3s Nature and Purposes of Technology and EthicsThe Problem of Technology and Liberal Democracy -ologism for the new age. che thing it names: indus- 6 PBiotechnology” is Byer and seta trial-scale processes and products offering power to alter and con- trol the phenomena of life—in plants, in animals and, increasingly, also in human beings. But while the word may be new, the idea of context and to consider more generally the problem of technology as a whole. Attempting an overview of the problem of technology is daunt- ing, For one thing, the topic is enormous: technology is everywhere, in a shifting variety of guises, from flush toilets to food processors, from automobiles to artificial organs, from cell phones to smart bombs. Second, given this vast heterogeneity, it seems foolish to try eral democracy, a hefty subject by itself. Third, there is the embar- rassment of apparent hypocrisy: how can a man who travels hither and yon by airplane and automobile, to deliver lectures produced Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity @ computer and laser printer, rendered legible and audible through and microphone, and no\ readable through the ting and publishing techniques, have the effrontery to technology as a problem? Finally, there is the matter ited competence; though I have worried for more than the meaning of biomedical technologies, I remain largely ignorant of other technologi ‘oblem of technology whole, , for the stakes are high, For sent decades, and hence we need all the more to try to understand i. Probably the most common view of “the problem of technol- gy” is something lke tis: technology isthe sum total of human tools and methods, devised by hus good and ill. There are, of course, dangers of abuse and misuse of technology, but these appear to be proble technology but of its human general. And, besides abuse of technology itself: the unin- tended and undesired consequences arising from its proper use. Thus, the problems of technology can be dealt with, on one side, by tech- nology assessment and careful regulation (to handle side effects and us to solve the problems technology creates without a its delightful fruits, ‘endeavor to show,The Problem of Tecmology and Liberal Democracy 22 Lif, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity able—through various “how-to” guides and manuals, (About the disposition to make—that is, why human beings want to make—I will speak shortly.) Following up these clues, one might think that technology is the sum of the products of craft and industry, and, even more, the sum of the know-how, skills and other devices for their production and use, But this is, at best, a partial view. Technology, especially mod- ‘em technology, occupies itself not only with the bringing-into-being ‘of machines and tools and other artifacts. [cis centrally involved in the hamessing of power and energy—thermal, hydroelectric, chem- atomic. The driling for oil, the damming of rivers, the What Is Technology? i i is, The term “We must begin by trying to understand what technology is. itself is singularly unhelpful; according to the Oxford ae Dic- ior it En; qh ‘meani dating back to the early sev~ tionary, eee ish meaning, eae ving, cutting canoes, making. rude weapons” (1864). i ‘The term has Greek roots: techne, meaning art, especially th ‘useful crafts rather than the fine arts, that is, ‘making rather late speech or compound fechnologos. As fa as I can tell, the closest chey came t0 any such notion was not an account about art—a logos of techne— ing upon, a challengiog forth janding of nature: that its concealed materials and energies be released and ordered as standing reserves, available and transformable for any multitude of purposes.’ Not the loom or the plow, but the oil storage tank or the stee! mill or the dynamo, is the emblem of jodern technology. Yer this, t00, does not go far enough. For tec derstanding the difference between th Greek polis and the modern nation-state by beginni thinking through the difference between technology understood as rhetoric and technology understood as rationalized art and industr)) Still art and speech are intimately related. Both are manifes- tations of human rationality, of the fact chat man is the is point largely har- essed by the art of healing, bur in the future usable also for genetic various techniques of psychotherapy to psychopharmacology. There are abundant techniques of mn, communication and enter- nization and engineering (for techniques of management (the ues of inspection and regulation; , learning and rearing, dating and ‘mating, birthing and dying, and even—God help us—of grief. In ‘modern times, as Jacques Ellul has persuasively argued, the techni it must be guided by mind, know-how, e and rational element that makes the various arts energetic. For him (as for Heidegger), technology is an entire of being in the world, a social phenomenon more than a merely‘The Problem of Technology and Liberal Democracy 33 ‘material one, characterized by the effort, through rational analysis aspects of our world toward efficiency, ease and control—to achieve the fullest control at the highest efficiency at the least possible cost and trouble.