Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry

by Albert Borgmann

  How incisive is the diagnosis and how helpful the therapy? Beginning with the third sort of disengagement, we see at once that there is nothing specifically technological about it. Inattention and blundering can blight any human activity. What is new in technology is its endeavor to overpower human frailty either through personnel management techniques or by eliminating the human component altogether. The ignorant and resentful disengagement from technology that is represented in Pirsig’s book by John and Sylvia Sutherland is ambivalent. It is not clear whether John and Sylvia want perfect technology, faucets that do not drip, motorcycles that start unfailingly, and pretty factories set in a parklike environment; or whether they want no technology at all. Pirsig’s proposal, finally, to counter the disengagment of consumption through the maintenance of technological devices is incomplete and becomes less and less helpful as technology progresses. For, as we have seen in Chapter 9, technology systematically withdraws devices or their machinery from our competence and care by making technological objects maintenance free, discardable, or forbiddingly intricate. When a great number of motorcycle functions are regulated by microelectronic rather than mechanical devices, the thoughtful inspection and tuning of the cycle beside a shady curbstone in Miles City, Montana, will have become a thing of the past.13 They will be impossible and unnecessary. A call for caring makes sense only within a reform proposal that recognizes and fruitfully counters the technological tendency to disburden and disengage us from the care of things.

  Pirsig realizes that there are underlying “systematic patterns of thought” that must be grasped and changed if there is to be a reform of the immediate problems that trouble us.14 He also recognizes that the underlying patterns of our lives are in the form of a division or a split between surface appearances and underlying forms.15 But that split is seen too subjectively, generally, and abstractly. It is a split that is not so much embodied in the concrete world about us as it is one of attitude, the romantic attitude that is oriented toward immediate appearances versus the classic attitude that searches for the rational and scientific structure of things. The account of these attitudes is both too strong and too weak, too strong in letting the attitudes pertain to all phenomena whatever, rivers as well as motorcycles, factories as well as piles of sand; too weak in defining the attitudes primarily as ways of seeing rather than shaping so that the shape of things remains largely unquestioned, and what is recommended is little more than a change of vision. Accordingly the counterpoint to this split is not so much the full bodily engagement with things in their own right as a mystic and metaphysical force or principle that Pirsig calls Quality.16

  It is ironical that a book that is so rich in concrete descriptions and insights takes this central and evasive leap into an autistic kind of metaphysics, a leap that finally drives Phaedrus, the narrator’s former and alter ego, insane. But the narrator clings to the hope that he can “get away from intellectual abstractions of an extremely general nature and into some solid, practical, day-to-day information.”17 This descent from metaphysics to the everyday world remains unfruitful. Pirsig believes that the typical predicament that we face today is the collision with clear and well-defined problems for which a standard solution is unavailable, so that we feel stuck.18 But surely in the context of being stuck technology is more likely to appear as the source of solutions than the source of our vague and profound misgivings. Pirsig’s political and social views are correspondingly barren. “The social values are right,” he says, “only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.”19 And, finally, all the narrator’s insight into Quality is powerless to help him reach his son Chris. He finally reaches him not through metaphysical acumen but by recognizing Chris as a person in his own right, one who has kept faith with his father through all the latter’s trials.20

  We can capture more precisely what is unsatisfactory in the reform proposals considered so far by distinguishing between reforms within the paradigm of technology and reforms of the paradigm.21 Reforms within the pattern or framework of technology are in implicit agreement with the way in which the promise of technology is being worked out according to the device paradigm. Such reforms can be central or piecemeal. Central reform proposals assume that the technological enterprise is basically, though not entirely, well conceived, but they imply or contend that its center has been missed, obscured, or lost; reformers are accordingly concerned to uncover the central force of technology and to let it have its properly beneficial and powerful effect. The restatements of the promise of technology, the program of functionalism, the concern with the value question, the fascination with technological spectacles, the democratization of technology, the global extension of the device paradigm, all these are central attempts at reform that are internal to technology. They all spring, as any reform proposal must, from a dissatisfaction with technology; but when they translate their dissatisfaction into a program of action, they are guided by too shallow a notion of technology; they overestimate or underestimate its character and force and remain inconsequential. Reformers overestimate technology when they believe that at the center of the promise of technology and in the implementation of the promise there is a tendency toward something like traditional excellence. But this belief ignores the ironical turn in the realization of the technological promise. Reformers underestimate technology when they take an instrumental view of it and believe that, having no center of its own, it can with little ado be given one from without. This approach ignores the definite and deeply entrenched style of life in which technology issues.

