“Technology” is the word of our era. We rarely read a newspaper, magazine or watch a newscast without being bombarded with the word. Future academics will probably refer to this period of earth’s development as the ‘Technologic Epoch.’ It will be identified by archaeologists as a thick band of plastic and other toxic waste clearly visible in the strata of the earth.
The philosophical controversy as to whether technology betters or worsens the human condition, intrigues me. There are any number of causes that favor a simple existence. Many of them are indicted, quite ignorantly, in the press as anti-technology.
It is not uncommon to hear the assertion that much of humanity is technophobic. Just because a culture embraces certain technologies and rejects others does not mean they prefer to live without technology.
The Amish come to mind. The height of modern technology, for them, is focused in the agrarian era. Despite their resistance to “English,” ways, their hand tools, buggies, and construction techniques are the acme of pre-industrial technology. They have even improved their technologies with modern materials. We outsiders ignorantly label them technophobes; they have simply embraced a level of technology that suits them, and might well enable them to survive the rest of us.
Then there is the fringe. Take the example of Theodore Kaczynsky, a.k.a. the “Unibomber.” He railed against industrialism, modern technology, and God knows who and what else. Yet he embraced the highly technological manual typewriter to write his manifesto. He also developed his own sophisticated technology for making improvised anti-personnel explosive devices. Technological serial homicide in defiance of technology. He was a psychopath camouflaged as a technophobe.
Most of humanity craves the luxuries technology provides. Safe, fresh food; clean water; shelter; health care and medicine; efficient transportation; and entertainment. What’s not to like? None the less, we go too far in our expectations and applications of technology. Two of humanity’s primary attributes are addiction and excess.
Mankind developed an appetite for technology with the stone age. We define rudimentary intelligence as the ability to identify problems and make tools to solve those problems. The fact that new technologies often manifest themselves as weapons has added an evolutionary imperative to the equation. Cultures who embrace cutting edge technologies often use them first to make weapons. Stone slings, bronze and iron swords eventually evolved into nuclear weapons.
A healthy skepticism of technology is a good thing. We have all come to learn that there is a lot of ‘bad science’ asserted to sell us stuff or beliefs. Pure research is almost a thing of the past, if it ever existed. Universities depend on grants to fund research. We are bombarded with conflicting research conclusions. The health benefits of caffeine and coffee are a case in point. The coffee drinking public has developed whiplash trying to keep up with the latest academic verdict as to whether coffee is harmful or not. The public is not stupid. We have learned to ascertain who funded the study.
Big Pharma invested billions in cholesterol reducing drugs. After they found drugs to do the trick, they funded studies that concluded previously established cholesterol levels were too high. What was a normal level for an adult in the 1980’s is now considered at risk of death or stroke if we do not medicate ourselves to levels unattainable without drugs.
What about the controversy over healthy food? Vitamins? Obesity? There are privately funded university studies that support damn near anything, as long as the money is there. How much money did the tobacco industry spend in the 20th century trying to convince us that smoking was not harmful?
Technology is not a deity, though we tend to regard it as such. It is a human endeavor and is subject to all of the fallibilities of human behavior. We should assess it with healthy level of skepticism as we embrace our personal computers, tablets, and smart phones.