Sources

Global Technology and thePromise of ControlTrish Glazebrook

Technology theorists are remarkably silent on the topic of globaliza-tion. Although philosophy of technology is burgeoning as a disci-pline, its proponents have little to say about technology transfer todeveloping nations, and the impact on the global human condition oftechnology outside the West, or, as it is also called, the North. There areexceptions, of course, most notably Sandra Harding, whose work onpost-Enlightenment, postcolonial science and technology is extensive.1Likewise, much has been done in social geography focusing primarily oncommunications technology. The lack of assessment of the global impli-cations of technology in science studies, cultural studies, and technologystudies gives pause for thought. Are contemporary philosophers of tech-nology simply reproducing the ethnocentrism evident in science andtechnology themselves? Or does the globalization of technology call fornew ways of thinking about traditional philosophical questions, for ex-ample, the political consequences of the metaphysics and epistemologythat underwrite modern technology, that philosophers are only nowbeginning to envision? I will argue that the answer to the second ques-tion is yes, and I will show that the task such innovative thinking entailspresses urgently if the answer to the first question is not to remain, yes.For without careful reflection on the ideology that is and informs modern technology, the technological dream of controlling nature spills over intopolitical and social practices of exploitation.I make my argument in four parts. First, I show how technologyhas figured in traditional philosophical treatments of the question ofwhat it means to be human. Second, I argue that the distinction betweenscience and technology, so clear for Aristotle, is blurred in modernity,and that the modern techno-scientific project is underwritten by a logicof domination and control. Thirdly, I situate technology in ethical, po-litical, and cross-cultural practices. I show how forestation programs inIndia were disastrously destructive because of their failure to respect localknowledge, and I use the Bantu education policy in South Africa todemonstrate that the introduction of science and technology to non-Western cultures has been and potentially remains a process not of demo-cratic access, but of cultural subjugation. Finally, I look at the collapseof the dream of control in two contexts. The nuclear power industry inthe West shows that the cooperation of national and techno-scientific,corporate interests is a dangerous complicity that promotes an illusion ofcontrol. Yet the French experience with videotex stands as an example ofthe human ability to transcend federally directed initiatives and to appro-priate technology democratically, as the experience of AIDS patientsdemonstrates the ability of an informed public to intervene in the insti-tutions of technology. In conclusion, I suggest that the globalization oftechnology can serve to perpetuate ideological and practical control ofboth nature and human beings, but offer the optimistic possibility thatthis need not be a foregone conclusion.Global technology is not novel but rather is an entrenched practice,and the ethical and political task at hand in the present is to integratelocal concerns within globalized culture. Global technology has a sub-stantial role to play in determining the human experience, and thereforeits ethical, social and political implications demand ongoing philosophicalanalysis and dialogue, lest a definitive function of human being remaina global mechanism for reinforcing privilege and hegemony over thevalues of community and democratic empowerment Aristotle begins his Metaphysicswith the claim that “[a]ll humans bynature desire to know.”2Likewise, when Descartes asks, “What am I?”in the second of his Meditations,he concludes, “A thing that thinks.”3The capacity for knowledge, our ability to think, has been definitive ofhuman being in the tradition of Western philosophy since its very begin-ning, and remains so in modernity. If we are what we eat, then human being continues to demonstrate an inexhaustible appetite for knowledge.For many in the West/North, our day has the consumption of informa-tion built right into it. We read the paper, watch the Nature or HistoryChannel, and spend both work and leisure time cruising the informationsuperhighway on the Net. That such knowledge is not just a humanfunction among others, or a specialty of us moderns, is evident in theChristian ideology of sexuality: Eden was lost through carnal knowledge,and we still talk of knowing in the biblical sense. Nor are we Westerners/Northerners alone in constructing ourselves socially as knowers. Aroundthe world, peoples define themselves on the basis of their cultural store-house of knowledge, and build their practices and calendars on the basisof preserving and disseminating knowledge through ritual.What is knowledge, however? This is a broad question, and even ifit could be articulated thoroughly, no final answer would then have beengiven, since knowledge is a process that evolves with culture and history.My task is precisely to trace the evolution of technology as an ideologyand practice of knowledge in order to place into relief a tension betweenWestern/Northern technology and global interests of politics and ethics.Hence, I confine myself to an analysis of the place of technology inknowledge, and the history I tell begins with Aristotle. He was quiteclear about what knowledge is, and drew the original distinction betweenscience and technology that is fundamental to Western intellectual his-tory. In the Topicsand the Metaphysics,he divides knowledge into