"Technology as political weaponry"

Sociologia Ruralis, 1997

Kritike: An Online Journal of Philosophy, 2019

Steigler's "originary technicity," Latour's "actor network theory," and Ihde's "post-phenomenology" accentuate the entwinement of technology and human existence. To imagine a world devoid of technology and a technology without a human being is unthinkable. The integral relations between technology and human beings are irrefutable. But while it is so, human beings' attitude towards technology, particularly modern technologies, remains ambivalent. Recognizing their inescapable relations, however, suggests that human beings may opt to simply accept or negate, or develop a critical attitude towards technology. This paper presents two models of critical engagement with technology, Andrew Feenberg's instrumentalization theory and MASIPAG's development of alternative agricultural technologies. In sum, it argues that the MASIPAG model, given the current capitalist order, holds a more promising approach to technological development than Feenberg's.

2013

What determines the transition of a society from one level of development to another? One of the most fundamental causes is the global technological transformations. Among all major technological breakthroughs in history the most important are the three production revolutions: 1) the Agrarian Revolution; 2) the Industrial Revolution and 3) the Scientific-Information Revolution which will transform into the Cybernetic one. The article introduces the Theory of Production Revolutions. This is a new explanatory paradigm which is of value when analyzing causes and trends of global shifts in historical process. The article describes the course of technological transformations in history and demonstrates a possible application of the theory to explain the present and forthcoming technological changes. The authors argue that the third production revolution that started in the 1950s and which they call the Cybernetic one, in the coming decades, that is in the 2030s and 2040s, will get a new ...

Agriculture and Human Values, 1987

Marxist social scientists have argued that the relationship between social and technical change is one of mutual interaction; innovation in the modes of production affects social organization, and social organization, in turn, has an impact on the development of novel modes of production. This consideration is of fundamental importance for the construction of any economic development policy. However, analyses of this critical relationship have been elaborated within a conceptual framework which most social scientists and policy makers who work within the framework of neoclassical economic thought find difficult to understand. When marxists argue that technical innovations are the product of a class conflict, non-marxist social scientists are left wondering about what the exact meaning of such a statement. Because marxists have been unable to communicate their message, their important insights into the relation between social and technical change have not been incorporated in contemporary development policy; this situation has often resulted in great social costs. In the past fifteen years, however, Yujiro Hayami and Vernon Ruttan have attempted to analyze the critical interaction of social and technical change using neo-classical economic concepts. I argue that their approach can be utilized to express marxist insights in a language accessible to non-marxist social scientists. The careful and critical adoption of this approach could provide the grounds for a more fruitful dialogue about the interaction of social and technical change, and aid the construction of a new development policy.

Synesis, 4, 2013

It goes without saying that the change we experience today, which is fuelled by a series of new technologies, differs from other profound changes that have defined our culture in the past. The current change affects our everyday lives, but the new tools it offers us can be seen as an extension of our senses, of our various modes of communication and, to a certain extent, of our brains (since the question about whether one regards machines as extensions of living organisms or living organisms as complex machines seems to be a topic of exploration as well). Nowadays, the proliferation of the fields of knowledge, the often vague distinction between art, technology and science, and the "immaterial" form of the new tech-nologies compel us to widen the field of our traditional research disciplines, and most crucially the field of ethics. The debate around the morality of technology has given rise to special moral categories -regarding for example the issues of responsibility, safety and risk -which had not been as important in premodern moral philosophy.

In this proposal we will address innovation from a peasant point of view, considering peasant knowledge applied to agrarian systems and the evolution of agroecosystems in terms of productivity and sustainability. The case study of Galicia (NW of the Iberian Peninsula) will illustrate how the intensification process took place in the context of an Atlantic agriculture in the South of Europe. The increases in productivity of Galician agriculture during the 19 th century confirm the spread of new technics in an apparently classical peasant economy and in a peasant way. We will focus on changes in crop rotations, and management of organic fertility during 18th and 19th centuries (first agricultural revolution). Our hypothesis is that these changes are related to the challenges of the first wave of the socio-ecological transition in agriculture. We will also analyze the spread of new technics after the end of 19th century crisis (second wave of socio-ecological transition). Our hypothesis is that the adoption of specific innovations by peasants (such as genetic changes, machinery and chemical fertilization) are linked not only with the State diffusion efforts but with the accuracy of these technics and with the way in which peasants had managed the agroecosystem in the previous centuries. Finally, the aim of this paper is also to show how farmers know, choose and adopt new technologies. This is the question we have asked ourselves for this period, when there was a singular and extended model of innovation in small-scale European agriculture involving farmers themselves, new State innovation system and market nets. A model developed before extensionism/advisory services dominant way of modernization times after World War II and just after illustrated and publication-dependent dominant model evolved since Enlightment century until the end of XIX century. A time in implementing the broad and new technological package of the second wave of industrialization including its important

