Sunday, July 03, 2005
Background Expertise
Evangelical Outpost has been running a series every Friday he calls "Expert Witness." The idea is to give bloggers with a particular area of interest and expertise some exposure that sucha widely read blog can provide, and allow the reader to gain a foundational understanding of that particular area of interest.
This week's entry is about the philosophy of technology by Macht of prothesis blog. He touches on a lot of points
As best as I understand it, technology is just an expression of the creative image of God that is within us. We differ from God in that we cannot create from nothing, but as He was driven to create, so are we. To differentiate technological creativity from other creative activity is, in my opinion, an artifical differentiation. All things that can be said about technology can be said about the "arts." If everyone painted, we would soon develop an environmental crisis in the scarcity of pigments, oils, and thinners, and we would have an enormous problem with waste disposal. If everyone made music, there would be unimagined levels of noise pollution.
Somehow, I am troubled by considering the issues related to technology apart from considering the human conidition in general. As Macht concludes that exisiting philosophical views on technology are inadequate -- he fails to look at the question of why. Ultimately, those views have to be placed in the context of humanity itself, and when they are, one can gain the middle ground that he seems to seek.
Oh, by the way, I heard a rumor that next week's "Expert Witness" at Evangelical Outpost is going to be particularly exciting.
This week's entry is about the philosophy of technology by Macht of prothesis blog. He touches on a lot of points
- A Definition of Technology
- The two primary philosophical viewpoints regarding technology
- The ethical ramifications of technology, in broad strokes
- The relationship between technology and science
It is very interesting stuff, but in the end I found the piece frustrating becasue it laid all of that out, but never really examined the questions towards any conclusion. Here's the concluding paragraph
We have really only touched the surface of the subject of technology. There are many other topics including the difference between natural and artificial, technology and politics, technology and ethics, sustainable/appropriate/intermediate technologies, and others. The two views of technology that I discussed - instrumentalism and substantivism - each have nuggets of truth to them. Neither is an adequate theory, however. The betterment of humanity will not come through faith in technical control or through the rejection of modern technology. Technology is neither savior nor the scapegoat for what's wrong with this world.One of the things I think I find most frustrating is the attempt to differentiate technology activity from other forms of human activity, like say the arts. I would contend that all human activity is technological in nature. Consider cave paintings in France -- before they could be made, someone had to figure out what pigments to use, how to prepare them and how to apply them -- those are all technological innovations. Humans are in large part defined by being technological -- defined by and differentiated from the rest of life by changing their environment to suit their purpoases rather than adapting to the environment as it is presented to them.
As best as I understand it, technology is just an expression of the creative image of God that is within us. We differ from God in that we cannot create from nothing, but as He was driven to create, so are we. To differentiate technological creativity from other creative activity is, in my opinion, an artifical differentiation. All things that can be said about technology can be said about the "arts." If everyone painted, we would soon develop an environmental crisis in the scarcity of pigments, oils, and thinners, and we would have an enormous problem with waste disposal. If everyone made music, there would be unimagined levels of noise pollution.
Somehow, I am troubled by considering the issues related to technology apart from considering the human conidition in general. As Macht concludes that exisiting philosophical views on technology are inadequate -- he fails to look at the question of why. Ultimately, those views have to be placed in the context of humanity itself, and when they are, one can gain the middle ground that he seems to seek.
Oh, by the way, I heard a rumor that next week's "Expert Witness" at Evangelical Outpost is going to be particularly exciting.
