An Introduction To A Critique Of Technology
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(transcript)
Hello, this is Audio Anarchy Radio, we’re starting off with
a series that introduces a few different concepts from anarchist perspectives.
And today we’re going to be talking about technology. The idea isn’t to give
you a line about what is right and what is wrong, but to explore some of the
aspects and critiques of technology that might not be regularly discussed. We
have Javier here, who is going to talk over some of the things that he has been
thinking about.
So, Javier, let me start by asking how you define
technology. “Well a dictionary definition of technology is the general term for
processes that which human beings fashion tools and machines to increase their
control and understanding of the material environment. The term comes from the
Greek words techne which refers to an
art or craft and lochia meaning an
area of study. So it means the study or science of crafting. For me I use it to
refer to all the tools and machines that humans use to shape, modify, or
understand their environment.”
And do you make a
distinction between certain types of technologies, or consider technology to be
socially neutral?
“Well I think each technology, each tool, or each machine should be considered separately. I think each individual technology has different social consequences, that I definitely don’t think they should be considered neutral for society. But I also don’t make too many distinctions or aggrupation’s in like, oh good technology, bad technology or things like that. I just think that we should take into consideration each technology individually, notice what characteristics it has, and how it shapes the social institutions and deal with those questions. “
And what do you think some of the most prevalent popular or
interesting analyses of technology have been throughout history?
“yeah well, the one that comes to mind first of all is Marx. He uses the term `means of production` vaguely to what I would refer to as technology. And it’s a very central concern for him, however his analysis of the way in which technology affects social institutions is limited to who controls the technologies, or the means of production. And he does a class analysis based on this where the bourgeoisie control the technology or means of production then you have a class society. If the Proletariat controls the means of productions there will be a classless society. Stuff like that, I think that Marxists -most Marxists- follow this analysis, I also think a lot of other people do. Anarcho-syndicalists are very influenced by this kind of thought, but others have been a lot more sceptical about this kind of simplistic view of technology. There’s been for example the appropriate technology movement, and more drastically the anarcho-primitivists, definitely think that there’s a lot more to technologies than just who controls it.”
And what do you think
are popular perceptions or critiques of technology today?
“Ok, well I think today, some environmentalists do have
certain critiques of technology which is you know they question technologies
themselves and who controls it. Their critique or analysis is based purely on
environmental aspects and not social that much and those I think in general
today people take technology kind of for granted. And they refuse to question
it because they think it’s kind of like a natural thing for humans to have.
Theirs I think a couple of myths that really kind of inhibit our analysis of technology.
For example I would say the myth of progress is a very basic myth, well it
basically states that humans have never lived in a better situation than today.
And that throughout history continually progressing towards a better state,
things are pretty much getting better. It also demonstrates that progress is
inevitable and we can never go back because of where we try to do something
like that and we will eventually advance again, back to the way we are now.
This myth is really annoying to me because it kind of served the purpose of
justifying our current institutions and makes it kind of impossible to
criticise technology or a lot of other things that are considered progressive.
I can’t say there isn’t some truth to that, but whether progress has made
things better or not is just a matter of personal preference. I think of an
important thing to point out though is that humanity did not get to its present
state of technological or social development by a process of you know continual
progress. It was not a process of like consensus, democracy or any other kind
of libertarian philosophy or any you know practice that really respected
individual freedom. I mean a great amount of cultures were forced to accept
specific kinds of agriculture. You know through imperialism they were forced to
for example massively harvest coffee or other products for Europeans. And even
some cultures were forced to take on agriculture when they were
hunter-gatherers. Other than in the Industrial revolution people were taken off
their lands and in a lot of cases chained to machines in order to have the
industrial revolution really work. So these things that are usually seen as
advancements were not so much a product of human ingenuity but in a lot of ways
a product of tyranny and oppression. To say that humans naturally developed
industrialism and that we can never, that we would always inevitably develop it
again if we go back, if we abolish industrialism is to say that authoritarian
institutions are a part of our nature, I think.
