As
we use information technologies, “we develop the cognitive skills best
suited for them and neglect those capacities that are less well
matched,” Kanner writes. “We mold ourselves to the machine.” Credit:
Creative Commons/Keoni Cabral.
Human beings are destined to mold the Earth. Gifted with exquisite
hands, passionate imaginations, and boundless curiosity about how things
work, we need to tinker, prod, poke, and build. It is in our genes, and
our souls, to engage so completely with our physical surroundings that
we alter them, just as the abundant fertility of the planet could not
help but produce us. Indeed, our propensity to construct and redo may be
a flamboyant expression of the generativity of our evolving world,
which in its four-and-a-half-billion-year history has never ceased to
cast itself anew.
To be against technology is to deny a crucial part of human nature.
Today, however, it has become extremely difficult to fully appreciate or
ponder our ability to make things. Instead, we are caught in a
tragically flawed philosophy called “technological progress” that blinds
us to the numerous choices we have, the various ways open to us to
become both wise and creative technological beings. It is as if we had
decided that the only proper use of our legs is to run, and run as hard
as we can, at every possible moment.
At present, our modern machines are polluting the Earth, increasing
the pace and stress of daily life, and transforming our environment
faster than we can comprehend. We are experiencing one wave of future
shock after another and cannot seem to slow down long enough to figure
out why. We can only have faith that the next set of
advances—nanotechnology, bioengineering, virtual reality—will magically
save us.
As an ecopsychologist, I am interested in the personal relationships
we each have with the natural and built worlds and how these
relationships interact. Our many inventions and devices are not only
altering the face of the planet, but also radically changing our
connection to nature, to each other, and to ourselves. These are
profound changes worthy of our most serious attention.
Yet at present there is no “psychology of technology,” if by this we
mean a systematic examination of the myriad influences of each
innovation on our psyches, our relationships, our identities. This is a
curious state of affairs, especially since psychology has turned its
magnifying glass onto so many other aspects of our lives. But my
profession is itself caught up in the sweep of technological progress
and assumes that each “advancement” is ultimately positive, inevitable,
or both.
An alternative view, and one that ushers in the full psychological
complexity of technology, conceives of our capacity to mold the Earth as
engaging in a two-way relationship. As we enter into this relationship,
we will be transformed. In this act of transformation, certain
questions emerge. What happens to us, and the world, when we do not try
to build it up as fast as possible? What happens when we do? Is there
such a thing as technological walking, skipping, strolling, and
meandering, as well as running, and how do our experience and treatment
of our selves and surroundings differ in each of these modes?
In this article, I will offer a relational theory of technology, one
that begins to recognize fully the mutual influence of humans and their
inventions. The implications of such a theory will be examined for two
areas, one that already exists and is well established (health
psychology), and one that—surprisingly enough given its import—is only
in its infancy: the psychology of information technology. We will also
see that honoring the mutual influence between humans and their
creations involves far more than the necessary move to sustainable or
appropriate technology. It requires a shift from technological progress
to technological wisdom.
The Illusion of Neutrality
Physics, ecology, and the various religious and wisdom traditions of
the world all tell us that we are interdependent, that we inhabit a web
of existence in which our actions ripple out in multiple directions,
only to reverberate back to us over time as complex configurations that
can never be fully anticipated. To deny these interconnections is both
the utmost arrogance and the sheerest folly, as denial leads to
delusions of full autonomy and total control, which in turn result in
violence and suffering. According to ecofeminists, deep ecologists, and
others, our ignorance of interdependence is the spiritual and
psychological root of the current planetary ecological trauma.
Although it is in the nature of things to be embedded in complex
relationships, we do not treat the things we make from nature as if that
were true. Instead we say that our devices, machines, and products are
“neutral,” meaning that only their use by us determines their impact and
value. This claim describes a one-way relationship of complete human
control over technology. Our inventions simply lay there, inert,
passive, innocent, exerting no intrinsic pull or push of their own. They
have somehow escaped the web of interconnection in which everything
influences everything.
On one level, this makes perfect sense. Who wants a tool that bites
back or heads off in unwanted directions? The ideal technology is a
total slave. To the extent that it is not, that it fails to translate
human will into reality, or breaks down, or demands undue maintenance,
it is flawed.
The assumed neutrality of technology accounts for why, until quite
recently, so little research has been done on the psychology of
technology, despite the staggering influence of modern inventions. With
no intrinsic influence of its own, the built world is assumed simply to
reflect human psychology. It provides an elaborate stage for our
personal and social dramas. But the stage itself remains a passive
backdrop.