threekinds: theoretical, practical, and technical.4He differentiates them on thebasis that each has a different end. The end of theory is simply knowl-edge itself. This is what one knows just for the sake of knowing it, andherein Aristotle includes metaphysics, mathematics, and natural science.5The end of praxis, which includes ethics and politics, is action. And theend of technical knowledge, production, is the thing that is made. Car-pentry, for example, has as its end the house that is built, and likewisemedicine is directed at and for the sake of health. Aristotle’s word for“nature” is physisand his word for “production” is technê.Hence, theetymological origins of physics and technology are evident in Aristotle’staxonomy. In the next section, I will argue that the Aristotelian differ-ence between theoretical science and technology is blurred in modernity,but first I make clear here the implications of his distinction.The first thing that must be noted is that technê is an ambiguousterm. It means both the things that are made in production, and theknowledge by which they are made. Hence, it can have ontological orepistemological force. I am very much persuaded by Heidegger’s in-sight that technology is not just a collection of equipment, but “a wayof revealing.”6In fact, this is the basis for my analysis that technology 146Trish Glazebrookis and can remain a global mechanism for reinforcing privilege andhegemony over democratic empowerment. Hence, when I speak oftechnology, I do not mean particular items of technological equipment,but rather the ideology that permeates the production and use ofsuch equipment.Nonetheless, I work within Aristotle’s ambiguity in that I beginwith a question of ontology: how are artifacts different from naturalthings? A debate is currently underway in philosophy concerning thisquestion,7but it is centered on restoration ethics8rather than Aristotle’sontological distinction. Aristotle argues at Physics2.1 that what is definitiveof natural things is that “they have within themselves a principle ofmovement (or change) and rest.”9He goes on at 2.8 that nature istherefore teleological in that, rather than natural things developing bychance, they grow toward some end. Together these claims say that, forexample, an acorn moves itself toward its final cause, which is an oak tree.Artifacts, however, have no such internal principle of growth. Productionbegins with the artist’s conception of what is to be made.10Aristotle drawsthe odd conclusion that an artist chooses material “with a view to thefunction, whereas in the products of nature the matter is there all along.”11What he means is that the relation between form and matter is necessaryin the case of nature (wood does not exist except in trees; trees cannot butbe made of wood), but not so in the case of an artifact (gold can be madeinto jewelry or a statue; a statue can be made of gold or bronze). Naturalform is a principle of self-directed material development, while artifactshave a form that is imposed on matter by the artist.The point to draw from Aristotle’s analysis is that technologydepends on nature in a way that nature does not depend on technol-ogy. For an artifact must always be made from some material appropri-ated from nature. Things taken from nature by the artist and formedinto an artifact are at most an interruption of natural process, whichpersists. Wood, for example, rots despite its treatment by the artist.Thus, technology is a derivative way of being, and control of naturalprocesses is at best partial and temporary. Yet modern technology is anideology of control and manipulation that has lost sight of this Aristo-telian truism. A succinct example of this modern oversight presenteditself when I recently read a paper called “Nature versus Technology”precisely to make the Aristotelian point. Someone joked, “I’ve got mymoney on technology!” The point I made, of course, was that in facttechnology is never removed from but rather always deeply embeddedin nature, and that therefore, it is nature that will always have the lastword, so to speak. MLA (Modern Language Assoc.) Tabachnick, David Edward, and Toivo Koivukoski. Globalization, Technology, and Philosophy. State University of New York Press, 2004. APA (American Psychological Assoc.) Tabachnick, D. E., & Koivukoski, T. (2004). Globalization, Technology, and Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press. MLA (Modern Language Assoc.) Tabachnick, David Edward, and Toivo Koivukoski. Globalization, Technology, and Philosophy. State University of New York Press, 2004. APA (American Psychological Assoc.) Tabachnick, D. E., & Koivukoski, T. (2004). Globalization, Technology, and Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press. MLA (Modern Language Assoc.) Tabachnick, David Edward, and Toivo Koivukoski. Globalization, Technology, and Philosophy. State University of New York Press, 2004. APA (American Psychological Assoc.) Tabachnick, D. E., & Koivukoski, T. (2004). Globalization, Technology, and Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press. MLA (Modern Language Assoc.) Tabachnick, David Edward, and Toivo Koivukoski. Globalization, Technology, and Philosophy. State University of New York Press, 2004. APA (American Psychological Assoc.) Tabachnick, D. E., & Koivukoski, T. (2004). Globalization, Technology, and Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press. MLA (Modern Language Assoc.) Tabachnick, David Edward, and Toivo Koivukoski. Globalization, Technology, and Philosophy. State University of New York Press, 2004. APA (American Psychological Assoc.) Tabachnick, D. E., & Koivukoski, T. (2004). Globalization, Technology, and Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press.