Through a glass technologically
Guest blog by Michiel Nederlof
One of the first philosophers who treated technology as a central theme is Martin Heidegger, who remains an important but controversial thinker in the philosophy of technology. A summary of his thoughts about the subject need not be given, since he himself condensed his thoughts on the subject into his short work A Question Concerning Technology. The notoriously vague terminology in which it written, is part of a bigger project in which he tries to liberate concepts from their legacy, but mostly succeeded in confusing a lot of readers and ultimately distracted from the arguments he tried to convey. Furthermore, it remains problematic that he was a member of the Nazi party, albeit for one year publicly, but more damning are his recently published notebooks in which it is clear he privately continued to confess anti-Semitic sentiments. For these and other reasons, his views are often glossed over. His insights about technology can be discriminated from his political and personal views, and still serve as a fruitful point of departure for thinking about technology. Here I would like to present his key insights without using too much of his vague terminology.
The argument made by Heidegger is quite simple: technologies are not merely tools to be used, but are the tangible outgrowths of an underlying way of thinking. The technological mindset facilitates a particular way of looking at the world which is not value neutral. How the world is framed, to a large degree, determines how we treat it. He argues not against technology and not even against the technological mindset, because it is fantastic and useful in many regards. What worries Heidegger is how far this computational way of thinking is increasingly applied to all other aspects of life, and becomes the only way of thinking. First and foremost, the latter development deserves to be recognized and questioned. Secondly, what alternatives can be formulated to counteract this development?
Computational reduction and dominion
Ever since the scientific revolution, the emphasis shifted increasingly to observation and quantification. And though the philosophical position of materialism is not universally acknowledged, nevertheless the materialistic assumption is the working hypothesis of science. In effect: if it can’t be measured, it doesn’t exist. Only if we can measure it, we can translate it into numbers and these numbers can be analyzed in mathematical models. The language of mathematics purveys science and bestows an air of objectivity that is not comparable to conclusions derived at in the ‘softer’ sciences like sociology or literature. The STEM fields are seen as the ‘harder’ sciences and are more highly regarded precisely for its computational essence.
Slowly but surely, computational thinking has become the dominant mode of thinking. In the economical calculus we are ever striving for more profit, most ethical considerations boil down to a similar utilitarian cost-benefit calculus, political discourse is dominated by cost of policies and how it affects the GDP, a students’ education is regarded as an investment in his or her future, a healthy lifestyle seems encouraged by employers and government primarily to reduce healthcare costs, &c. Computational thinking determines our values and has become so commonsensical, it’s almost impossible to think beyond it. In turn, this mindset consequently shapes how we perceive the world. Nature is conceived as a commodity to be used and rearranged as man sees fit. The natural world becomes a mere resource to be consumed. In short, the technological mindset transforms our environment into resources with the intention of gaining the most efficient yield.
The technological mindset has a profound domineering character. Take for instance the following 1928 mission statement of the American Bureau of Reclamation, expressing the ethos of our modern era:
“The destiny of man is to possess the whole earth; and the destiny of the earth is to be subject to man. There can be no full conquest of the earth, and no real satisfaction to humanity, if large portions of the earth remain beyond his highest control. Only as parts of the earth are developed according to the best existing knowledge, and brought under human control, can man be said to possess the earth.”
The mission statement epitomizes the drastic change in attitude towards nature, due to the greater power of technology. From time immemorial, technology has been a means for survival in a hostile environment, but after the Industrial Revolution, sufficiently powerful machines arose that could return the hostility against the same environment. By the 19th century, the engineer was generally portrayed as a heroic fighter, a conqueror, overcoming whatever stands in his path. The attitude of technology reflected the recently formulated Darwinian evolutionary insight, as engineers treated nature as their enemy in the human struggle for survival and designed machines to defeat all natural resistance.
Technological glasses
Nevertheless, it would go too far to claim technology as such is evil; and neither is its underlying mode of thinking a bad way of looking at the world. Technology and the hard sciences are wonderful fields, enabling truly amazing achievements like deploying a vehicle on the surface of Mars, or ordering groceries online in the comfort of your own home. The question of technology is rather: can we take off our glasses through which we gaze at the world technologically, and see the world through different lenses as well? Like a drug, the ease with which it produces great yield is exactly what should make us wonder and reconsider its price. What will we give up when the technological mindset becomes the only way of thinking? In case we can no longer take of those glasses, will we not lose the most important part of what makes us human? If we are unable to do so, we would reduce ourselves to mere computers, trapped as cogs inside a machine of our own making. Conversely, it would be unwise to throw these technological glasses away. Even if a full rejection of technology would be viable, it would be as foolish as the thing it would try to escape. Who really would want to return to a state of nature without even a technology like clothing? The technophile is just as enslaved to technology, as the technophobe is enslaved to his aversion of technology.