  Central reform proposals within technology will always fail when they ignore the idiosyncrasy and momentum of technology. The attempts at finding an inspiring and ennobling force that is intrinsically technological have so far failed in fact. But it would be dogmatic and invidious to deny the possibility of such a discovery altogether. The search for a guiding force of an essentially technological sort becomes objectionable only when it entails the neglect or destruction of great things that are clearly and already present. As I want to show in Chapter 23, the orientation toward vague and distant but supposedly magnificent technological goals indeed tends to settle like a blight on the things of simple splendor that are all about us. The fact that all the central reform programs have so far been without consequence is of course a sign of failure, and the failure may in turn indicate that these proposals are moved by a concern that can be satisfied only through a reform of the paradigm of technology. Central proposals would then be ways in which people misspeak themselves when talking about technology. We will consider this possibility more closely in Chapter 22.

  Piecemeal reforms within the framework of technology address a particular area of our lives that has not been rendered available, one that is unsafe, severely limited, or inaccessible. Such an area may be large as that of energy resources or small as tic douloureux; it may be significant such as prison reform or frivolous such as hair transplants. There is little disagreement that the large or significant problems should be solved and those first that are both large and significant. This is simply a matter of continuing and perhaps concluding the genuinely liberating and constructive program of technology. But there are complicating factors that make it difficult to set off salutary technological reforms against frivolous ones and internal from external ones. The line between soundness and frivolity has been blurred in technology. It is no longer clear, for instance, where in orthodontics the line between cosmetics and hygiene is to be drawn or where in the procurement of information enrichment turns into disorientation and stultification. There are problems of justice also. Assuming that frequent meals at fast food outlets are frivolous, should one oppose them, knowing that the burden of homecooked meals would disproportionately fall on women? Or should one try to prevent them from becoming available to the poor, given that the broad middle class freely and universally enjoys this luxury? Finally, there are unquestionab
ly serious problems such as lung cancer and acid rain for which, it would seem, one should try to find a technological fix by all available means. But these problems spring largely from frivolous consumption, and is it not more reasonable to prevent them from arising than to fix them technologically?

  The difference between the treatments of a problem can also be stated as a difference of kinds of problems. The prevention of a problem such as water shortages requires social change, the introduction of more parsimonious practices through education, rationing, or pricing. The cure of water shortages requires the procurement of abundant water through a technological device such as desalination. We can take this issue as a social or a technological problem. Alvin M. Weinberg, who has cast the matter in these terms and coined the notion of the technological fix, has also argued that the latter is quick and reliable whereas social change is “a frustrating business”; it is “difficult, time-consuming, and uncertain in the extreme.”22 Hence we should to the largest possible extent convert social into technological problems. The technological fix is of course in the middle of the mainstream of technology. It disburdens people to the point of disengagement, and it conceals its debilitating tendency behind the liberal democratic principle of leaving people’s “habits or motivation” unquestioned.23 Since technology has for two centuries been eminently successful by its paradigmatic standard, there is, as Weinberg stresses, strong historical evidence to support his recommendation for future reliance on technological fixes.24 But whether continued confidence is warranted is an empirical question. Two future technological fixes of which Weinberg thinks highly are the intrauterine contraceptive device and nuclear power desalination.25 The IUD is an example of a technological fix that works as much through discrimination as through technology. It puts the real burden of birth control, as is generally the case, on women and particularly exposes them to physical harms and dangers. One might reply on behalf of technology that the IUD is simply a biased and imperfect device and that an equitable and efficient one is desirable and possible. The fact is that none has been devised so far.

  Still it is not clear that this is an instance where technology, having disposed of the manageable problems, is running up against an intractable one. But the latter event is more obvious in the second instance of Weinberg’s technological fixes of the future. Two of his statements will establish the point.

  A large program to develop cheap methods of nuclear desalting has been undertaken by the United States, and I have little doubt that within the next ten to twenty years we shall see huge dual-purpose desalting plants springing up on many parched seacoasts of the world. At first these plants will produce water at municipal prices. But I believe, on the basis of research now in progress at ORNL and elsewhere, water from the sea at a cost acceptable for agriculture—less than ten cents per 1,000 gallons—is eventually in the cards.26

  In short, the widespread availability of very cheap energy everywhere in the world ought to lead to an energy autarky in every country of the world; and eventually to an autarky in the many staples of life that should flow from really cheap energy.27

  This was written in 1966, and we should now be in the middle of the period when the huge desalting plants were to spring up. But Weinberg’s words seem to come from a different era altogether. The nuclear power industry has run up against apparently insuperable physical, economic, and political obstacles and has had to halt its expansion at a very early stage of its projected program. The energy problem is of course still with us and, being large and genuine, in need of reform. But the path toward a solution that this country has taken is not “the hard path” in Amory B. Lovins’s term, one that pursues high and massive technology to force an abundance of energy.28 How did this come about? Did we suddenly discover how to bring about social change efficiently? Or was there spontaneous social change in the desired direction? The answer is simpler as we now see. The main cause of change has been a stronger than suspected tie between ecology and economy. Warren Johnson, considering his earlier prognosis of ecological chaos, put it this way:

  The mistake, I now see, in this way of thinking was to assume that there was a difference, even a separation, between economics and ecology, and that the economy could go where it pleased uninhibited by ecological constraint until the whole economic order broke down. But the last few years have made it clear that the economy is heavily influenced by ecological factors, especially the onset of scarcity.29

  Scarcity is of course relative to technology. The one-time scarcity of wood was overcome through the coal industry and the one-time shortage of whale oil through kerosene production. What is novel in our present scarcity and must give pause to the technologist is the resistance of that scarcity to hard technological solutions. What surprised the environmentalist is the relative smoothness with which the industrial countries are adapting to scarcity. The mechanism that is transmitting the ecological pressure on the economy into social change is a homely one, ignored by both technologist and environmentalist but greatly respected of late, namely, the market mechanism of supply and demand.

  But pointing out these developments is, so far, simply to give detail to the more general point, made in the previous chapter, that technology has a self-stabilizing tendency. The question here is whether these recent trends embody a principle that distinguishes frivolous from genuine problems and directs us to the solution of the latter. And this question is embedded in the still more important one of whether the present departure from high and hard technology constitutes a reform rather than merely one within the framework of technology. To begin with, we can certainly say that to the extent that we are turning away from the traditional expansion of massive technology we are turning to a new kind of technology, even if we have not approached it very closely. E.F. Schumacher has called it “intermediate technology” to situate it between primitive and high technology.30 In this country it has been promoted under the title of “appropriate technology.” The intermediate and appropriate technology movement sprang from the recognition that the transfer of advanced technology to Third World countries was wasteful, disruptive, and harmful to those countries and that technology had to be scaled down to connect beneficially with local circumstance and competence. This recognition naturally led one to question high technology in its original setting as well. The successes that advanced technology has had in transforming the social structure of the industrial countries to its benefit and growth is no proof that it is truly conducive to human well-being. As we have seen in the preceding chapter, the injuries that technology has inflicted on the environment and social welfare in the technological societies is evidence for Schumacher that advanced technology is in itself pernicious. Hence just as the intermediate technology movement developed appropriate counterproposals to high technology intervention in Third World countries, so the movement went from the critique to the reform of advanced technology in its native context.

  Many of the reform proposals are indistinguishable from those of enlightened proponents of technology.31 They emphasize that conservation is our cleanest and readiest energy resource and that conservation can be achieved through reliable, small-scale, and unspectacular measures. They further stress national or personal self-reliance and a regard for the integrity of the environment. This convergence of the critics and proponents of technology is certainly a salubrious development worthy of every good person’s support.32 But were the proponents of appropriate technology to center their position in the intersection with enlightened technology, they would implicitly support the technological style of life. It is clear from their programs that they want to provide an alternative way of life. This becomes apparent at two levels. The higher is defined by their willingness to break with the liberal democratic reticence regarding the good life, to sketch and to call for a kind of excellence that they articulate in terms of traditional standards and virtues. There is Schumacher’s well-known triad of health, beauty, and permanence and his reminder of the instructions given in the Ser
mon of the Mount.33 But there are also secular versions, centered on two kinds of virtues, social and ontological, one guiding us in our relations with our fellows, the other in our commerce with things; the first rendered as loyalty, cooperation, neighborliness, or selflessness, and the second as austerity, frugality, or simplicity.34 Occasionally this new way of life is in turn centered in the notion of homecoming, one that received a national if passing voice when in 1972 George McGovern, on accepting the Democratic nomination for president, issued his call: “Come home, America!”35

  This fairly traditional and abstract notion of excellence is paralleled at a more concrete level in proposals to restructure the tangible world around us. The social virtues are to be promoted by rendering our social settings smaller, more enduring, and endowed with more self-determination. Such settings would allow us to know and acknowledge one another, to join in common enterprises, and to take responsibility for them. The ontological virtues become attainable when the work world provides creative and autonomous occupations.36

  The reform proposal that is proper to the appropriate technology movement points in the right direction and is capable of fruitful development as I intend to show in the following chapters. But it is also, as I want to argue now, in danger of being deflected from its central aspirations. Its higher standards of excellence remain too vague and conventional; its practical proposals are, as a consequence perhaps, either indistinguishable from or subvertible by mainstream technology. The latter case is illustrated in Ivan Illich’s Tools for Conviviality. One would expect a book, so entitled, to speak of the convivium in which conviviality finds its fundament. In the introduction, Illich shows himself to be aware of the various meanings of conviviality, and he wants us to understand it as “graceful playfulness.”37 But this is a fleeting hint. “Convivial” is explicitly defined “as a technical term to designate a modern society of responsibly limited tools.”38 Tools (taken broadly) over which the individual has no control violate conviviality. But telephones, tape recorders, and cameras, for instance, are convivial.39 At one place Illich defines “ideally convivial” techniques this way: