Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry

by Albert Borgmann

  34. See the Thompson and Gutman papers cited in nn. 1 and 3 above.

  35. See Braverman, pp. 11–13.

  36. Gendron and Holmstrom attempt to construct such an argument in the article cited in n. 11 above.

  37. Ibid., p. 128.

  38. Thompson quoting a Methodist lay preacher, p. 75.

  39. Ibid., pp. 83–88.

  40. See de Grazia, pp. 131–45; Braverman, pp. 139–52; and J. B. Schneewind, “Technology, Ways of Living, and Values in 19th Century England,” in Values and the Future, ed. Kurt Baier and Nicholas Rescher (New York, 1971), pp. 125–32.

  41. See Form’s article cited in n. 5 above.

  42. See Louis E. Davis and Albert B. Cherns, eds., The Quality of Working Life (New York, 1975), p. 14; and in the same anthology Stanley E. Seashore, “Defining and Measuring the Quality of Working Life,” pp. 107–8.

  43. On the duality of responses, see John P. Robinson, How Americans Use Time (New York, 1977), pp. 125 and 128. For in-depth testimonies on the draining and stultifying nature of divided labor, see Studs Terkel, Working (New York, 1974). A survey of findings on work dissatisfaction in the United States can be found in Work in America, prepared by a Special Task Force of the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), pp. 10–23 and 29–56.

  44. See Christoph Lauterburg, Vor dem Ende der Hierarchie, 2d ed. (Düsseldorf, 1980), p. 52.

  45. See “The Robot Revolution,” Time, 8 December 1980, quoting James S. Albus on p. 73. Further materials on microelectronics and labor in Tom Forester, ed., The Microelectronics Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), pp. 290–355.

  46. See Lauterburg, p. 49.

  47. See “Robots Join the Labor Force,” Business Week, 9 June 1980, p. 63; see also “The Robot Revolution,” in Time, 8 December 1980, p. 78; and Colin Norman, Microelectronics at Work: Productivity and Jobs in the World Economy (Washington, D.C., 1980), p. 6.

  48. See Lauterburg, pp. 20–31 and 43–47.

  49. On the growth and the necessity of hierarchical organization in American business and industry, see Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, Mass., 1977.)

  50. See Time, 8 December 1980, p. 73; Business Week, 9 June 1980, p. 64.

  51. See Business Week, 9 June 1980, p. 63. See Norman, pp. 29–40. A progress report on the way to automation has been given in Scientific American 247 (September 1982) which is devoted to the mechanization of work.

  52. See Norman, pp. 21–29, Business Week, 9 June 1980, pp. 62–63, Newsweek, 30 June 1980, p. 51. See also “A New Era for Management,” Business Week, 25 April 1983, pp. 50–80.

  53. See Business Week, June 9, 1980, p. 63.

  54. Ibid., p. 68.

  55. For beginnings of this trend, see Hans Berglind, “Unemployment and Redundancy in a ‘Post-Industrial’ Labor Market,” in Work and Technology, ed. Marie R. Haug and Jacques Dofny (London, 1977), pp. 195–213. See also “The Disenchantment of the Middle Class,” Business Week, 25 April 1983, pp. 82–86.

  CHAPTER 18

  1. See Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality (New York, 1973), pp. 1–8.

  2. See Tibor Scitovsky, The Joyless Economy (New York, 1976), pp. 165–70.

  3. See “The Robot Revolution,” Time, 8 December 1980, p. 83; see also “And Man Created the Chip,” Newsweek, 30 June 1980, pp. 51 and 56; and Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave (New York, 1981), pp. 155–67 and 380–91.

  4. Walter Kerr, The Decline of Pleasure (New York, 1962); Staffan B. Linder, The Harried Leisure Class (New York, 1970); Scitovsky, The Joyless Economy. Studies in the same vein with less indicative titles are August Heckscher, The Public Happiness (New York, 1962); Sebastian de Grazia, Of Time, Work, and Leisure (Garden City, N.Y., 1964); Fred Hirsch, Social Limits to Growth (Cambridge, Mass., 1976); Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (New York, 1976); William Leiss, The Limits to Satisfaction (Toronto, 1976). See n. 1 in Chapter 13.

  5. Two loci classici of this ideal are Plato’s allegory of the cave in The Republic, 514A-517A, and the beginning of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, 980a22–983a24. World citizenship is of course the result of education in the profound sense.

  6. Gallantry corresponds to the Greek ideal of being kalòs kagathòs and to the Roman principle of mens sana in sano corpore.

  7. “Above all,” says de Grazia, “the Greeks were and wished to be musicians.” See Of Time, Work, and Leisure, p. 15.

  8. See Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago, 1958), pp. 236–43.

  9. What I am asserting is, more technically put, that underlying the ethics of rules, which is dominant today, the older ethics of virtues is still weakly alive and can to some extent be appealed to. On the demise of the morality of virtues, see Alasdair MacIntyre’s illuminating book After Virtue (Notre Dame, Ind., 1981). MacIntyre argues that the older morality has survived in unintelligible fragments only and that no equally viable and consistent ethics has taken its place. It is clear from MacIntyre’s study that the drawing up of a list of virtues is difficult in the best of circumstances. But whether the list above is sound or not is finally less than decisive since, as I want to show in Part 3, Chapter 24 in particular, the tradition of virtues must be revived from the ground up.

  10. On the modern demise of world citizenship, see Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man (New York, 1977).

  11. See de Grazia, pp. 59 and 419.

  12. Ibid., pp. 59–74.

  13. See Daniel Yankelovich, New Rules (New York, 1982), p. 18.

  14. See Lee Rainwater, What Money Buys (New York, 1974), p. 46.

  15. See Linder, pp. 135–37.

  16. See John P. Robinson, How Americans Use Time (New York, 1977), pp. 89–91; and de Grazia, pp. 57–83.

  17. See Robinson, pp. 98, 102, 107.

  18. See the references in n. 4 above and also Angus Campbell, Phillip E. Converse, and Willard L. Rodgers, The Quality of American Life (New York, 1976).

  19. See Robinson, pp. 92, 102, and 173–79; and de Grazia, pp. 106–8 and 422.

  20. See Bertrand de Jouvenel, “Technology as a Means,” in Values and the Future, ed. Kurt Baier and Nicholas Rescher (New York, 1969), p. 217. Very similar remarks by Emmanuel G. Mesthene can be found in his “Technology and Wisdom,” in Philosophy and Technology, ed. Mitcham and Mackey (New York, 1972), pp. 110–11.

  21. See de Jouvenel, p. 232.

  22. See Chapter 8.

  23. See Chapter 10.

  24. See Howard Mumford Jones, The Pursuit of Happiness (Ithaca, N.Y., 1966).

  25. See ibid., pp. 74–80; Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden (London, 1964), pp. 117–50; and Hugo A. Meier, “Thomas Jefferson and a Democratic Technology,” in Technology in America, ed. Caroll W. Pursell, Jr. (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), pp. 17–33.

  26. See Richard A. Easterlin, “Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot?” Nations and Households in Economic Growth, ed. Paul A. David and Melvin W. Reder (New York, 1974), pp. 89–125; and “Does Money Buy Happiness?” Public Interest, no. 30 (1973), pp. 3–10; Hirsch, pp. 111–14; and Nicholas Rescher, Unpopular Essays on Technological Progress (Pittsburgh, 1980), pp. 3–22.

  27. See Scitovsky, pp. 59–79.

  28. Ibid., pp. 204–47.

  29. Ibid., p. 234.

  30. Ibid., pp. 150 and 234.

  31. Ibid., pp. 149–203 and passim.

  32. See ibid., pp. 234 and 254–55.

  33. See Hirsch, pp. 117–58, 128–29, and p. 141 in particular.

  34. Ibid., pp. 111–13.

  35. Ibid., pp. 55–60.

  36. See Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (New York, 1955 [first published in 1848]), pp. 9–15.

  37. See Hirsch, p. 167.

  38. Richard Sennett quotes Raymond Hood, “one of the presiding geniuses of the Rockefeller Center development,” as saying: “Congestion is good. . . . New York is the first place in the world where a man can work within a ten-minute walk of
a quarter of a million people. . . .” In “Giants of the Market. The Skyscraper. By Paul Goldberger,” New York Times Book Review, 29 November 1981, p. 15.

  39. See Michael R. Real, “The Super Bowl: Mythic Spectacle,” in Television: The Critical View, ed. Horace Newcomb, 2d ed. (New York, 1979), pp. 170–203.

  40. See Hirsch, pp. 95–101.

  41. Hirsch provides indirect support for this view by pointing out that the effectiveness of the supporting morality “does not require neighborly love to exist, but only action as if it exists” (p. 142; see also pp. 146–47). An as-if-instruction invokes a familiar pattern to secure an as-yet unfamiliar behavior. But there is always some excess and deficiency in the familiar pattern which through repeated use in the unfamiliar setting are gradually adjusted. Finally, the new behavior is familiar and is seen to have its own character. There are numerous examples of this in sports and music. Here the shift is perhaps from as-if-altruism to the acceptance of the device paradigm.