Another myth that a lot of people take it as truth is that
progress and technological progress has a consequence that we have more
leisure. Most anthropologists agree that almost every society that has less
advanced technology has more leisure time. So even hunting and gathering
provides for more leisure time than farming. However its easy to see why some
people think that more or more advanced technology leads to more leisure. I
mean a superficial analysis would conclude that you know pushing a button is
easier than doing manual labour. The problem with this analysis is that it
doesn’t take two things into consideration; what goes into building the machine
that allows for you to just push the button so the machine does the work for
you. For example its less intensive, less labour intensive to drive a car than
to walk, but if you take into consideration the labour involved in
manufacturing the car from extracting the raw materials, extracting the oil for
it to run, to run the factories that build it, extracting the metals to build
the car, rubber to build the tires etc, you know that’s a lot more labour
intensive than just walking. The thing is that traditionally I think the
distribution of leisure and labour has you know favoured the ruling classes. It
hasn’t really been distributed equally. Some people have to do a lot of labour
and pretty much finance the leisure of the ruling class. That’s why some people
have to work really hard and don’t have any cars and some people just go to an
office building and have the most luxurious cars. So you know that way you can
see that it doesn’t provide for more leisure to have more technology, at least
not necessarily.”
And so, what are some
of your thoughts about technology and how it affects the environment today?
“Well definitely I
think this is perhaps the most, or these are the most obvious consequences and
people you know talk about it continually how cars pollute and stuff like that.
I think its useful however to try to find some general characteristics of technologies
that tend to intensify the environmental impact. I’ll try to mention a few that
I think are not as commonly discussed. One of them, one of these general
observations, I would say that technologies that are labour intensive are
usually more or have a bigger impact on the environment. This is because
changing the environment is something that requires labour, so the greater
impact usually is because there’s more labour involved and required to do it.
Also centralisation is something that generally increases environmental impact,
and this is because it concentrates the impact in a small area, making it
harder for natural mechanisms to repair the damage. I mean most
environmentalists are aware of this. The environment can modify itself to make
impact not as damaging if its done in a scattered way and not concentrated in
one place. Also technologies that require homogeneous persistent human activity
increases the impact because they make it harder for nature to slowly adapt, so
I mean for example assembly lines come to mind where you know what is done is
continually done it’s like massively done, and this doesn’t allow for the
environment to adapt to allow to small changes.
So, an important thing to notice about all these
implications is that these kinds of activities and technologies are almost
exclusively found in authoritarian societies. You know the observations that I
made that recognises that are labour intensive, centralised and homogenised
human activity. You know people when they are free from many authoritarian
institutions they tend to preform tasks that involve the least amount of labour
to achieve, they make decisions in a pretty sporadic manner, and decentralise
and also they like usually to engage in a variety of diverse activities.
There’s only one coherens where people engage in dangerous and unpleasant
labour intensive activities like mining, these activities are the ones that
have such a great environmental impact. So I think realising this, leads to a
very different approach to a problem of environmental destruction than the one
I think most people argue for right now. I think most people now argue for more
centralised control, you know the government regulating factories, regulating
emissions, you know more rules or you know everything that we do because we
can’t seem to manage ourselves without causing environmental problems. But this
analysis actually states kind of to the contrary; it states that humans when
free of authoritarian institutions produced the least amount of environmental impact.
So I think, I mean as an Anarchist I think this is the
analysis that you know that’s more useful, from my perspective. Yeah, another
useful thing to notice is that advanced technologies tend to have a high
environmental impact. What I mean by this is that when I use the term advanced
technology I mean that technology that depends on previous technologies to
function, so therefore its total impact becomes not only the impact that the
specific technology has but the added impact of all the technologies that are
required for the specific technology. You know like the examples are I think
pretty easy to see like you know electrical appliances need energy supply or
power supply and so the power supply has I mean you know like maybe a little
electrical appliance doesn’t have that much environmental impact but the whole
electrical infrastructure that is needed to power it does. And you know
different technologies like that, I think what this analysis leads to is that
it doesn’t make much sense to make more advanced technology that is supposedly
going to be more environmentally friendly.”
