Technology in Different Worlds

Thresholds (2019) (47): 17–27., 2019

In this text, I will try to convince you of the vanity of critique. The argument is simple: there is no world without war, and neoliberal capitalism is a weaponized economy. This is a version of the larger argument that claims resistance is futile. You will be commodified. The first section will theorize ‘technology’ as consisting in the integration of a series of ‘tests,’ which is nothing but ‘nature in disguise.’ The second section provides a theory of ‘weaponization’ as the purposeful utilization of ‘failure’ qua ‘destruction.’ It will be shown how ‘weaponization’ is living within technology. Consequentially, there is no technology without arms. We will argue for the metaphysical inevitability of war. The third and last section will show how, along these lines, neoliberal capitalism, understood on a global scale, is a weapon in the sense defined. Consequentially, we are at war—globally and tacitly. And as it stands, no force can stop it. It will be much more convenient to acquiesce to defeat than to waste time and energy in critique and resistance. Welcome to the future of compliance.

Jus et Civitas – A Journal of Social and Legal Studies, 2014

Technology seems, at the individual level, to be passive because we just act on it. We buy things that we need or passionately desire, we use and consume them, break or forget then in boxes, attics, drawers and garages or we dump them in landfills or scrapyards. However, technology is also active: we are drawn by technological products, entertained or bored by them, empowered or alienated, hurt or cured by them. Not only that our daily activities are sometimes shaped by the advent of new machines, gadgets, appliances or applications. We feel also that our familiar environment, our social and personal relations, and even our identity, are transformed by technology. Our bodies and the way we perceive, our desires and aspirations, our attitudes and values, our vocabularies and practices, our responsibilities and obligations, they all change. From a day-today perspective, technology is visible more or less as gadgets because we want to buy them; or is visible because something in our technological permeated surroundings breaks down and then we are aware of the existence and function of some device. But technology plays another role, a crucial one, at the macro level of an entire modern society. This part of technology is like the submerged part of an iceberg: is massive, unseen, and necessary for keeping afloat modern societies, given that it powers our homes with electricity, gives us clean water and medical treatments, builds megacities, shapes the Earth, and is essential in delivering food for billions of people (given the Green Revolution in agriculture). From this perspective, technology is not just a mean to an end, but a precondition to the modern life style that is defined by pursuing certain kinds of ends. The modern conception of a dignify life is framed in terms of rights. The right to food and shelter, work, medical treatment, social security, education, justice, freedom of speech and movement are all possible in large societies, to a certain extent, only if there are met some technological preconditions. If understood as positive rights, then there is a duty of all for all to provide the technological frame necessary to secure the rights specified above. The imperative of technological justice might be formulated also with regard to the notion of sustainable development. Thus, we

The concept of technology as well as itself has evolved continuously over time, such that, nowadays, this concept is still marked by myths and realities. Even the concept of science is frequently misunderstood as technology. In this way, this paper presents different forms of interpretation of the concept of technology in the course of history, as well as the social and cultural aspects associated with it, through an analysis made by means of insights from sociological studies of science and technology and its multiple relations with society. Through the analysis of contents, the paper presents a classification of how technology is interpreted in the social sphere and search channel efforts to show how a broader understanding can contribute to better interpretations of how scientific and technological development influences the environment in which we operate. The text also presents a particular point of view for the interpretation of the concept from the analysis throughout the who...

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.

Foundations of Science, 2015

Pieter Lemmens’ neo-Marxist approach to technology urges us to rethink how to do political philosophy of technology. First, Lemmens’ high level of abstraction raises the question of how empirically informed a political theory of technology needs to be. Second, his dialectical focus on a “struggle” between humans and technologies reveals the limits of neo-Marxism. Political philosophy of technology needs to return “to the things themselves”. The political significance of technologies cannot be reduced to its origins in systems of production or social organization, but requires study at the micro-level, where technologies help to shape engagement, interaction, power, and social awareness.

2006

Within anarchist thought there is a current that treats a critique of technology as a central component of a broader critique of society and modernity. This tendency - which can be traced through the works of Peter Kropotkin, Rudolf Rocker, and Murray Bookchin - treats technologies as being thoroughly nested within sets of powerful social relations. Thus, it is not that technology cannot provide 'plenty for all' but that technology is bound up in a system where priorities other than providing plenty win out. This paper will work to reassemble the framework of this current in order to demonstrate the continuing strength of this critique.

Technology is a subject which can in no way be ignored. Whether we discuss war, or scientific development, technology is a continual area of topic/concern. The author asserts in this paper that this (due to the MIMS aspect of war and technological progress) means that on a foundational level, technology can be considered the 0th domain of war. In fact, it remains prevalent in all the following domains, irrespective of our respect and/or grasp of it, mimsically speaking. On another philosophical level the author believes it becomes its own zeitgeist and gestalt due to its overarching importance. Examples given in the paper include computation, video games, martial arts techniques, missiles, hacking, jet fighters, and more. This paper can be a foundation for a more specific "technology in each domain" or produce a myriad of 0th Domain mimsical propositions, pre-engineering future weapons and tech to give decisive advantages in any other domain. This last statement is not particularly controversial, but rather than make the assumption, the reader should figure out why technology is so important.

1990

This is a set of lectures on technology from a critical theory perspective given in 1990-91. Quite apart from what was explicitly offered and, therefore, went unannounced to the final year student audience, my intention was to determine what could be learned from key pieces of literature on technology for the advancement of my idea of cognitive sociology. The lectures opens with a theoretical clarification of where technology fits in the context of society, and then divides into three parts. First, a reconstruction of the long-term development of technology and science up to their status as leading productive force in late modern society is given. Second, the bulk, indeed, the core of the lectures consists of a review of some leading theoretical perspectives on technology, including Herbert Marcuse, Jürgen Habermas, Peter Weingart, C. A. Van Peursen, Gernot Böhme, Serge Moscovici and Klaus Eder. This part is closed with critical reflections aimed at enhancing the critical sociological theory of technology. The third part is an analysis of the technology debate from the 1950s to the late 1980s in which attempts were undertaken in view of a variety of mounting threats, dangers and risks to clarify the horizons of rationality within which society could regulate its own development and render technology amenable to reform. The lectures are finally brought to a close with reflections on the role of social movements in public debate and the relation of sociology to them. The aim here is to highlight the interrelations of different levels of knowledge, from the everyday through the public to the professional, as well as the collective learning processes which permeate them.

parallax, 2018

In order to escape from the hierarchical dichotomy of civilization vs barbarism, in this article I will develop a postcolonial critique of technology building upon Walter Mignolo’s concept of ‘barbaric theorizing’. In this way, I want to propose a way of thinking about technology that disassociates technology from the self-conceptualization of civilization by the West, i.e. by imperialist powers. Such a way of thinking will also open up a space in which the barbarians will have the opportunity to imagine new uses of technology which have been constantly repressed by imperialist/capitalist narratives of progress and development. Indeed, by breaking through the binary opposition of civilization vs barbarism, I will argue that these concepts are deeply inscribed in a linear narrative that takes the exploitation of human labour and natural resources as inevitable. In order to develop this postcolonial critique of technology, I will adopt Walter Benjamin’s ‘new, positive concept of barbarism’. Although Benjamin can hardly be considered a postcolonial author, his writings on technology and his critique of the concept of progress will prove valuable to such a criticism, as well as for opening up new avenues for thinking about technology. I will thus explore Benjamin’s concept of barbarism to dislodge technology from its imperialist associations with various aspects of the civilizing process and its concomitant idea of progress. Then, I will compare Benjamin’s definition of technology and his concept of barbarism with Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s, who also thought that humanity was stepping into a new stage of barbarism. Finally, I will propose a barbaric, postcolonial conception of technology in order to extricate it from its dangerous and ultimately self-annihilating interdependence with the concepts of progress and capitalist development.