‘ Technology comprises organization and scheduling no less than machinery and fuel, concepts and methods no less than physical processes. In short, itis a way of thinking and believing and feeling, a way of standing in and toward the world, Techno! ‘ogy, in its full meaning, is the disposition rationally to order and predict and control everything feasible in order to master fortune and spontaneity, violence and wildness, and leave nothing to chance, all for human benefit. It is technology thus understood, as the dis- position to rational mastery, whose problem we hope to discover. ‘Whence comes such a disposition to mastery? What is the source of the technological attitude? Again, a question difficult to unravel. According to some, its deepest roots are somehow tied to human weakness: necessity is the mother of invention. Need lies behind the fishhook and the plow, fear of beasts and men the club and the barricade, and fear of death behind medici according to Hobbes, the fear of violent death that awakens human reason and the quest for mastery. Of course, too much fear can ener- vate, According to Aeschylus’s Prometheus, only when men ceased seeing doom before their eyes were they able, with his aid, to rise up from abject nothingness, poverty, terror’ In this view, the world’s inhospitality—not to say hdsilty—toward human needs and wants By other accounts, the primary root is not weakness but strength: pride rather than needy fear erects the technological atti- nothing but wounded pride—moved the primordial human beings to cover their nakedness, right from the moment of their rise to ‘painful self-consciousness.* Pride lies behind the technological proj- honor and glory, called mankind to the conquest relief of man’s estate, a project he regarded as the highest and most a Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity magnificent human possibility’ Ambition—the desire for wealth, power and honor—prompts many a man of science and industry. lly, the master does not seek mastery just to escape from the There are, of course, other possible roots than fear, need and : for example, laziness, beneath the desire for an easier way to ‘mow the lawn; boredom, beneath the desire for aew amusements; greed, beneath the desire simply for more and mores vanity and lust, beneath the desire for new adornments and allurements; envy and ‘This analysis of the origins of the technological disposition is, 0 far, only psychological, and goes deep into basic features of the juman psyche, Yet this cannot be the whole story. For one thing, of the arts, The peo- ‘cans of the New World rca. In place of the disposition rational mastery, these societies and many others like them are ruled by the spirit of reverence, or national pride, or the passion for hhteousness or holiness or nobility, or even just certainly seems as if modern technology differs from ancient fechne, 10t only in scale, but even, decisively, in its nature. ‘Whether or not this is so can be argued at length. Bur one thing indisputable: modern technology would not be the ubiquitous ‘phenomenon—or the problem—that it is, were it not for modern , Bacon and Descartes. Says Robert Smith Woodbury in his le on the “History of Technology” for the Encyclopaedia Bri- innica: “For many thousands of years ... [man’s] progress in tech-‘The Problem of Technology and Liberal Democracy 35 36 Life, Liberty andthe Defense of Dignity nology was made by trial and error, by empirical advance... [twas so-called empirical science of nature is, as actually experi only toward the end of the 18th century that technology began to. mex rie inet highly contrived encounter with apparatus, measuring devices, pointer readings and numbers; nature in its ordinary course is virtually never directly encountered. Inquiry is made “methodical,” through the mn of order and schemes of measurement “made” by the jowledge, embodied in laws rather than theorems, matic” under rules of a new mathematics expressly that have had enormous influence.”” A discussion of the nature of technology would be incomplete without at least a few words about are, to be contemplated as an end in itse In contrast, modern science seeks knowledge of how things work, to be used as a means for the relief and comfort of all humanity, knowers and non-knowers alike. Though the benefits were at first slow in coming, this practical intention has been at the heart of mod- ‘ern science right from the start. Here, for example, is celebrated hand—in contrast to its ancient counterpart, which be beheld,” which implies that the mind ee a the receiv- ing eye. And modern science rejects, as meaningless or useless, ques- tions that cannot be answered by the application of method. Science becomes not the representation and demonstration of truth, but an art: the art of finding the truth—or, rather, that portion of truth that lends itself to being artfully found, Finally, the truths that modern science finds —even about hut ings —are value-neutral, in no ‘way restraining technical appli and indeed perfect! for it. In short, as Hans Jonas ee as ‘manipulability at its theoretical core;!* and this remains true even for those great scientists who are themselves motivated by the desire for tcuth and who have no interest in that mastery over nature to which pee terrae nonetheless contribute, and for which sci- ence is ‘esteemed by the rest of us and mightily su ‘the modern state. i a peel For this reason, we must think of modern science and modern technology as a single, integrated phenomenon. It is the latter's fusion ith the former that makes it both so successful and, as we shall see, such a problem. “very useful So soon as I had acquired some general notions concerning Physics ... they caused me to see that itis possible to attain knowledge which is very useful in life, and tead of that speculative philosophy which is found in the Schools, we may find a practical philosophy by means of which, knowing the force and the action of fice, water, ait, the stars, heaven, and all the other bodies that ehviron us, as distinctly as we know the different crafts of our artisans, we can in the same way employ ‘themt in all those uses to which they are adapted, and thus ren- der ourselves as the masters and possessors of nature.” {Emphasis added.) But modern science is practical and artful not only in its ends. Its very notions and ways manifest a conception of the inte of knowledge and power. Nature herself is conceived energeti and mechanistically, and explanation of change is given in terms (at most) efficient or moving causes; in modem science, to be respor- sible to produce an effect. Knowledge itself is obtained pro- Hidden truths are gained by acting on nature, through ‘experiment, twisting her arm to make her cough up her secrets. The‘The Problem of Technology and Liberal Democracy | Life Liberty and the Defense of Dignity What Is a Problem? i to self-knowledge? Could understood as the disposition and activity of mastery, IE know what we might mean by “technology,” bling block in the path of the master himself? teh get tteee aeat erect gy isa problem, or poses a problem, what would would make technology more like a tragedy for understanding and endurance, even if only in mind. To ask about the problem fact exemplifies it, ‘We do not like to be obstructed, to be ‘We do not like to have problems. bout the goodness and sufficiency of human —is very old. Nearly everyone in antiquity agreed degree of arculness was indispensable for meetingThe Problem of Technology and Liberal Democracy 39 human needs and for human living together. No arts, no cit 10 true humanity. Rational animal, techi al—it is all one package. The arguments concerned the unqualified goodness of this package and, even more, the relative importance of fechne and of law (ot piety) in promoting the ‘human good. ‘Crudely pur, the argument could be stated this way. Those who hold that the biggest obstacles to human happiness are material, and arise from scarcity and the stinginess and violence of nature, from the indifference of the powers that be, 0 ease and death, look to the arts. In this view, bringers of the arts are the true benefactors of mank revered like the godss the supreme example is Promethe hought”), bringer of fie, with its warming and t through fie, all the other arts. By contrast hold that the biggest obstacles to human happiness are psychic and spiritual, and arise from the turbulences of the human soul itself, look instead to law (or to piety or its equiv tame and mod: erate the unruly and self-destroying passi the lawgivers, the statesmen and the prophets are the true benefac tors of mankind—not Prometheus but Lycurgus, not the builders ‘of Babel but Moses. The arts are suspect precisely because they serve comfort and safety, because they stimulate unnecessary desires, and because they pretend to self-sufficiency. In the famous allegory of in Plato's Republic, Socrates implies that it is the Promethean. ie and the enchantment of the arts that hold men unwit- tis chained, warm and comfortable yet blind to the world beyond the city. Mistaking their crafted world for the whole, men live ignorant of their true standing in the world and their absolute dependence on powers not of their own making and beyond their ‘when the arts and men are ruled politically, and only flourishing. “The coming of the modern technological project added anew | his dispute. What if technology, founded upon the new stingy nature without but also unruly race-based technology could be brought governed by wisdom about the human soul and | larger whole, ean art contribute properly to human Life Liberty andthe Defense of Dignity was certainly part of the vision of Descartes, and, it seems, an antic- ipated benefit of the mastery of nature: “For the mind depends so ‘miich on the temperament and dis ind most humanitar- ian of arts, wil, when iis properly transformed by the new science itature and human nature, provide at lng las solution for the yuman condition—through what ‘now begun to call a similar promise anthropology and Feasibility The first question arising from a consider L better —not less —technology, and regulatic an urgent cause. Indeed; Hi powerfully argued that, thanks to the profound ca sia fentieth-century technology, the whole scale and meaning of n action has been transformed, and a new ethi‘The Problem of Technology and Liberal Democracy with the intended intervention, they must be seen, wanted or not, as central and integral to the whole. nature, it entails roads and body shops, parking facilities and traffic laws; the production of 1e need for autoworkers, , fumes, smog and auto graveyards; the need f | tuto dealers and mechanics, safety and highway inspectors, traffic instructors, testing and licensing, ims adjusters, trackers of stolen in AS eee eee eee eee vides In cach goeraton we bequeath o out descendants wonder new devices, but by thet aggregate effets, we preordain or at greatly constrain how they are able to use them. More radical analy%ts of free human choice between comy automatically made, always in fa Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity ‘Science bestowed immense new powers on man and, at the same time, created conditions which were largely beyond his ‘comprehension and beyond his control. While he ‘aursed the illusion of growing mastery and exulted in his new {tappings he became the sport and presently the victim of tides and currents, whirlpools and tornadoes, amid mote helpless than he had been for a long time, ms of feasibility and the problem of unwanted juences, and think now only about the desired ‘examination, can we say about the goals of ject for the mastery of nature? idy noted, mastery of nature seeks, to begin 's liberation from chance and from natural necessity, both ft len, what is the ground of these and other goal me from liberation from natural neces. ration from natural goals? Or does man, even i ‘temain within the grip of nature as regards his‘The Problem of Technology and Liberal Democracy 43 and pleasure, for example, given to man ‘not the goals of i then mastery over nature will always be by his own natu: ‘ment to instincts, drives, lusts, (On the other hand, perhaps technology can enable man to fcom the grip even of his own nature, even regard- (though in another sense, of course, man. ‘of nature). If so, then mastery of nacure ‘would meat ' control, Reason would not only be a tool, reason would create. xtion, toward goals he freely and good for us? Why would the setting of p meled hut be anything but arbitrary ‘man's so-called power over nature is, in truth, always a powe cised by some over others with knowledge of nature as ‘ment, can it realy be liberating to exchange the rule of nat the rule of arbitrary haman vue, such will might happen to 7 ilanthropically, but then again, and much more likely, i human history is any guide, we already know what to expec in the arbitrary positing of human projects, especially on a I scale. And even on a personal scale, liberating —an¢ ing—to live under one’s own wi it Ices no guidance from what would be genuinely good for oneself? Fair enough, you say, but why must the mastering wil trary? Why can’t reason function not as an arbitrary creator, no ‘merely as a tool, but also as a guiding eye, to discover and promul- zgate those standards of better and worse, right and good, and di and true human flouris hat would guide th wer and make the master Life Liber and the Defense of Dignity rnaively hope will happen. Indeed, the extreme trust i nology tacitly assumes the existence ar the emergence of idee ledge of genuine goals that would in fact guarantee not onl fecedom but also the goodness ofthe mastery of nature, Don't hold your breath. Such knowledge of : 08 ‘goals and such vai scenes are not only methodoloicalyiniferet vo ques etter and worse, Not surprisingly, they find their own indif- verti humanly lovable i pecsabl, while al hings Bee aes utterly unlovable, n ence, however gri ring as dis i throw icy waters on the human spit : eee‘The Problem of Technology and Liberal Democracy rder is bad, just because science cannot corroborate the it this tolerant division of live and let ally unsatisfying and finally won't work. The teach as they diffuse through the community, do not stay quietly and inno- cently on the scientific side ofthe divid ical teachings. The dards for human conduct; lings cause us to doubt the truth and the ground of those standards we have held and, more or less, fares the belief in the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Inde- pendence and the existence of inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pura of happiness co whose defense the ldview make us skeptical about the existence of any ni its and therefore doubrful of the wisdom of those who to defend them? If survival and pleasure are the only po: principles that nature does does not all respected body of thought a teaching that has no room for freedom. and dignity. Liberal democracy has reached a point, thanks in no ject, which has brought in the laboratory yet can- ‘human, a science whose Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity bout man cannot even begin to support its own premise ightenment enriches life. frankly, adrift without a compass. We adhere more ly progress or merely change—or, for that matter, decline, Tragic Self-Contradiction ras they go, But even iple—that is, necessar- PecAsides foc exainpe, che technology of meeting needs and relieving toil. We in the prosperous West have come a long way. But have we attained satisfaction? Have we not, with each new advai our desires turn into needs, yesterday's luxuries into tod: and human desires are, it seems, swell and turn into needs, the gap ‘of even the first efforts at easing the harshness of life:‘The Problem of Technology and Liberal Democracy a7 {Slince men enjoyed very great leisure, they used it to pursue many kinds of commodities unknown to their fathers; and that was the first yoke they imposed upon themselves without think- ing about it, and the fist source ofthe evils they prepared for their descendants. For, besides their continuing thus to soften body and mind, as these commodities had lost almost all their pleasantness through habit, and as they had at che same time degenerated into true needs, being deprived of them became ‘much more cruel than possessing them was sweet; and people were unhappy to lose them svithout being happy to have them. (Emphasis added.] Moreover, new needs—especially in modern times—always create new dependencies, often on nameless and faceless others far away, ‘on whose productivity and good will one comes increasingly to rely for one’s own private happiness. Finally, since even poverty acquires only a relative meaning, since technology widens the possible range between rich and poor, since vanity and envy compound the gap satisfaction of need and desire becomes should governments step in to try to -chnology has spawned, they can do so only at the cost of economic liberty. Bureaucracy, too, is a form of technology, and living under itis anything but liberating. Docs this look anything like mastery? And what of technology fueled not by need but by fear of death? Has it proved a success? True, fear of death at the hands of wild ani mals rarely troubles the minds of city dwellers, but our haven against by their impotence to control the surrounding violence as to con- tribute to it themselves. On the international scene, we may credit the absence of fear of foreign invasion to our superior might, but the fear of death from modern warfare and international terrorism rans high, the unavoidable result of the fact that technologies know no political boundaries or that passenger airplanes can be used for more than transportation. Even in medicine, that heartland of gentle human- itarianism, the fear of death cannot be conquered, The greater our medical successes, the more unacceptable is failure and the more intolerable and frightening is death, True, many causes of death have Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity vanquished, but the fear of death has not abated, and may, indeed, have gotten worse. For as we have saved ourselves from the rapidly fatal illnesses, we now die slowly, painfully and in degrada- -tion—with cancer, AIDS or Alzheimer’s disease. In out effort to con- trol and rationalize death and dying, we have medicalized and iionalized so much of the end of life as to produce what amounts to living death for thousands of people, Moreover, for ‘we now face growing pressures for the legalization ‘which will complete the irony by casting the doctor, preserver rund like mastery? technologies for the soul, only now being ssion and dementia, stress and schizo- technology to the rescue? Can we not make good on the Cartesian promise to make men ifice and self-restraint? On. conquest