  42. See Hirsch, pp. 7–83; and Scitovsky, pp. 170–81 and 236–47.

  43. See Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost (New York, 1965), pp. 1–106; John Demos, “The American Family in Past Time,” American Scholar 43 (1974): 422–46; Mary Jo Bane, Here to Stay: American Families in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1976), p. 37; Ruth S. Cowan, “The ‘Industrial Revolution’ in the Home: Household Technology and Social Change in the 20th Century,” Technology and Culture 17 (1976):1–3.

  43. See Christopher Lasch, Haven in a Heartless World (New York, 1979).

  44. Ibid., pp. 22–43. Perhaps the ultimate dissolution of the household is reached when the companion is further reduced to a procurer of the commodities required to satisfy the spouse’s “emotional needs.” Andrew Hacker quotes Andrew Cherlin as saying that “husbands and wives are more likely today than in the past to evaluate their marriage primarily according to how well it satisfied their emotional needs.” See “Farewell to the Family?” New York Review of Books, 18 March 1982, p. 38.

  46. See Lasch, pp. 62–110.

  47. See Urie Bronfenbrenner, “The Disturbing Changes in the American Family,” Search 2, no. 1 (Fall 1976):4–10; and Hacker, “Farewell to the Family?” pp. 37–44.

  48. On the stability of the family, see the Bane and Hacker references in nn. 43 and 47 above.

  49. See John Kenneth Galbraith, Economics and the Public Purpose (Boston, 1973), pp. 233–40.

  50. See Cowan, p. 21. The manipulation and exploitation of women has remained a prominent feature of advertising to this day.

  51. See Grace Hechinger, “Happy Mother’s Day,” Newsweek, 11 May 1981, p. 19.

  52. See Lillian Breslow Rubin, Worlds of Pain: Life in the Working Class Family (New York, 1976), p. 169.

  53. See Myra Marx Ferree, “The Confused American Housewife,” Psychology Today 10, no. 4 (September 1976):76–80.

  54. See Daniel Yankelovich, New Rules (New York, 1982), pp. 93 and 101.

  55. “Defensive products” is Ralph Hawtrey’s term, quoted and explained by Scitovsky, pp. 108–9; Hirsch, pp. 55–60, speaks of regrettable necessities; and Rescher, in Unpopular Essays, pp. 5–6, uses the expression “negative benefits.”

  56. For these and other examples, see “And Man Created the Chip,” Newsweek, 30 June 1980, p. 50; Myron Berger, “Enter the Computer,” New York Times Magazine, pt. 2, 27 September 1981; and George O’Brien, “Living with Electronics,” ibid., pp. 25–37.

  57. There is of course Linder’s problem of harriedness where a hectic and unhappy life results from cramming more and more consumption into the necessarily limited leisure time (see n. 4 for reference). A critique, similar to that of Scitovsky and Hirsch, is needed here, and it would have to make these points. Harriedness as a problem within technology will have our full attention and the benefit of technological resourcefulness. By means of scheduling, innovation, variety, and arranging for “quality time,” we can secure at least the semblance of a solution. While harriedness can so be alleviated, the problem of disengagement and distraction is exacerbated at the same time.

  58. See Real’s article referred to in n. 39 above.

  59. This tendency is well illustrated by the reaction of parents to teenage pregnancy which they commonly bemoan as a technical, not a moral, failure.

  60. See Marie Winn, The Plug-in Drug (New York, 1978); and Neil Postman, “Childhood’s End: The Tragedy of the Television Age,” American Educator 5, no. 3 (1981):20–25 and 37.

  61. See Robinson, How Americans Use Time, pp. 105–7.

  62. See Winn, pp. 179–83.

  63. Ibid., pp. 189–92.

  64. See Dennis Porter, “Soap Time: Thoughts on a Commodity Art Form,” in Television, ed. Newcomb, pp. 87–96.

  65. Quoted by Winn on p. 129.

  66. See Paul M. Hirsch, “The Role of Television and Popular Culture in Contemporary Society,” in Television, ed. Newcomb, p. 263.

  67. Ibid., p. 261.

  68. See Winn, pp. 12, 17–18, 25, 160–61, 166, 191–92, 232, and passim. Robinson on the other hand reports (on p. 179) that not many Americans “feel that the television programs they watch are a waste of time.” Whence this inconsistency? As in surveys on work satisfaction, the evaluation in the responses may depend heavily on the setting and the scope of the question. See the preceding chapter and nn. 41–43 in that chapter.

  69. See Robinson, p. 173.

  70. Ibid., p. 116.

  71. See Winn, pp. 215–44.

  72. Ibid., pp. 228–29 and passim.

  CHAPTER 19

  1. See Robert L. Heilbroner, An Inquiry into the Human Prospect, 2d ed. (New York, 1980), pp. 18–19. Note that for Heilbroner scientific technology is the driving force of the time whose prospect he considers (pp. 56, 74–75, 92, 108). See also Warren Johnson, Muddling toward Frugality (Boulder, Colo., 1979), pp. 13 and 233–34.