The neutrality of technology is essential to the ideal of
technological progress. This ideal can be understood as a utopian vision
in which humanity attains paradise by controlling nature through
technology (see Carolyn Merchant,
The Death of Nature). For
this vision to be complete, nature has to be neutralized, it has to be
rendered powerless and fully manipulable. Nature must also be ethically
neutral, having no inherent rights or worth of its own so that humans
can do what they will with the land yet remain morally upright.
For the vision of progress to hold true, technology must similarly be
neutral. If it is not, if our machines change us in ways we cannot
fully anticipate or control, then paradise cannot be constructed.
Technology will keep pulling us in directions we did not intend or
desire. And certainly technology must be ethically neutral, having no
intrinsic pull of its own that moves us in directions we consider either
morally desirable or repugnant.
The question of neutrality can be subtle, for technology generates
temptation, and temptation is a form of influence. Even when we choose,
say, to turn off our cell phone most of us still have to cope with the
urge to check for messages. To resist the temptation is to interact with
the intrinsic pull of the device. That is why in the gun control debate
it is incorrect to assert that guns kill people and equally misleading
to claim that people kill people. It is people with guns who kill
people. The transaction of the individual and the weapon is at the
center of this lethal process—and the gun is far from neutral.
In today’s society, exceptions to the assumption of neutrality do
exist, particularly when the inherent disadvantages are obvious and
severe. This is the case when the FDA determines that a drug’s “side
effects” are unacceptable. For many, the intrinsic dangers of nuclear
power and genetically modified organisms justify a ban. And for reasons
not clear to me, since the disadvantages are often not lethal or
extremely harmful, architecture is also an area where the inherent pull
of the built world is readily recognized.
Thus, throughout history our dwellings have been constructed with an
eye to how they move us emotionally, spiritually, and aesthetically, a
set of requirements that go far beyond sheer practicality. The Taj Mahal
provides a compelling example. Although cultural forces and personal
differences may mold individual reactions to the marble mausoleum, it is
still true that millions of people from all walks of life and from all
corners of the globe respond with awe and appreciation to the
spectacular edifice. Are we prepared to say that the building’s inherent
properties do not contribute to this nearly universal resonance?
Critiques of Technological Neutrality
The belief in technological neutrality has, of course, been
challenged elsewhere, often on a social and political basis. Although my
focus here is primarily psychological, these critiques are worth
briefly reviewing, for they provide a sense of the scope of the illusion
of neutrality.
In
Hand’s End, philosopher David Rothenberg draws our attention to how technology pulls for the creation of yet more technology:
A tool realizes a human inventor’s intention and the
realization of this technique suggests new intention. Those who use the
tool begin with their own intentions, and the more they accept the
technology, the more their desires are changed. The technique alters its
user’s grasp on the world.
Technology, notes Rothenberg, pleases us and, in so doing, seduces us
down its own path. It begets more of itself through us. First the
phone, then the car, then the car phone, and our concepts of
communication, privacy, and travel are fundamentally altered. Rothenberg
concludes:
The tool solves a problem, and then creates new and
thornier issues not dreamable before. Technology, unlike science, does
not even claim to reveal larger truths about what exists, but hints at
more ways for humanity to change the world.
Moreover, no technology is born in a vacuum. There is always a
context—social, political, economic, cultural—and it is naive to believe
that the tool can be wholly extracted from its origins and applied to
an unrelated situation without significantly altering that context. In
In the Absence of the Sacred, Jerry Mander uses nuclear energy to illustrate this point:
Because it is so expensive and so dangerous, nuclear
energy must be under the direct control of centralized financial,
governmental, and military institutions. A nuclear power plant is not
something that a few neighbors can get together and build … so if some
future society, tiring of the present path, should determine to move
away from a centralized technological society and toward, say, an
agrarian society, it would be impossible. The technological elite would
need to remain, if only to deal with the various wastes left behind. So
it is fair to say that nuclear power inherently steers society toward
greater political and financial centralization, and greater
militarization.
But society’s controlling institutions do not wish to advertise the
fact that so many technologies—cars, CAT scans, computers—require large
institutions and centralized power to produce and maintain them.
Instead, the public emphasis is always on the advantages that the latest
product will confer on the individual. Mander writes:
The idea that technology is neutral is itself not
neutral, since it blinds us to the ultimate direction in which we are
heading and directly serves the promoters of the centralized
technological pathway.
Technologies change the worlds into which they are introduced.