of his own nature In his moment contented cow. Having enumerated a number of problems of technology, can we find their common ground? Wh:‘The Problem of Technology and Liberal Dentocracy Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity promote the general welfare and, above all, secure the bless- liberty to ourselves and our posterity. does not yet mean that modern life—ourlife—must be tragic. Every- thing depends on whether the techn¢ i ted, spiritually, morally, politically. Technology and Liberal Democracy ization —I refer in particular to the Sec- Americans today—including, one should emphasize, the ri cond World War. As our liberal democracy becomes also a mass soci- friends of technology: ‘yssith mass culture, bureaueratization, multinational corporations, lream of human perfectt i . Republic, though influenced ‘ment thought, were hardly utopians. They adopted a more moder- ate course, On the one hand, they knew human nature well enough crucial importance of good laws (backed ion and also religion for the preservation of decency and public spiritedness, On the other hand, they appreci- ated fully the promise of stience. The American Republic is to my knowledge, the first regime nical progress and United States Con: ‘The Congress shall have power .. . To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to ‘Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective ‘Writings and Discoveries. (Article I, Section 8) Our Founders, in this singular American innovation, encouraged technological progress by adding the fuel of interest to the fire of genius. Yer progress for progress’s sake was not their goal. Rather, by science and technology they hoped to help provide for the commonThe Problem of Technology and Liberal Democracy st claims, but being willing to defend those rights, with one’s life and fortune and sacred honor if necessary. The American citizen is not a happy slave, True, prospects for active citizenship today often seem. greatly attenuated, thanks largely to changes of nance for which technology is largely responsible: citizenship means or requires in the megalopolis reaucratic state, Yet voluntary associations abound, many with civ and public-spirited purpose; and the liberation from arduous t ty also allows for genuine political people's representatives are capable of responding to the problems spawned by technology, from enacting standards for the purity of air and water, to preserving natural forests and parks against the deadening encroachments of asphalt. In the bio- medic che same Congress that enacted the patent laws also 9. Various states have enacted legisla- tion prohibiting assisted suicide, destructive research on embryos, and cloning. As this book goes to press, the United States Senate ill, American institutions offer us political oppor- regulate and slow down the technological “real life” rather than virtus cents and children dwell in a realm of sentiment and spontaneous affection, rooted in the bonds of lineage and relation, and presided ‘over by some of the deepest strengths of our nature. Private life is where we come face to face with birth and Jove, death and sorrow, not merely as helpless victims but as connected, responsible and thoughtful agents. Private life also provides liberty of worship, to acknowledge the dependence of human life—and of nature itselé— ‘on powers beyond us and not at our disposal. Technology today 2 Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity threatens our private life by invading our houses to make us; in effect, comfortably homeless. Television usurps the place of con- ion, while modern conveniences : fe same time, we increasingly know what we ate missing people are learning that marria ined attention, and there genuine wisdom. Full human dignity requires a mind uncontami- nated by ideologies and prejudice, turned loose from the shadows of the cave, free not Ive factitious problems of its own +rshadowed by technology, to nature and purpose and good: technology, Ifthe deepest problem of technology utilitarian habit of mind it engende in iberal democracy, and especially in liberal education, ies the last best hope of mankind. Honesty compels me to add, I disputes and in and just ‘shness and frivolity. Yet nearly everywhere, one can find pock thoughtfulness and genuine ns of light that attract and engage seri- ‘ous and eager students. It has been my singular good fortune to be first a student and then for twenty-five years a teacher in one suchto these tasks. They are tasks, rather, for families and for commu- nities of worship, where cultural practices enable the deepest insights of the mind to become embodied in the finest habits of the heart. Not for nothing does the Good Book say that the beginning of wis- dom is the “fear [awe, reverence] of the Lord.”