According to Heidegger, and many others with him who recognize the shortcomings of the technological mindset, we are in desperate need of alternatives. Apart from technophobia, environmentalism might seem to be the most obvious response to the destructive aspects of technology. Environmentalism fights pollution for the preservation of the natural world and all the organisms it inhabits. To a greater or lesser extent, environmentalism assumes earth to function as a homeostatic system. It describes a holistic view of the world as a closed system, in which every organism has a specific place and function. In environmentalism, the pollution produced by modern technology brings the system of nature, the ecology, out of balance. In response, environmentalism reacted by either protesting against destructive forms of technology, or promoting zero waste policies in which we have to reduce our carbon footprint. These projects of sustainability have become commonsensical in engineering and society at large, as we strive to reduce humanities’ impact on its environment by calculating the maximum rate of pollution and depletion of resources, with the aim to endure indefinitely. This environmentalist or ecological reasoning reduces the earth to a machine with parts that require repair, or an equation to be balanced. The tragedy of environmentalism is that it is forced to formulate arguments within the logic of computational thinking, in order to make sense and be taken seriously at all. In this sense, it fails as an alternative to the technological framework, but proves to be a different side of the same coin.
Non-computational thinking
Over and against computational thinking, Heidegger posits what he calls meditative or reflective thinking. It is important to stress this mode of thinking is not a substitute, nor superior. Heidegger suggests these two modes of thinking require a balance and should complement each other in an odd but interesting manner. The idea goes back to Aristotle who distinguished multiple ways that things are generated. When things come about automatically and grow unimpeded, we call it nature. In case we do not let nature come about automatically, but impose a pre-conceived plan on nature, we practice engineering. So nature is not the inverse of technology, but opposite ends of a spectrum. The Heideggerian alternative is the middle way between unimpeded nature and completely domineering technology. He takes the image of a rustic farmer, who isn’t himself the sole cause of the crops he grows, but rather aids and steers his environment by taking care of it. His care is a combination of a passive acceptance of what emerges as nature and an active intervention to assist nature reach its full potential. Take the famous anecdote about Michelangelo for instance; who claimed his David was already in the piece of marble. He merely subtracted the excess material. He does not simply impose his own design on it, like the technological framework, but brings out what is already present within it: a beautiful piece of art.
Let’s consider another scenario given by Heidegger, where he illustrates the two modes of thinking. Both are technological solutions for the same problem, how to derive energy from a river. One is a hydroelectric dam. The structure embodies the domination technological worldview; because it reduces a river to a collection of Mega Watts, waiting to be extracted. A dam has a sense of megalomania about it. It exemplifies the hubristic attitude of the 19th century engineer, who could look at something as powerful and majestic as a river, and haughtily decides to cut off its flow. The whole land is distorted for sake of the project, flooding sacrificial towns in the valley for its reservoir basin. The result is awfully efficient though, with great yield and a source of labor and energy.
Another solution to the same problem, is building a mill upon the river. In this less controlling alternative, the river is neither stopped, nor changed, nor forced into routes it would not naturally take. The mill is an addition to the landscape, instead of a remodeling of the countryside. A mill is equally dependent on technology, albeit less efficient, and that is exactly the point. An optimized equation need not be the justification for everything. In this example, the mill is an older technology than the hydroelectric dam, but it does not mean that older technology is always superior. What differentiates the two solutions is the underlying worldview which they illustrate. The Heideggerian engineer distances himself from the 19th century model of a conqueror of nature and comes closer to the image of a craftsman or artisan. Here, technology once again connects to art, as its Greek root τέχνη (téchne) was originally translated. The reflective engineer has an artistic sensibility and is more respectful to the material with which he works. The craftsman no longer battles against nature, but resumes the co-responsibility and partnership with nature; this can be done with cutting edge technology as well as by traditional tools.
New questions
In summary, in the modern age we have grown almost incapable of looking at the world other than as problems to be solved and a heap of resources to solve it with. The question of technology lies deeper than its tangible results, and shows how we are embedded in a computational way of thinking which reduces of everything to an equation in search for profit. The technological mindset is nevertheless useful and has merit in specific fields, but it deserves to be questioned whether it needs to be applied to all aspects of life. The subsequent question is obviously: what are the alternatives? One such alternative was envisioned by Heidegger, who proposed a middle way between the natural and technological way of shaping the world, moving away from the domineering aspects of technology, without abandoning technology altogether. Ironically, Heidegger’s stance is by many still regarded as antithetical to (modern) technology, perhaps for his romanticist sounding counterexamples. Nevertheless, I think he opened up a new way of thinking about technology that merits further examination. Thinking about technology should look further than its effects. What worldview do technologies convey? And more importantly; what worldviews do we want technology to enable?