Reality is transformed as each new wave of innovation takes hold. Neil
Postman, in
Technopoly, explains:
New technologies compete with old ones—for time, for
attention, for money, for prestige, but mostly for dominance of the
world-view. This competition is implicit once we acknowledge that a
medium contains an ideological bias. And it is a fierce competition, as
only ideological competitions can be. It is not merely a matter of tool
against tool-the alphabet attacking ideographic writing, the printing
press attacking the illuminated manuscript, the photograph attacking the
art of painting, television attacking the printed word. When media make
war against each other, it is a case of world-views in collision.
This collision in worldviews is dramatically illustrated when
television is introduced into a culture previously untouched by it. In
Ancient Futures,
Helena Norberg-Hodge describes how this process unfolds in a Buddhist
village in Ladakh, a sparsely populated region of India. The
transformation begins almost at once. Irrespective of the content of the
TV shows, the medium is inherently hypnotic. Family gatherings at
night, a time when elders traditionally pass along wisdom and knowledge
in the form of myths and stories, are suddenly far less interactive.
People’s gaze is fixed on the TV rather than each other. Moreover, the
stories told on the screen have an intrinsic quality that differs from
the ambiance created by the live spoken word, the crackle of a nearby
fire, the well-known gestures of an elder. Remoteness creeps in, as does
an emphasis on vision and sound over touch, smell, and the immediacy of
place. These changes would ensue even if the traditional cultures were
to produce the TV shows for, irrespective of a show’s content, the very
act of watching TV powerfully alters the viewer’s experience. In this
way, television homogenizes experience. It alters any context into which
it is introduced to become more like the urban-industrial context from
which it arose.
In fact, technology has so altered the modern context that there is
now a general belief that only through technological progress will we
solve humanity’s most profound and pressing problems. Postman calls a
culture steeped in such a utopian vision a “technopoly”:
Technopoly is a state of culture. It is also a state of
mind. It consists in the deification of technology, which means that the
culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions
in technology, and takes its orders from technology. This requires the
development of a new kind of social order, and of necessity leads to the
rapid dissolution of much that is associated with traditional beliefs.
Those who feel most comfortable in Technopoly are those who are
convinced that technological progress is humanity’s supreme achievement
and the instrument by which our most profound dilemmas may be solved.
The patterns being described here are pervasive and deep. Rothenberg
alerts us to technology begetting technology, pulling its builders ever
more deeply into an artificial world, mesmerizing society with its inner
logic and workings. Mander brings attention to the centralization of
power inherent in modern technology, a tendency that is denied by those
who most benefit from it and instead touted as the empowerment of the
individual. Postman sees new technologies reshaping worldviews, until a
worldview emerges that deifies technology. This is not neutrality.
Stress-Inducing Technology
Neutrality has a long, honored history within psychology. Freud and
his followers saw the therapist as a blank slate, an unbiased
professional who could serve as a mirror to the projections, wishes,
fears, and hopes of the patient. The analyst was to remove her or his
own desires, impulses, and neurotic conflicts from the therapy
relationship, remaining an objective observer, unaffected by the
patient’s love, hate, or indifference.
"Engaging
with the machines renders us impatient with the old ways," Kanner
writes. "Slower rhythms are abandoned and devalued." Credit: Creative
Commons/Clyde Bentley.
Just as with the idea of clinical neutrality, technological
neutrality is an expression of the rational, objective, scientific ideal
that dominates modern society. Moreover, it arises almost any time
psychology addresses the built world. I would like to illustrate this by
considering two areas in particular. The first is health psychology,
which for the last several decades has been one of psychology’s fastest
growing fields. The other is our relationship to the Internet, the most
popular and influential of modern inventions. In both instances, we come
to vastly different conclusions depending on whether we assume
neutrality or explore the sway of our creations over us.
I do not own a cell phone. For many years I held out on using email
until it became nearly impossible to function without it. Each time I
opt out of participating in the newest phase of technological progress I
have to take time with colleagues and friends to determine the best way
to communicate without using the latest devices. Annoying as these
negotiations sometimes are, they’ve been worth it, for the pace of my
life has been slower than if I owned these recent inventions.
Which is my point. New communication technology, precisely because it
is more efficient, exerts a pressure on its user to do more in a
shorter period of time. In our business and personal lives, we rapidly
gear up for each new communications device, as it cycles from novelty to
luxury to convenience to necessity, until its efficiency becomes our
own. A major, inherent pull of information technology is that our lives
speed up.