So, what are some of
your thoughts about the social implications about technology throughout history
and today?
“Okay, and this I think is something that is not usually
talked about, so I think its important to consider. Okay, so technology claims
to provide society with the tools to achieve its goals. Society however is not
like a monolithic entity formed of homogeneous individuals with identical
goals. Different individuals in society have different goals and the
technologies used will inevitably provide society with the tools to achieve the
goals of some and not all members. And it also, I mean also technologies not
spread like equally amongst all members of society. It will provide some
members of society something while maybe refusing something else to others. So,
taking this in mind that considers some of the implications of technology in
society. First of all, organisation, different technologies require for their
application different social settings, in terms of centralisation or spreading
social activity, technologies can have several implications. If a technology
requires for its use many individuals, social activity is centralised around
the technology. If the technology allows for only one or a small number of
individuals it promotes decentralisation. So centralisation implies that a form
of decision making where a single consensus has to be reached by the group, not
allowing for individuals to reach different decisions and be autonomous. In big
groups this phenomenon usually leads to representation or other forms of
mediation for the individual to make his or her decisions. So there are you
know an individuals ability to make their decision is taken further and further
away from them. To put an example, a factory can be well it can be owned by a
single boss that has authority over many individuals who work there, or it can
be cooperatively owned by the workers. In any case each individual will have to
adapt his or her schedule to the factories, they will have to preform the job
that the factory assigns and they will have to receive from their work what the
factory decides. They will have to produce what the factory decides when it
decides and how it decides. Obviously cooperative ownership offers the
individual worker more of a say in the decisions of the factory than the owner
model, but the individuals will never be able to reach a decision that’s
different from the one assigned by the factory. The individual is alienated
from the decision-making process, in the case of the capitalist process the
alienation is pretty complete, like you don’t have absolutely any input into
the decision making; in the case of the worker run factory this alienation is
mediated by a process that can be you know in different ways it can range from
consensus to some kind of representative democracy. Or you know the level of
let’s say authoritarianism that you can have is can vary, but autonomous
decision making is pretty impossible in the context of a factory. Whereas other
technologies allow for individuals to make their own decisions.
Okay another interesting aspect is the distribution of
technology. Proportionately to the energy and labour required for its
production technology becomes a scarcity. The more labour is used to produce a
machine the less the number of machines society can produce. In class societies
this usually implies that the members of the ruling class have access to the
technology and the others don’t. This causes a widening in the power gap
between the classes, the ruling classes are provided with more tools to control
their environment and society and the rest loses control in the same measure.
Another aspect is the shaping of human resources. It’s
obvious that technology has a profound impact on the educational system of a
society, you know whether the goal of the educational system is to modify the
individual so that he can better serve society. Or just to provide him and her
with the knowledge and skills needed to preform the social roles, to provide
for themselves, it would always take into consideration that society uses. If
the technology is very complex and complicated the educational process will be
long. If the technology requires monotonous centrally organised work, skills
like discipline and obedience will be encouraged in the educational process. A
point may be reached where the society needs for its survival to produce a
certain kind of individual, this will very likely tend to make its educational
institutions coercive rather than voluntary.
Another point is specialisation. Certain technologies demand
that the division of labour in society that tend to produce specialisations.
