Attitudes towards Technology

I distinguish three basic attitudes towards technology:

1. The technolaters see technology as a wonderful thing, and have an almost religious devotion to it.For example, the Singularity Action Group:
   The mission of the Singularity Action Group is to promote a Singularity for the good of mankind through public education and direct action in the development of Singularity technologies. We believe that everyone can help make the Singularity a success. As our name implies, talk is good but action is better... he Singularity Action Group was formed to address the social transition of the Singularity. The Singularity will herald the beginning of a new age in which physical and mental perfection will be the norm along with unimaginable wealth and freedom. These benefits will accrue not just to the current privileged classes but to every human being.

   
   
2. The technophobes dislike technological progress and in some cases even advocate undoing technological civilization. For example, the Coalition against Civilization:
   
   
   We are a loose coalition of anarchists for the destruction of civilization and for the defense of wildness. We exist to help strengthen the strictly antiauthoritarian anarchist movement and work with all other like-minded organizations. We feel that society in general is in a crucial point where the overall disgust for daily life is reaching a new high point everyday. It would seem that antiauthoritarian would be all the more appealing to larger majorities, so the widening of our reach as anarchists requires more efforts to spread information and more ways to keep up on current debates as well as information regarding direct actions.
   
   
   
3. Finally, there are the technoneutralists who assert that technology is neither good nor bad, but becomes so depending on our use of it. This attitude is often expressed with the knife argument:
   
   
   Those who believe that technology is neutral argue that "guns don't kill people, people do", or that a knife can be used to "cook, kill, or cure."
   
   
   

I don't like any of these three positions:

• Technolaters strike me as bizarre, too narrowly focused on the direct effects of technology, e.g., "cars allow one to go from A to B faster", without considering the philosophical foundations of "why going faster is good", or the necessary conditions of technology (i.e., the whole system which has to exist in order to produce and maintain some technology), or its impact on the future (e.g., antibiotics save people now, but may lead to more virulent strains later on).

• Technophobes are often utopianists, who (a) have an idealized vision of the pre-technological past, or (b) have little feeling for all the suffering caused by the lack of certain technologies. The key questions here are "Why is natural equivalent to good?", and "Try living without technology for a week and see how you like it".

• Technoneutralism is the dominant position, and one is tempted to say the most prudent position, at least until some broad consensus is finally reached as to what technology actually is and what its effects, for good or ill, are. But, technoneutralism has two important problems: (i) it fails to acknowledge that while a technology may be used in various ways, it is often used overwhelmingly in one particular way. For example, I would wager that knives are used far more for cooking than they are for killing, while P2P systems are used most of the time to share bootleg MP3s/movies rather than for other types of files. Also, (ii) technoneutralism leads to a regulatory outlook, whereby the "good" things about technology (defined by intellectual or popular consent) are promoted, while the "bad" things are suppressed. This fails to take note though, that consent does not equal good, and that suppression does not mean extinction.
  

Technology is rapidly solidifying its position both in affecting more and more people worldwide, but also in affecting more aspects of their lives. At the same time, the anti-technology current has never ceased to exist, having been born even as the Industrial Revolution was getting off the ground. The main tension between the technolaters and technophobes will continue to exist, with most people continuing to take a technoneutralist position.

We must not believe though that this comfortable co-existence of the three tendencies will go on forever. Long-term prediction is difficult, but it is conceivable that many of the upcoming technologies will lead to a permanent splintering of mankind: the technolaters might get fed up with the regulatory outlook of the majority and decide to break off from social norms, creating an alternative society; the technophobes might get fed up with the same outlook that leads to a constant increase in technological dependence, breaking off from society in the opposite direction. And, most terrifying of all, an unanticipated event might shift the balance drastically to either of the two extremes, perhaps bringing about the Next Big Thing in the social evolution of our species, whatever that is.