Each time we communicate more efficiently, the temptation to do so
grows. Each time we transmit information in seconds rather than days,
the convenience, competitive advantage, and sense of control we gain
invite us to do so again. Engaging with the machines renders us
impatient with the old ways. Slower rhythms are abandoned and devalued.
Having to wait becomes a sign of inferiority, a type of humiliation. As
soon as speed becomes an advantage, not having it becomes a
disadvantage.
These observations bring up a fascinating question: Could we design
communication devices that encourage a variety of paces, ones more
consistent with our biorhythms and those of the natural world, to which
we are genetically attuned? Would such a world be emotionally and
physically healthier?
In my graduate years, I was involved in creating the Daily Hassles
Scale. The most frequent hassles reported were “too many
responsibilities” and “not enough time,” attesting to what we referred
to as “the stress of modern life.” Yet in our many discussions of this
phenomenon we never mentioned the machines that lay humming away behind
the scenes. We were well ensconced in the illusion of neutrality,
believing people were choosing to use their new, efficient gadgets in
service of a competitive, high-pressured lifestyle. They could opt to
use the inventions in a more leisurely manner, or less frequently, but
it was all a matter of choice. The technology, we assumed, permitted the
stress of modern life but did not encourage it.
For many years I worked as a psychotherapist in Silicon Valley, the
high-tech center of the world. Many of my clients were so busy that we
constantly struggled to maintain a once-a-week meeting schedule. They
put in twelve-to-fourteen-hour days in a chronic mode of semi-crisis,
attempting to meet one deadline after another. Exhilarating and
cutting-edge as their work was, it was also apparent to them that they
were paying a steep price in terms of their relationships, health, and
peace of mind.
Ironically, even as their lives sped up, my clients were designing
and acquiring the latest “time-saving” devices. Jet lagged, they yearned
for faster airplanes. Up all night and early in the morning to catch
the Japanese and European business days at their inception, they touted
the virtues of global communication. Devoted to technology, they
continually discounted their own experience with it.
In a nutshell, information technology
causes stress. When
people text, instant message, and email, they are subject to a powerful
pressure emanating from the equipment to be more efficient, to become
more like the machine. Smart phones, iPads, and Facebook all contribute
to a Type A environment that takes active effort and awareness to
resist. Electronic communication is as much a reason for the deadly pace
of our lives as it is a result of it.
By moving health psychology beyond the illusion of neutrality, the
focus of the field shifts radically to include a careful scrutiny of the
psychological environment created by modern technology. New questions
appear. Perhaps the rise in cancer, heart disease, and other such
illnesses of our times cannot be reversed until we engage less with
stress-inducing technology. Perhaps we need to re-evaluate the movement
in medicine toward sophisticated diagnostic apparatus and procedures
that remove doctors even further from their patients. Perhaps a very
challenging question needs to be asked: Given the accelerating stress of
our current lives, are these machines worth it?
(Inter)Net Losses
Computers in particular and information technology in general are the
most potent symbols of technological progress. In them are invested the
dreams and hopes of the future. Many consider them the greatest
manifestations to date of human intelligence and technological skill.
For these reasons we are particularly attached to our screens and
readily deride or dismiss their critics. Bolstered by an enormous media
onslaught of support, information technology is nearly sacred.
Further, most of us have nary a clue as to how iPods, cell phones,
and digital cameras work. We certainly cannot build or repair them.
Instead, purchasing the latest devices allows us to identify with and in
some way participate in each impressive wave of technological
creativity. Possession makes us feel powerful and hip. Ownership has a
potent symbolic value that extends far beyond the actual features, say,
of the newest smartphone, no matter how many apps we download.
In this section, I wish to speak about the downside of information
technology, especially on the psychological level, but even more about
the emotional blocks we have against looking at them skeptically. Many
of the claimed advantages have concomitant disadvantages, but rarely do
we line up the benefits and the drawbacks, the net gains and losses, and
seriously examine the whole enterprise.
One of the challenges of a relational approach to technology is
becoming skilled at identifying the myriad inherent influences of each
innovation. The same device or product can pull us in quite different,
even opposite, directions. Hiking boots may invite us to enter the
woods, at the same time luring us away from toughening the soles of our
feet so we can enjoy walking barefoot in the dirt. Indeed, each
technology exerts a unique set of influences on us, both desirable and
undesirable. That is why it is never enough to examine only the
advantages of a given innovation, no matter how appealing they may be.
Yet such a one-sided approach is typical of our analysis of
information technology. This technology is supposed to grant us
unprecedented power, to unleash untold creativity, to bring us all
closer. With so much at stake, an unflinching look at these inventions
seems prudent.
