Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry

by Albert Borgmann

  Yet the poet in the stillness of writing and in the calm of speaking gathers and presents the world in the comprehensive and intimate ways that distinguish human beings. Through the poet’s deictic discourse we come to comprehend the world more fully and are so empowered to inhabit it more appropriately in our tangible and bodily activities. Between poetry and practical engagement there is the complementary rhythm of comprehension and action, of systole and diastole. The focal significance of a mental activity should be judged, I believe, by the force and extent with which it gathers and illuminates the tangible world and our appropriation of it.

  Is the design and construction of computers a focal concern by that standard? Not in the setting that Kidder presents. Work on the computer alienates most of the workers from the larger world. And the object of their endeavors to which they devote themselves as an end they know at the same time to be a means for whatever ends. They know that the intoxicating and engaging circumstances of their work have been granted them because for the company and the world at large the new computer will be a mere means. But these again are contingent circumstances. Inasmuch as computers embody and illuminate phenomena such as intelligence, organization, determinism, decidability, system, and the like, they surely have a kind of focal character, and a concern with computers in that sense is focal as well.17 But the focal significance of work with computers seems precarious to me and requires for its health the essentially complementary concern with things in their own right. Otherwise the world is more likely lost than comprehended.

  Have we reached a reflective equilibrium? It may seem as though a more precise inquiry of activities, traditionally thought to be excellent, will show them to be more complex than their more recent and technological rivals. Perhaps this welcome result is due to the fact that a more meticulous scrutiny comes closer to Rawls’s “relatively precise theory and measure of complexity” which presumably would settle comparisons conclusively. But all this is semblance. What we have really done is to bring activities back to the things to which we respond in those activities. It is the dignity and greatness of a thing in its own right that give substance and guiding force to the notion of complexity. Complexity by itself and as a formal property is, as we noted in Chapter 22, too flexible a notion to serve as a guide to the value of wild nature; and so it is as a guide to the excellence of human activities.18 Rawls’s Aristotelian Principle is not, to be sure, accidentally tied to a formal notion of complexity.19 The thrust of A Theory of Justice, consistent with its allegiance to the deontological tradition, is to keep the contingent and historical world at bay.20 Thus Rawls’s theory screens out the presence of those things that alone, I believe, can orient our lives. To say this is, of course, to speak approximately and ambiguously. It is after all not finally decisive whether and how we succeed in securing an ordered and excellent life for worldlessly conceived subjects. The point is to remind or to suggest that in all significant reflection of the good life things in their own right have already graced us.

  But if this is the pivot of ethics, is it not possible that a technological device or, more generally, a technological invention may someday address us as such a thing, one that, whatever its genesis, has taken on a character of its own, that challenges and fulfills us, that centers and illuminates our world? As said in Chapter 20, it is possible that such an invention will appear and that technology will give birth to a focal thing or event. But none are to be found now, and we must not allow vague promises of technological magnificence to blight the simple splendor of the things that now center and sustain our lives. At the same time we must, in a new kind of maturity and adulthood, accept the plurality of focal concerns, and we can take pleasure in the social union that is fostered by that plurality. But the diverse and complementary nature of our concerns should not be seen as the convergence of the Aristotelian Principle and human finitude. That would diminish focal things to the indifferent furniture of an abstract principle. The threat of one-sidedness that Rawls fears if focal things and practices are taken as dominant ends does not really obtain. Significant or focal things, as pointed out in Chapter 21, have an unsurpassable depth which surely distinguishes them from a dominant end in Rawls’s precise sense where such an end “is clearly specified as attaining some objective goal such as political power or material wealth.”21 A dominant end in this sharp conception is more consonant with technology where gifted and ambitious people, dissatisfied with the shallowness of consumption, seek a transcendent goal and yet remain enthralled by technology in choosing a goal that has in principle procurable and controllable, i.e., measurable, character.

  There remains one possibility of unity and coherence arising among the dispersed focal concerns. It appears when we remember that the variety of “focal” practices in pretechnological societies was centered about one focus proper, religious in nature. The focus proper did not unite all the subordinate engaging activities as a rule covers its applications. Rather the central focus surpassed the peripheral ones in concreteness, depth, and significance. As suggested in Chapter 23, there may be a hidden focus of that sort now, or one may emerge sometime. But who is to say? To the blight of the enthrallment with technology there corresponds symmetrically the impatient waiting or insistence on the great epiphany of the world’s central focus. Instead we should gratefully record the present wealth of focal things and practices, take these things to heart, and work toward a republic of focal concerns.

