Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry

by Albert Borgmann

  As Boorstin’s position and the distribution of wealth in technologically advanced socialist countries show, technology is not by its nature socially unjust. It may in fact have a weak tendency toward equality. The obvious inequalities in this country (and in all Western democracies) derive from historical circumstances. This illustrates once more both that technology is not the sole structuring force of contemporary reality and that it decisively transforms almost all traditional forces. To see this we must look more closely at the shape of inequality.

  It is generally recognized that a satisfactory treatment of the question of equality requires an antecedent understanding of whether, generically speaking, all persons are in fact equal and if so in what respect, given that there are obvious ineradicable differences among humans. Assume that this question has been answered along Kantian lines. We are all equal because each of us belongs to the realm of morality as a member and as a sovereign. Each of us regards himself or herself and everybody else as an end in herself or himself.11 The question then arises what we, acting socially, owe one another as equals. How, in the arrangement of our lives, is respect for equality to be made manifest? Different answers are conceivable. We might be concerned to secure equality of education, or of political power, of moral excellence, aesthetic sensibility, of skill and responsibility in the work world, or in other ways. But it is clear that in general we have no such concerns. Substantive equality is measured solely by wealth and income. It is controversial whether wealth or income is a better measure of equality and inequality.12 Wealth seems to bestow power. But as suggested in Chapter 13, wealth does not provide power that could be used against the paradigm of technology and the common allegiance that it commands. Within the paradigm, there is a range of options, but it is narrowly circumscribed. Personal income yields no directive power at all over against technology. There is controversy also as to the way in which income should be measured.13 But whether it is measured this way or that, the unchallenged significance of income is that it in turn is the measure of what is technologically available to a person. It determines how many commodities are at one’s disposal. Income is a measure of equality that is consonant with technology, and so it has become the standard of living in a technological society.14 It is again an indication that technology is so deeply entrenched that there is controversy whether, by the standard of income (or wealth), justice or prudence require equality.15 But there is no challenge to the standard itself.

  What is the shape of inequality in this country, measured by income? There are two crucial features. First, there is a sharp difference between the incomes of the richest and poorest families. In 1970, the lowest fifth made 5.5 percent of total family income, the highest fifth made 41.6 percent.16 In 1978, the bottom 8.2 percent of all families made under $5,000 annually whereas the top 3.6 percent made $50,000 and over. Second, between these extremes, there is a fairly linear slope of inequality. As one goes up in $5,000 increments of annual family incomes for 1978, one picks out roughly 16 percent of the families with each step up to the increment from $25,000 to $50,000, which corresponds to the largest group of families with 24.3 percent.17

  The origin of inequality lies in the ranks of late Medieval Europe. These developed into the class divisions of the early modern period which in turn were smoothed into the present wage differences and contours.18 The latter have considerable stability, but they no longer divide families into clearly delimited classes. The blurring of income differences is strengthened through the increasing number of families where two moderate incomes, one from the husband and one from the wife, may lift the family into the top quarter of family incomes.19

  Given that liberal democracy has provided a notion of equality and has advocated it, and given that the machinery of government to implement that notion is available, why is inequality so generally accepted?20 It is clear that it is resented by the poorest families. They are excluded from the blessings of technology, and for them the promise of liberation and enrichment has retained some of its early and genuine appeal. But there is a broad middle class, clearly poorer than the really rich, that could muster the political power to enforce greater equality but fails to do so. There are several ready answers which in the end prove unsatisfactory. (1) Inequality mirrors merit. The rich have worked for what they have. But this would require that everyone have the same opportunities at the start, which is not the case.21 (2) Inequality is necessary for the common good. Differences in reward constitute incentives for the kind of hard and creative work that raises everyone’s wealth. But it does not appear that steps toward greater equality diminish initiative.22 (3) Inequality has become immaterial. The majority of people have crossed the threshold of abundance, and it is pointless to be concerned with degrees of abundance. But there is in fact no evidence that the absolute level of affluence determines people’s degree of happiness and that a general rise in the standard of living leads to greater happiness. On the contrary, people measure their happiness according to the rank they occupy within the income structure of a reference group, the most encompassing of which is their country.23 And people remain vitally interested in a rising standard of living. (4) People are ignorant about the facts and functions of inequality. They accept a degree of inequality because they accept theses (1) and (2) above in support of it, not knowing the weaknesses of these positions. And they believe that the government is committed to equality and working to achieve it through taxes and transfer payments. They do not sufficiently realize that the equalizing force of taxes is nullified through loopholes.24 But this is not convincing. Inequality is an obvious and persistent phenomenon in this country. If equality were a vital concern to a majority of people, they would insist on obtaining appropriate information, and today’s information and communication technology makes that an entirely feasible task.