On the psychological level, information technology fosters the
replacement of face-to-face contact with electronically mediated
interactions. The enormity of this shift, which at times can be quite
subtle, and which potentially alters our very concept of relationship,
has not been adequately addressed.
Electronic communication is beginning to be experienced by many as an
acceptable substitute for the physical presence of other people and for
immediate engagement with one’s human and natural community. In
education, we see this happening when no formal distinction is made
between time spent learning on the computer and time spent learning from
a human instructor. The warmth, personal understanding, and love of
knowledge conveyed by a good classroom teacher are treated as
interchangeable with on-line programmed lessons. Spontaneous discussions
among a relatively small number of students are considered
pedagogically identical to emailed questions to on-screen experts who
live in different parts of the country or world and lecture to many
thousands of students at once.
Educators appear to be quickly abandoning the notion that
any
personal relationship is necessary to learning, or learning how to
think well, or learning how to apply knowledge in an ethical and
compassionate manner. This seems to be the implicit assumption of
supporters of MOOCs (massive open online courses), whether they see the
widespread adoption of such courses as the democratization of
academia—since they can be made cheaply available to large number of
students—or simply as a terrific business opportunity. The solution to
exorbitant higher education costs is not a technological fix that tears
apart the very fabric of the teacher-student relationship and which
itself is highly susceptible to commercial exploitation. The solution is
to make higher education free, as we have done so successfully with
kindergarten through high school.
One way to make the virtual world an acceptable substitute for the
rest of reality is to romanticize the abilities of computers, which we
do through the language we use to describe them. A number of authors
have noted that computers do not think or have intuitions. Yet we refer
to them routinely as smart or in terms of artificial intelligence.
Similarly, computers are not relational—they do not bond, love, or hate.
But we describe them as “interactive,” a word with strong relational
connotations. Through our language, we reduce ourselves and elevate
them.
People do develop some forms of meaningful relationships over the
Internet. But these are quite distinct from the full-bodied ties that
develop in functional families and communities. Computers numb us to the
differences between virtual and real life, between cyberspace and a
real place with trees and fungus and ancestors in the ground. In our
adoration of these machines, and encouraged by all the media hype, we
shut down the parts of ourselves sensitive to these differences.
As we use computers, it is easy to forget that they do not truly
think or have creative intuitions. Instead, they calculate, perform
logical operations, and follow certain algorithms or mathematical rules.
In using them, we develop the cognitive skills best suited for those
activities and neglect those capacities that are less well matched. We
mold ourselves to the machine.
In a similar fashion, texting, e-mail and other forms of electronic
communication are extraordinarily narrow. We cannot touch, smell, or
directly sense the presence of others. No physical context exists beyond
a lit screen. With texting, instant messaging, and other keyboard-based
communication, the slower pace of exchange means spontaneity is more
difficult than with the spoken word. Thus, we need to take all the
splendid ways we have of connecting and cram them into these relatively
barren procedures. Moreover, the more time we are immersed in an
electronic medium, the easier it is to forget its limitations and
instead come to believe that we are fully present. This confusion of the
virtual and the real is one of the inherent qualities of information
technology. As we become more interactive, we become less relational.
Technology-Tethered Teens
New forms of communication technology, of course, are particularly
attractive to teenagers, for they fulfill the adolescent dream of
instant access to their friends without adult supervision. Yet, as
Sherry Turkle documents in her book
Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other,
adolescents are now reporting serious drawbacks to the heavy use of
texting, instant messaging, Facebook, and the like. In Turkle’s
interviews, teens describe feeling a constant pressure to respond
quickly to any message, to always be “on.” They can’t ignore a text or
message without risking upsetting their friends, who expect prompt
replies. Turkel describes these young people as being “tethered.”
Tethered teenagers report having very little privacy. Many have
gotten into the habit of instantly reporting any significant event or
feeling to their peers. As a result, they fail to develop the capacity
to be comfortably alone and to form a strong, independent sense of self
from which to connect with others.
Although online communication appears spontaneous, in fact
adolescents carefully craft the image they present to the world. They
devote much time and energy to tweaking their messages in order to put
their best face forward. Turkle acknowledges that conflicts around
self-presentation are not new to teenagers but “what is new is living
them out in public, sharing every mistake and false step.”
