Philosophy

Philosophy

Generally, is a reliance or confidence in technology as a benefactor of society. Taken to extreme, technicism is the belief that humanity will ultimately be able to control the entirety of existence using technology. In other words, human beings will someday be able to master all problems and possibly even control the future using technology. Some, such as connect these ideas to the abdication of religion as a higher,

Optimistic assumptions are made by proponents of ideologies such as and which view as generally having beneficial effects for the society and the human condition. In these ideologies, technological development is morally good. Some critics see these ideologies as examples of andand fear the notion of and which they support. Some have described as a techno-optimist.

On the somewhat skeptical side are certain philosophers like and, who believe that technological societies are inherently flawed. They suggest that the inevitable result of such a society is to become evermore technological at the cost of freedom and psychological health.

Many, such as the and prominent philosopher hold serious, although not entirely deterministic reservations, about technology (see). According to Heidegger scholars and Charles Spinosa, “Heidegger does not oppose technology. He hopes to reveal the essence of technology in a way that ‘in no way confines us to a stultified compulsion to push on blindly with technology or, what comes to the same thing, to rebel helplessly against it.’ Indeed, he promises that ‘when we once open ourselves expressly to the essence of technology, we find ourselves unexpectedly taken into a freeing claim. What this entails is a more complex relationship to technology than either techno-optimists or techno-pessimists tend to allow.

Some of the most poignant criticisms of technology are found in what are now considered to be dystopian literary classics, for example’s and other writings, , and. And, in by, Faust’s selling his soul to the devil in return for power over the physical world, is also often interpreted as a metaphor for the adoption of industrial technology. More recently, modern works of science fiction, such as those and , and films project highly ambivalent or cautionary attitudes toward technology’s impact on human society and identity.

The late cultural critic distinguished tool-using societies from technological societies and, finally, what he called “technopolies,” that is, societies that are dominated by the ideology of technological and scientific progress, to the exclusion or harm of other cultural practices, values and world views.

Darin Barney has written about technology’s impact on practices of and democratic culture, suggesting that technology can be construed as (1) an object of political debate, a means or medium of discussion, and (3) a setting for democratic deliberation and citizenship. As a setting for democratic culture, Barney suggests that technology tends to make questions, including the question of what a good life consists in, nearly impossible, because they already give an answer to the question: a good life is one that includes the use of more and more technology.has also about the dangers of new technology, such as and He warns that these technologies introduce unprecedented new challenges to human beings, including the possibility of the permanent alteration of our biological nature. These concerns are shared by other philosophers, scientists and public intellectuals who have written about similar issues ,

Another prominent critic of technology is , who has published books On the Internet and What Computers Still Can’t Do.

Another, more infamous anti-technological treatise is , written (aka The and printed in several major newspapers (and later books) as part of an effort to end his bombing campaign of the techno-industrial infrastructure.The notion of, however, was developed in the 20th century (e.g., see the work o f and o to describe situations where it was not desirable to use very new technologies or those that required access to some centralized or parts or skills imported from elsewhere. Themovement emerged in part due to this concern.