  Having secured, to some extent, a place for the plurality, concreteness and simplicity of focal concerns, we must now show more soberly and specifically how they serve as a basis for the reform of technology. And the first question is: How broad a basis will it be? I have suggested in Chapter 23 that there is a wide and steady, if frequently concealed, current of focal practices that runs through the history of this country. It is the other American mainstream. Its various stretches are linked by the generic features that focal things have in common, and it may be helpful to outline this kinship more formally as a set of traits that focal things and practices exhibit for the most part. These traits are not conditions that are sufficient to qualify something as focal. Nor is each of these traits necessary. Rather these features reflect general recollections and anticipations of focal concerns.

  These generic features are divided between the things and practices of focal concern. But the division is not sharp since things and practices are tightly and variously interwoven. The practice of fly-fishing is centered around a definite, independent, and resplendent thing: the trout. The thing in backpacking is expansive, broadly defined, and it exists in its own right: the wilderness. In the practice of running, the thing is always and already there, Sheehan’s ocean road, for instance, or the course that the New York City Marathon takes. But it lies there, inconspicuous and indistinct, till the runners bring it into relief. And the great meal and its courses must be prepared and brought forth by the cook and the host. Still we might say this about focal things in general. They are concrete, tangible, and deep, admitting of no functional equivalents; they have a tradition, structure, and rhythm of their own. They are unprocurable and finally beyond our control. They engage us in the fullness of our capacities. And they thrive in a technological setting. A focal practice, generally, is the resolute and regular dedication to a focal thing. It sponsors discipline and skill which are exercised in a unity of achievement and enjoyment, of mind, body, and the world, of myself and others, and in a social union.

  This is just a summary of issues discussed before. An additional point must now be made. Focal practices are at ease with the natural sciences. Since focal things are concrete and tangible, they are at home in the possibility space that the sciences circumscribe. Because the givenness of these things is so eloquent and articulate, the scientific investigation of such things is not found to be a dissolution but an illumination of them. Correspondingly, the human being, as it is engaged and oriented by great things and is so an eminent focus itself, suffers no threat or diminishment f
rom scientific examination. Capon and Sheehan testify to this openness. They use scientific insight gladly, easily, and often to bring out the splendor and depth of the things that matter to them. It is clear, in light of Chapters 4–7, that the reform of technology would rest on a treacherous foundation if focal things and practices violated or resented the bounds of science.

  We now turn explicitly to the reform of technology. It is evident from Chapter 20 that the reform must be one of and not merely one within the device paradigm. It is reasonable to expect that a reform of the paradigm would involve a restructuring of the device, perhaps the deletion, addition, and rearrangement of internal features. And this would lead, one might think, to the construction of different, perhaps intrinsically and necessarily benign technological devices. But I believe the device paradigm is perfect in its way, and if concrete pefections within the overall pattern are to be achieved, this will be the task of research and development scientists and engineers, not of philosophers. A reform of the paradigm is even less, of course, a dismantling of technology or of the technological universe. It is rather the recognition and the restraint of the paradigm. To restrain the paradigm is to restrict it to its proper sphere. Its proper sphere is the background or periphery of focal things and practices. Technology so reformed is no longer the characteristic and dominant way in which we take up with reality; rather it is a way of proceeding that we follow at certain times and up to a point, one that is left behind when we reach the threshold of our focal and final concerns. The concerns that move us to undertake a reform of the paradigm lead to reforms within the paradigm as well. Since a focal practice discloses the significance of things and the dignity of humans, it engenders a concern for the safety and wellbeing of things and persons. Consequently, focal concerns will stress and support the paradigm’s native tendency toward safety, both locally and globally. It will concur with the efforts of consumer advocates and environmentalists, not of course to save and entrench the rule of technology but to provide a secure margin for what matters centrally.

  But is this really a radical and remarkable reform proposal? Is it not indistinguishable from all the programs that are worried about the excesses of technology, about the imbalance between means and ends, about the suppression of the value question, and about the enslavement of humankind by its own invention? Would it not be fair to say that these programs have anticipated the goal of the present reform proposal, namely, to restrict technology to the status of a means and to introduce new ends? The question is simply unanswerable because it is deeply ambiguous. If by new ends we mean different commodities, then the present proposal differs sharply from traditional programs of reform. Reform must make room for focal things and practices. In a broad sense, these are the ends that technology should serve. But this broader sense of the means-ends relation is in conflict with the means-ends structure, embodied in the device paradigm. We can put the point at issue clearly, if baldly, this way. Both the common and the present reform proposals revolve about a means-ends distinction. In the common view, the distinction is placed within the device paradigm, in alignment with the machinery-commodity distinction. Thus the role of technology remains invisible and unchallenged. The present proposal is to restrict the entire paradigm, both the machinery and the commodities, to the status of a means and let focal things and practices be our ends. The conflict between these two views is easily overlooked. It is that unresolved conflict that infects the question above with ambiguity. More important, as argued repeatedly and particularly in Chapter 11, the sharpness, pervasiveness, and concealment of the technological means-ends relation exert a nearly irresistible pressure toward resolving the ambiguity in favor of technology. Most traditional reform proposals are finally ensnared by the device paradigm and fail to challenge the rule of technology and its debilitating consequences. Hence a radical reform, as said above, requires the recognition and the restraint of the device paradigm, a recognition that is guided by a focal concern. Such recognition can, as suggested in the preceding chapter, shade over into an implicit understanding though explication, it is hoped, would sharpen it.