The availability of instant communication encourages continuous
stimulation, even multi-tasking. This is another one of information
technology’s inherent pulls. Teenagers now routinely augment homework
with Facebook, online shopping and games, blogging, and a host of other
similar activities. Yet, research indicates that multi-taskers don’t
perform as well on any of their individual tasks as “single-taskers” do.
In fact, the evidence indicates that multi-tasking actually interferes
with learning.
Yet another problem is the constant deluge of information within
which young people operate. Any message they send has to compete with
many other sources of stimulation, which means it could easily get lost
in the electronic shuffle.
Meanwhile, what are their parents doing? The same thing. Teenagers
now complain about parental unavailability even when adults are
physically present, since their parents spend large amounts of time
texting or phoning. Ironically, adolescents also bemoan the loss of
independence they experience because their parents can text or phone
them any time, any place.
Some members of the current generation, Turkle notes,
live more than half their waking hours in virtual places.
But they also talk wistfully about letters, face-to-face meetings, and
the privacy of the pay phone. Tethered selves, they try to conjure a
future different from the one they see coming by building on a past they
never knew. In it, they have time alone, with nature, with each other,
and with their families.
We could argue that these recent developments are simply a matter of teenagers
choosing
to use the Internet in unhealthy ways. As adults, we need to guide them
(somehow) to a more reasonable approach. But the seductiveness of
instant communication is a major feature of every electronic device
under consideration here. Each is designed specifically to make
immediate access as easy as possible. It should come as no surprise that
the temptation to exploit this quality is a powerful inherent pull of
the technology.
Adults, of course, are also struggling with many of the pitfalls
outlined above. Neuroscientists are just beginning to address how
attention, memory, and learning suffer when our digitally
over-stimulated brains don’t have time to rest and recharge. In a
New York Times
article titled “Out of Door and Out of Reach, Studying the Brain,” Matt
Richtel quotes psychologist David Strayer, professor of cognitive
psychology at the University of Utah, as describing attention as the
brain’s “holy grail,” noting, “Everything that you’re conscious of,
everything that you let in, everything that you remember and forget,
depends on it.” Too much digital stimulation, he suggests, fatigues the
brain, which in turn can “take people who would be functioning O.K. and
put them in a range where they’re not psychologically healthy.” The
technology that has come to symbolize the peak of human intelligence
could be dumbing us down.
Internet Activism Revisited
One way to remain in denial about the drawbacks of new technologies
is to create a long list of the benefits and then cloak these advantages
in utopian garb. This was done with radio and television, which were
initially hyped as inventions that would bring the world together in
harmony and peace. Now this starry-eyed promise has been transferred to
information technology.
A recent example of such idealization is the use of social media and
cell phones in the Egyptian uprising of 2011. The role of information
technology in organizing the rebellion is seen be many, as the
New York Times
article “Spring Awakening: How An Egyptian Revolution Began on
Facebook” described it, as the beginning of a “borderless movement that
is set to continually disrupt powerful institutions, be they corporate
enterprises or political regimes.”
Before crowning the Internet the grand tool of liberation, however,
we need to account for the fact that computers pull for centralized
power, increasing far more the influence of governments, the military,
and transnational corporations than they cumulatively benefit
individuals and small groups. Three questions are particularly relevant
here. First, how much has the Egyptian government used the Internet to
organize and implement decades of oppression? Second, how much has the
Internet been used globally by governments and corporations to further
oppressive policies, a question of particular relevance given recent
revelations of pervasive U.S./corporate spying on citizens around the
world. Third, do we truly believe that governments won’t “catch up” to
techniques used in the Arab Spring and in the future shut down such
efforts?
I anticipate that the answers to these questions will show that the
Internet centralizes power more than it topples it. It may be necessary
to use social media and cell phones to have a fighting chance against
large institutions that employ the same technology on a far more massive
scale, but that does not justify the glorification of these forms
communication.
Resistance
There is a fierce resistance in many of us to considering even the
possibility that information technology could do more harm than good.
This resistance is a major concern of a relational theory of technology.
As I have been suggesting, the cultural taboo against challenging
technological progress cuts us off from our own experience. Instead of
tolerating and exploring any discomfort we encounter with a new
invention, we are far more likely to tell ourselves to adapt. When we
automatically dismiss our doubts as old-fashioned we fail to distinguish
between legitimate reactions to the harmful effects of technology and
anxiety that arises simply because something is new and unfamiliar.
When I first wrote the precursor to this article in 1998, a friend of
mine had recently brought her computer home after losing a job. The
heightened activity level that it generated ruined the peaceful ambience
of her small house. Her response, however, was to feel there was
something wrong with her for reacting as she did. Back then, even the U.