2021

This essay presents a brief survey on some of the basic questions concerning the Philosophy of Technology, including the different historical perspectives regarding the part played by technology in human life and societies. From the historical debate between the more pragmatic and the more skeptical sides, the optimistic and pessimistic views, an answer is proposed, finding support in a sociological point of view in what can be interpreted as a contemporary marxist approach on these problems. This work was developed in the context of the course An Introduction to the History of Science given by Professor Luca Maria Possati, part of the Philosophy degree at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of University of

Capitalism Nature Socialism, 2004

Recent global protests, as well as the World Social Forum, have called attention to the urgency of developing what we might call a "people's technology." A central focus of concern has been the biotech sector, but the issues posed by information technology lie not far behind. Both can be seen, at least in their current mode of development, as instruments for expanding and deepening the control exercised by capital, over the natural world and human society alike. An alternative political/economic agenda requires an alternative technological agenda, from several angles. These include: reducing costs, absorbing labor-power, overcoming alienation, and halting despoliation of the environment. There is no conceptual difference between a people's technology and a socialist technology. My own preference is to use the two terms interchangeably, depending on the immediate context of the discussion. The "people's" dimension reminds us that our vision is one of democratic control, while the reference to socialism reminds us that you can't have democracy, especially in an area like technology, as long as a capitalist ruling class is calling the shots. Marxism has had, from its beginnings, a defining interest in technological issues. What were, after all, the preeminent "forces of production" in Marx's time, if not the new technologies unleashed by the development of "modern industry"? And what better basis do we now have for the critique of firstepoch socialism than Braverman's admonition-well before the 1989 collapse, but echoed subsequently by Mészáros-to treat the Communist movement's long-unquestioned privileging of state power as a tragic detour from the task of embracing Marx's much broader assault on capitalist power-relations? * This article is based on a presentation at a symposium in honor of Richard Levins at the Harvard School of Public Health in June 2000.

Economic Alternatives

The paper investigates the role of time as one of the most precious politico-economic resources. It shows that the compression of time during every successive industrial revolution brings contradictions that change the logic of the politico-economic system. To prove this thesis historical and political-economic approaches are used. The historical approach shows the correlation between the development of technologies, time and society. The politico-economic approach emphasizes on the different dimensions of this change, trying to answer the question about the transformation of the role of time in contemporary economy and politics. One of the main contributions is that time is correlated with the different technological revolutions. Thus, I first examine the correlation between time and technological changes during different technological stages. Then the exponential character of the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is shown, as well as the transformation they bring to...

International Conference on "Domination and Ideology in High-tech-capitalism" organized by the Berlin Institute for Critical Theory in cooperation with the Institut für Philosophie der Freien Universität Berlin, 24 to 27 May 2001 at Jagdschloss Glienecke near Berlin, 2001

The objectives in this paper are as follows: First is to show that technological solutions for resolving development problems are based on reductionist science derived from a certain type of positivism which was and is closely tied to bourgeois-liberal and capitalist ideologies. Second, it is attempted to demonstrate that these technologies perpetuate inequalities among groups within a community and between nations and economies. This occurs through excluding people from access to forms of knowledge, skills, techniques, and markets, which are important for subsistence, survival and for competing in a globalized economy. Finally, an argument is advanced that the claims made on behalf of these technologies, particularly those related to 'hunger' and 'poverty', are spurious, and that they represent the use of science as an ideology to legitimize forms of governance and economy. Specific kinds of 'scientific' arguments supporting particular technologies serve two purposes. One is to push technologies that enable transnational monopoly capital to exercise greater control over the agrarian production of large parts of the world. Two, the deliberate misrecognition of exclusionary technologies as contributing to development and alleviating hunger constitutes a diversionary tactic, in as much as social and economic inequalities are am outcome of the functioning of these corporations. Through specific cases and arguments related to particular developments in biotechnology and genetic engineering, the increasing domination of monopoly capital over agriculture and the drive for profits and surplus extraction in the development of these technologies are outlined.