-2001, Frank Edler
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