  Let me now draw out the concrete consequences of this kind of reform. I begin with particular illustrations and proceed to broader observations. Sheehan’s focal concern is running, but he does not run everywhere he wants to go. To get to work he drives a car. He depends on that technological device and its entire associated machinery of production, service, resources, and roads. Clearly, one in Sheehan’s position would want the car to be as perfect a technological device as possible: safe, reliable, easy to operate, free of maintenance. Since runners deeply enjoy the air, the trees, and the open spaces that grace their running, and since human vigor and health are essential to their enterprise, it would be consistent of them to want an environmentally benign car, one that is free of pollution and requires a minimum of resources for its production and operation. Since runners express themselves through running, they would not need to do so through the glitter, size, and newness of their vehicles.22

  At the threshold of their focal concern, runners leave technology behind, technology, i.e., as a way of taking up with the world. The products of technology remain ubiquitous, of course: clothing, shoes, watches, and the roads. But technology can produce instruments as well as devices, objects that call forth engagement and allow for a more skilled and intimate contact with the world.23 Runners appreciate shoes that are light, firm, and shock absorbing. They allow one to move faster, farther, and more fluidly. But runners would not want to have such movement procured by a motorcycle, nor would they, on the other side, want to obtain merely the physiological benefit of such bodily movement from a treadmill.

  A focal practice engenders an intelligent and selective attitude toward technology. It leads to a simplification and perfection of technology in the background of one’s focal concern and to a discerning use of technological products at the center of one’s practice. I am not, of course, describing an evident development or state of affairs. It does appear from what little we know statistically of the runners in this country, for instance, that they lead a more engaged, discriminating, and a socially more profound life.24 I am rather concerned to draw out the consequences that naturally follow for technology from a focal commitment and from a recognition of the device pattern. There is much diffidence, I suspect, among people whose life is centered, even in their work, around a great concern. Music is surely one of these. But at times, it seems to me, musicians coniine the radiance, the rhythm, and the order of music and the ennobling competence that it requires to the hours and places of performance. The entrenchment of technology may make it seem quixotic to want to lead a fully musical life or to change the larger technological setting so that it would be more hospitable and attentive to music. Moreover, as social creatures we seek the approval of our fellows according to the prevailing standards. One may be a runner first and most of all; but one wants to prove too that one has been successful in the received sense. Proof requires at least the display, if not the consumption, of expensive commodities. Such inconsistency is regrettable, not because we just have to have reform of technology but because it is a partial disavowal of one’s central concern. To have a focal thing radiate transformatively into its environment is not to exact some kind of service from it but to grant it its proper eloquence.

  There is of course intuitive evidence for the thesis that a focal commitment leads to an intelligent limitation of technology.25 There are people who, struck by a focal concern, remove much technological clutter from their lives. In happy situations, the personal and private reforms take three directions. The first is of course to clear a central space for the focal thing, to establish an inviolate time for running, or to establish a hearth in one’s home for the culture of the table. And this central clearing goes hand in hand, as just suggested, with a newly discriminating use of technology.26 The second direction of reform is the simplification of the context that surrounds and supports the focal area. And then there is
a third endeavor, that of extending the sphere of engagement as far as possible. Having experienced the depth of things and the pleasure of full-bodied competence at the center, one seeks to extend such excellence to the margins of life. “Do it yourself” is the maxim of this tendency and “self-sufficiency” its goal. But the tendencies for which these titles stand also exhibit the dangers of this third direction of reform. Engagement, however skilled and disciplined, becomes disoriented when it exhausts itself in the building, rebuilding, refinement, and maintenance of stages on which nothing is ever enacted. People finish their basements, fertilize their lawns, fix their cars. What for? The peripheral engagement suffocates the center, and festivity, joy, and humor disappear. Similarly, the striving for self-sufficiency may open up a world of close and intimate relations with things and people. But the demands of the goal draw a narrow and impermeable boundary about that world. There is no time to be a citizen of the cultural and political world at large and no possibility of assuming one’s responsibility in it. The antidote to such disorientation and constriction is the appropriate acceptance of technology. In one or another area of one’s life one should gratefully accept the disburdenment from daily and time-consuming chores and allow celebration and world citizenship to prosper in the time that has been gained.