  The present inequality, then, must have a different rationale, and, again, the question is not how it arose but why it persists, and, more precisely, how technology has put its stamp on it. I believe that inequality favors the advancement and stability of the reign of technology. The unequal levels of availability represent a synchronic display of the stages of affluence that many people can hope to pass through. What the middle class has today the lower class will have tomorrow, while the middle class aspires to what the rich have now.25 The goals of tomorrow do not consist of vague conceptions and promises; they are realized and lived by those above my standing in the economic order. We all identify our lot and aspirations with those above us. Thus, the pervasive relative deprivation fuels the motor of technological advancement. The aspirations of the people are to some extent fulfilled. I do attain eventually what my wealthier neighbors have today but not until they are wealthier yet. The rising tide lifts all ships, but it does not equalize them in size. Social justice, understood as an equal level of affluence, will not be advanced merely by technological progress. A slowing or decline of general affluence, on the other hand, increases injustice. The scale of income provides a principle of selecting those who will pay for economic declines. In letting the poor and powerless suffer primarily, the allegiance of the more prosperous to the status quo can be secured. And since the slope of inequality is continuous and fairly linear, the boundary of the favored can be shifted without creating or revealing clearly demarcated social classes.26 Class formation is also prevented by the upward orientation of most people and by their refusal to make common cause with those below them against those above them. I believe that it is this shifting and blurred outline of social injustice that profoundly discourages so many of the poor and less educated from participation in politics and gives rise to the limited politically active and attentive public. And, of course, quite a few of the people at the middle and upper levels of wealth and education feel disburdened from genuine citizenship because they are certain of the stability of the political framework and content with the benefits they derive from it.

  It seems then that technology in itself is socially indifferent though not inc
onsequential. There is some tendency, as remarked before, to let the scope of availability expand and to let more and more people have its benefits. But the paradigm of availability becomes socially active only where it is threatened by social unrest. In such instances measures are taken to transform the negatively engaging social relations into commodities, i.e., into mutual services that are safely and easily available. The development of labor relations illustrates this pattern. On the other hand, as long as human misery borders on the universe of technological affluence without disturbing it, misery is callously neglected.

  The peculiar conjunction of technology and inequality that we find in the industrially advanced Western democracies results in an equilibrium that can be maintained only as long as technology advances. The less affluent must be able to catch up with the more affluent at least diachronically; they must be able to attain tomorrow what their wealthier neighbors have today. If the general standard of living comes to be arrested for the indefinite future, inequality will be come stationary and more manifest and will require a new solution. At the moment, it is clear, the tendency is to maintain the dynamic balance of technology and inequality by maintaining technological progress through a rearrangement of energy resources. We will consider the prospects of this tendency in Chapter 19.

  As long as the tendency remains largely unquestioned, politics will remain without substance.27 It will not be the realm where the crucial dimensions of our common life will be considered or altered. These are always and already determined by technology. Politics is merely the metadevice of the technological order. This is not all there is to politics. Traditional notions of service, leadership, and civic responsibility still move some people to political action which goes beyond technology. But the technological cast of politics constitutes its presently central features. Politics in this sense is well understood by people and used when they face an otherwise unsolvable problem. But a device, once designed and in use, does not engage or even permit engagement. The calls for participatory democracy which are oblivious to the substance of politics and merely recommend new forms of transaction are pointless and will remain inconsequential. One may as well call for participation in pocket calculators. A calculator not only disburdens one of the intricacies of computation, it resists efforts at engagement. It is beyond our care, maintenance, and radical intervention. One can, of course, study its history and construction. And one may find new and more frequent uses for it. But the first course of action is entirely cerebral and inconsequential, and the second is entirely playful if it goes beyond the genuine requirements of technological life. And so it is with politics within a technological society.

  17

  Work and Labor

  We have now outlined the character of technology historically and systematically, in detailed examples and in its wider social compass, theoretically and with regard to empirical data. We have so obtained a picture of the technological pattern which has a measure of coherence and balance. But if it is true that the paradigm of the technological device has shaped the modern world pervasively and incisively, then the possibilities of tracing the pattern of technology in our world are endless. If we want to give the present account of technology more depth, what phenomena should we take up for investigation? There are spectacular or obviously disturbing cases of the rule of technology that one might consider, such as medicine, the military, art, space exploration, artificial intelligence, or starvation in the Third World. I will have to leave them aside for two reasons. First, these problems are so complex that simply to lay out the significant features and data would take us beyond the limits of this volume. Second, I believe that the working of technology is more telling and consequential in the inconspicuous everyday world of an advanced industrial country such as ours.

  It is in this everyday world that we work up and firm up the attitudes and procedures that bring about or at least sanction irrational expenditures for military armaments, the need for space spectaculars, and callous disregard of global poverty. The particular phenomena that I want to examine are labor and leisure. These too are, of course, difficult and ramified topics. But we all know them as participants and observers. Thus everyone can test, illustrate, and substantiate points that are sketched schematically. And obviously, it cannot be my concern to treat labor and leisure from every angle but to exhibit in them how technology has led to a radical transformation of the human condition. Finally, as indicated in Chapters 9 and 10, there is a privileged tie between the device paradigm and labor and leisure. The sharp division in our lives between labor and leisure is a unique feature of modern existence.1 It is my thesis that this division reflects the split between machinery and commodity in the pattern of technology. Leisure consists in the unencumbered enjoyment of commodities whereas labor is devoted to the construction and maintenance of the machinery that procures the commodities. Labor is a mere means for the end of leisure. Let me elaborate, then, the instrumental character and the fate of technological work in this chapter. Technological leisure will be examined in the next chapter.

  Roughly speaking, the reduction of work in technology to a mere means has resulted in the degradation of most work to what I usually will call labor.2 A critique of work in modern technology is inevitably seen against the background of pretechnological work. The latter is thought to provide the alternative and so informs one’s view of technological labor significantly. But there are two sharply differing views of work in a pretechnological setting. One is the idyllic view which appreciates the artisan’s and peasant’s work for its natural pace, its variety and skill, its social richness, its connection with the rhythms of celebration and of the seasons.3 In Chapter 9, following Sturt, I sketched this kind of work world as a foil for the device paradigm. Sturt mourned the passing of this world although his appreciation of it contained the realization of what he called “the sordidness of business,” the periodic lack of warmth, light, and free time, the awareness of occasional fatigue and boredom.4 Still, the joy and pride of workmanship are evident and dominant in Sturt’s account. “But the joyous work of artisans or peasants is probably a myth,” replies William Form, a representative of the harsh view of pretechnological work who has a correspondingly positive view of technological labor. “Most townspeople,” he says further, “were not craftsmen and much of the work even of craftsmen was dull and routine. The work of peasants was drudgery.”5 Not all pretechnological work was either this or that. Nor is there a real question of our literally and entirely going back to pretechnological work in any form. But the issue is significant because it is clear that in at least some pretechnological settings work was fulfilling and ennobling, that it oriented the workers in nature, culture, and society and allowed them, as workers, full and bodily participation in these dimensions. Technology has given us enormous power, and it is a legitimate question whether we, as citizens of the technological society, are able or willing to employ that power on behalf of good work. There is a question whether we are confident enough of the quality of typically technological labor to measure it against good pretechnological work which was typical at least within certain cultures. To answer these questions, we must first outline the character of technological work.

  The division of work is a well-known feature of the technological setting. What is less obvious is the twofold division of work in technology. The first kind is the celebrated division of labor with which Adam Smith begins The Wealth of Nations.6 It must be distinguished from the specialization of work which is as old as human culture and practiced in the very pretechnological work world that some of us admire. Nor is the division of a work process into steps and the frequent repetition of just one step characteristic of modern industrial labor. A tinsmith who is about to make a great number of funnels would not complete one after another, each from start to finish, but would first do all the drawing on sheet metal, then all the cutting, and so on, and would make specialized devices which the economy of scale would permit and reward. The typically modern divisi
on of labor, on the other hand, divides one process into many simple parts and assigns the performance of each to a single worker.7 The monotonous and endless repetition of one small task is typical of much of modern labor and gives it its stupefying and draining character.