This means that certain individuals are required preform a socioeconomic role
and others are obliged to preform these tasks through this class of specialised
individuals. So individuals cannot perform or individuals that are not
specialists cannot preform these tasks by themselves. Our current society has
many examples; individuals need lawyers to legally defend themselves, cops to
physically protect themselves, media to be aware of things that influence our
lives, architects to build houses etc. It is important to know how
specialisation is not simply an individual having an extraordinary ability, it
is the assigning of an individual or individuals to perform a social role and
excluding others from performing it. To put an example of a specialist which is
I think a useful example and perhaps the oldest example is the priest. In
certain societies it is assumed that the only person or class of persons that
can communicate with the deities is a priest. Other individuals are forced to
perform only through the priests. In this way the class of priests effectively
control the spiritual aspect of the society, and often this is used to also
control other aspects like the moral standards and other taboos and customs of
the society. So that obviously has like enormous power of consequences on the
power relationships of the society. There’s different ways in which specialised
roles are imposed or assigned for some you know to perform certain things you
need a diploma, a certificate or some kind of authorisation from an appropriate
authority to perform it. Technology works in a different way to assign these roles
increasing in complexity, technologies become impossible to be wholly
understood by an individual and individuals have to specialise in a particular
aspect of the technology and depend on others to specialise in the rest and you
know when this happens everybody loses their autonomy and their ability to
perform jobs by themselves.
Another important consequence- social consequence of
technology is the creation of environments. Every technology as we have said
before is essentially a modification of the environment, from an environmental
point of view the implications you know have obvious consequences, but its also
very relevant from a social point of view. Some relevant questions are you know
who gets to modify the environment for others or whose environment do they
modify? And how do these modifications impact the lives of the individuals who
live there? To me the issue of empowering versus disempowering environments is
noteworthy. Certain environments provide each individual with the means for his
or her subsistence in a quite egalitarian way. If each individual is able to
access the resources they need to survive in an autonomous way then this is an
empowering environment. But other environments do quite the opposite, for
example modern urban environments pretty much eliminate all of the resources
from our environment and the ability to access the resources that we need to
survive is pretty much denied. So you know the modern urban environment pretty
much puts the resources in the hands of the few people and then all the rest of
the people has to acquire these resources through monetary exchanges. The
individual is forced to participate in socioeconomic and political institutions
set before her to be able to have access to the resources needed to survive.
With the impossibility of directly accessing resources one has to acquire money
which is the modern socially imposed means to access resources in order to
survive. And then those who control the money; have most of it, effectively
control both resources and the individuals who want access to those resources.
In Ivanovitch’s words “modernised poverty deprives those affected by it of
their freedom and power to act autonomously, to live creatively. It confines
them to a survival through being plugged into market relations, the opportunity
to experience political and social satisfaction outside the market is thus
destroyed. I am poor for instance, when the use value of my feet is lost
because I live in Los Angeles or live in the 35th floor .”
Mediation and autonomy. Direct action is a commonly used
word in radical circles, it is usually considered an anarchist value. The
reasoning goes that if to achieve our goals we must go through others then
we’re not in direct control of our lives, we’re not in direct control of the
consequences of our actions. And so mediated action is the opposite of direct
action, autonomy increases as mediation decreases. Technology is always a
medium through which we interact with our environment, a medium through which
we accomplish our goals and access our resources. So the same reasoning applies
here, to increase autonomy we must decrease mediation. This is especially true
when technology also implies a social mediation, when the technologies we use
and the technology we need to preform
our activities are controlled by others. Then our actions are not only mediated
by material objects but they’re also mediated by social institutions, which we
might not like and which in effect can become quite controlling of our actions.
So as a conclusion I would say that the implications of
technology has, goes well beyond its stated purposes. By this I mean that you
know like if a technology says that it will just transport people like cars for
example, well yes the consequences are that it transports cars but also that we
need streets, that it also implies that not everybody’s going to have access to
cars because they are very labour intensive and so therefore a class of people
can own cars will exist and one that doesn’t have access to cars is etc. an
important thing to note is that all the implications that I found are inherent
in the technology itself and do not depend on who controls or uses the
technology. Only by being aware of all the implications the technologies have
will we be able to make those decisions that will help us to achieve the
society we desire".
That’s it for todays
introduction to a critique of technology. Check out Audio Anarchy on the web
audioanarchy.org
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