  2. See my review of Edward Goodwin Ballard, Man and Technology (Pittsburgh, 1978), and of Donald M. Borchert and David Stewart, eds., Being Human in a Technological Age (Athens, Ohio, 1979), in Man and World 15 (1982):112–14 for references and discussion.

  3. See E. F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful (New York, 1973), pp. 31, 32, 37, 46, 101, 263.

  4. See Chapter 2 for discussion of the substantive notion of technology and n. 7 in that chapter for a reference to Florman who lays bare the weaknesses of that concept.

  5. See the review cited in n. 2 for examples and discussion.

  6. See Staffan B. Linder, The Harried Leisure Class (New York, 1970). Duane Elgin argues that there are forbidding bureaucratic limits to growth. See his Voluntary Simplicity (New York, 1981), pp. 251–71. See n. 57 in the preceding chapter for discussion.

  7. See Schumacher, pp. 20 and 147. See also Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality (New York, 1973), pp. 71 and 85.

  8. See Schumacher, pp. 113, 159, 262; and Illich, pp. 13, 48, 51–54, 108; and the review referred to in n. 2 above. A classic statement of the pessimistic view is given by S. R. Eyre, “Man the Pest: The Dim Chance of Survival,” New York Review of Books, 18 November 1971, pp. 18–27.

  9. See Johnson, pp. 69–90; and Heilbroner, pp. 47–55 and 68–74.

  10. Heilbroner’s distress is genuine. He mourns the passing of technological affluence and its blessings (p. 175).

  11. See Schumacher, p. 20.

  12. That evidence has been summarized by Johnson, pp. 69–90; and Heilbroner, pp. 47–55 and 68–74.

  13. See R. Buckminster Fuller, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (New York, n.d. [first published in 1969]), p. 52.

  14. See Christopher D. Stone, Should Trees Have Standing? (Los Altos, Calif., 1974), p. 53.

  15. See Lawrence H. Tribe, “Technology Assessment,” Southern California Law Review 46 (1973):620. For discussion and eloquent expressions of this view by Archibald MacLeish and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, see Ronald Weber, “The View from Space: Notes on Space Exploration and Recent Writing,” Georgia Review 33, (1979):280–96, pp. 283, 288, and 289 in particular.
>
  16. See Donella H. Meadows et al., eds., The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind (New York, 1972), p. 19.

  17. Ibid., p. 35. We found that same device helpful in Chapter 9 where the device paradigm was first outlined.

  18. See Robert Stobaugh and Daniel Yergin, eds., Energy Future (New York, 1980).

  19. See Newsweek, 30 June 1980; and Time, 8 December 1980.

  20. Quoted in Colin Norman, Microelectronics at Work: Productivity and Jobs in the World Economy (Washington, D.C., 1980), p. 5. See also Herbert A. Simon, “What Computers Mean for Man and Society,” in The Microelectronics Revolution, ed. Tom Forester (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), pp. 419–33. Further appraisals can be found in Forester’s anthology on pp. 3–64 and 434–96.

  21. Set Newsweek, 30 June 1980, p. 51.

  22. See Alvin Toffler’s account of how quickly and easily he came to master a simple computer used as a word processor in The Third Wave (New York, 1981), p. 189.

  23. See Daniel Yankelovich, New Rules (New York, 1982), p. 18.

  24. See Information Please Almanac, ed. Ann Golenpaul (New York, 1975), pp. 80 and 87.

  25. See Newsweek, 30 June 1980, p. 50.

  26. Ibid.

  27. See pt. 2 of the New York Times Magazine of 27 September 1981, which was devoted to the issue of “Living with Electronics”; and Toffler’s book referred to in n. 22.

  28. Toffler in The Third Wave, pp. 265–88, argues that the consumer will more and more become a producer too, thus constituting a “prosumer.” But it is clear from the majority of his examples that prosuming is the typically unencumbered and unskilled, if newly busy, consuming which is guided by and rests on an impenetrable productive machinery.

  29. See Tony Schwartz, “The TV Pornography Boom,” New York Times Magazine, 13 September 1981.

  30. See Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (New York, 1973), pp. 477–80; and then the elaboration of this scheme (with the addition of the polity as a third and relatively independent force) in Bell’s The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (New York, 1976).

  31. On the dominance of culture, see Bell, The Cultural Contradictions, pp. 33–35.

  32. See Bell, “The Social Framework of the Information Society,” in The Microelectronics Revolution, ed. Forester, p. 509.