S. Senate balked at introducing laptop computers into its chambers. The
senators feared that the sounds of clicking machines and the enticement
of instantly available data would distract members from attending to
live speeches and participating in ongoing debates. According to a
San Francisco Chronicle
article in September 1997, they also believed that the presence of
computers would compromise the distinguished atmosphere of the
proceedings. In 2013, such concerns seem quaint.
Such reactions to new technology, I suspect, are far more common than
we realize, although we quickly banish them from consciousness. My
friend and the senators were experiencing a healthy aversion to the
intrusiveness of information technology, although we have come to
experience its interference with the flow of life as normal. More
generally, such negative responses are an important part of our capacity
to evaluate technology.
When the Internet was first built, our society was capable of
anticipating all of the problems outlined above—and a technologically
wise society certainly would have done so. Based on such an analysis we
might have modified the Internet before introducing it (while retaining
the benefits as much as possible), limited its use once it was
introduced, and monitored from the start its harmful effects. We might
have decided against introducing the Internet at all.
Further, in making such decisions a peculiar quality of inventions
needs to be taken into account. Once the increased convenience, power,
and control of a new technology are directly experienced, and society
has reorganizes itself accordingly, it is exceedingly difficult to
reverse course. The “genie out of the bottle” factor is one more reason
to proceed cautiously.
A Multitude of Technological Pathways
One of the key assumptions of technological progress is that
advancement is linear. This simplistic model provides three choices:
move forward, stand still, or regress, perhaps back to the Stone Age.
The possibility that many technological pathways exist, each leading to a
unique set of sophisticated inventions, does not enter the equation.
The linear model also excludes the impact of culture, history, economic
forces, and the like in determining which technological pathway a
society follows.
Let us escape these confines for a moment by imagining we’re back in
the 1940s when modern computer technology was first emerging, but living
in a society far less ruled by the mind-body split than ours. In this
incarnation we value emotions (body) as highly as cognitions (mind). As a
result, the first modern machines designed to imitate human
intelligence are built to both feel and think, however primitively. Call
them “emputers,” since they emote and compute. Emputers are built to
include chemical processes as well as electronic transmissions, thereby
more closely paralleling the evolution of the brain than computers. They
are programmed for basic pleasure and pain (like/dislike) reactions as
well as “on” and “off” decisions. Over the next seven decades they take
their world in a strikingly different direction than purely logical
computers have taken ours.
What direction might this be? Here’s a very partial answer. In 2013,
computers can defeat chess masters but cannot produce a single piece of
good, let alone great, music, art, or literature. As is well known, high
quality art reflects and expresses our deepest passions, fears, joys,
and turmoil. Since emputers have feelings, they can begin to approximate
these experiences more effectively than computers, which are left out
in the cold of strict logic. Of the two types of machines, emputers
could very well be the more creative.
But back to the present-day world, where the Internet is ubiquitous
and, in the short term, nearly unavoidable. For many, not using it would
be professional or financial suicide. Under such circumstances we can
cultivate a kind of technological mindfulness and stay aware of the
drastic impact that information technology is having on us collectively
and individually. I have seen such awareness among many environmental
activists in regard to cars. Those who own automobiles use them
sparingly, buy used ones that they keep in good repair, and take public
transportation whenever feasible. They are also comfortable with the
idea that the personal car may eventually be relinquished, as cities are
redesigned, people live close to work, and so on. They certainly don’t
idolize the car as the technology of liberation. A similar approach to
computers seems appropriate.
The Hands of the Spirit
Jeannette Armstrong is co-founder and director of the En’owkin School
of International Writing, the first accredited Canadian writing school
operated solely by and for Aboriginal people. In “Keepers of the Earth”
in
Ecopsychology, she shares the technological wisdom of her people, the Okanagan:
We are tiny and unknowledgeable in our individual selves,
it is the whole-Earth part of us that contains immense knowledge. Over
the generations of human life, we have come to discern small parts of
that knowledge, and humans house this internally. The way we act in our
human capacity has significant effect on the Earth because it is said
that we are the hands of the spirit, in that we can fashion Earth pieces
with that knowledge and therefore transform the Earth. It is our most
powerful potential, and so we are told that we are responsible for the
Earth. We are keepers of the Earth because we are Earth. We are old
Earth.
This passage, as I have come to understand it, contains the essence
of technological wisdom. Foremost, it speaks about the greater purpose
of technology, providing a vision in which humanity, through its
inventions, joins the Earth as the planet remolds itself. But our
species participates in this mysterious unfolding in a particular
manner. It seeks guidance from its world as to how to proceed. It acts
as the hands of the spirit. (For those of a more atheistic bent, we
could say our species acts from an ethical obligation to live in harmony
with the planet, which requires continually attending to technology’s
impact on nature to know if we are behaving honorably.)
According to Armstrong, our role in the planetary scheme of things
has been revealed to us slowly. Over the generations, we have come to
discern small parts of the greater picture. This knowledge has been
acquired not just through thought, observations, logic, and
experimentation—although we have learned much that way—but by listening
to the “whole-Earth part of us.” In modern psychological parlance, we
might speak of opening to intuition, the collective or ecological
unconscious, or the transpersonal realm. Our technological potential is
unfulfilled, and unfulfillable, when it is divorced from the spirit of
the Earth.
Thus, the value of any technology is only partially determined by the
security, comfort, and convenience it confers. We need also to know if
it draws us closer to the land, to each other, and to the cosmos. These
relational, political, and spiritual/ethical dimensions are always
present in our inventions and are part of their inherent pull.
A significant part of this dialogue is the immediate quality of
experience we have as we interact with our machines. Such exchanges
cannot always be pleasant, of course, but each technology has its own
look, feel, and smell, and otherwise engages our senses. It also affects
our awareness of our bodies and physical surroundings—compare riding a
bicycle to driving a car.
Another part of the dialogue is the pace of innovation itself, which
includes the amount of time necessary to evaluate a new invention. In
the case of life-altering technologies, it may take decades or even
generations of observation and small-scale experimentation before we are
prepared to move forward. Our species adapts quickly to change in some
ways but more slowly in others. We can change our mind in an instant and
acclimate to new conditions, even difficult ones, in a matter of months
or a few years. However, the effects of other shifts, such as dietary
ones, may not show up for decades while the full ramifications of
cultural transformations, such as the scientific revolution, may not be
evident for centuries. Our decisions regarding new technologies need to
account for their short-term and long-term impact.
At present, much that we manufacture is, in a word, junk. As consumer
society transforms into a technologically wise one, far fewer things
will be made, allowing those items that remain to be of much higher
quality and to be produced under considerably more favorable
circumstances than the modern factory affords. People who work with
wood, metal, or stone will know the local forests, caves, and mountains
from which their materials come.
To move in this direction will require considerable technological
creativity, integrating the old with the new, retaining all that we
still value of the modern after we have come to understand far better
how it molds us. This is not going back to Paleolithic modes of
existence, but it is drawing on the well-established technological
principles
of indigenous cultures. Many of these cultures have invented
successfully for thousands of years without demolishing their habitats.
Why Deal With This Now?
The
philosophy of "technological progress" has made it increasingly
difficult to engage in a nuanced debate about what sort of relationship
with technology would make our lives richer. Credit:
Creative
Commons/Scott McLeod.
When the opportunity arose to revise this fifteen-year-old article, I
had to ask myself if it was worth the effort. Aren’t there more
pressing issues than our relationship to our inventions?
As I see it, the monumental changes many envision as necessary to
address the ecological crisis cannot be accomplished unless we attend to
the ubiquitous influence of our machines. Let’s say, for instance, that
we build a set of interlocking local economies capable of meeting most
of our material needs through local production, and augmented by
regional, national, and international services as needed. Within such an
overarching structure, will we continue the current practice of making
new, improved inventions to replace the old at an ever-accelerating
rate? Even if our population plummets to 1 billion, or 500 million, do
we replace our computers, cell phones, and other devices every year with
better ones?
More broadly, it is entirely possible that much of modern technology
moves us toward centralized power, alienation from our body, and a
preference for virtual reality over physical reality. If this is the
case, we dare not ignore such powerful roadblocks to a sound ecological
existence.
Our species is at a technological crux, a moment when it needs to
examine its ability to create as never before. Collectively, we are
having a manic-depressive reaction to our inventions. On the one hand,
we can but marvel with giddy anticipation as scientific and technical
wizards spin out one stunning innovation after another. On the other, we
are horrified with disbelief as we witness these same innovations
destroying complex life on the planet. Obviously, we need to find a more
even keel, an internal equilibrium in which we can fully absorb all the
wonders and dangers of each invention and then decide, with full use of
our rational faculties, if the gains are worth the losses. This would
be the beginning of technological wisdom.
(This is a substantially revised and updated version of an article that first appeared in Revision
, 20 (4), Spring 1998, pp. 45-53.)
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