What Technology Values

http://al3x.net/2011/02/21/technology-and-values.html

by younata • 15 years ago

17 5 15 years ago

Flagged for being vacuous. The author is misusing a word as an excuse to claim everyone is making false assertions about referents they didn't even have in mind. Technology is the study of tools and techniques, not anything else ("dehumanization"? seriously?) on his laundry list.

younata• 15 years ago

You bring up a good point. However, because of its use as a political buzz-word, 'technology' has connotations that go far beyond it's original meaning.

rbarooah2• 15 years ago

Nicely written, and an important point. Technologies are developed by people to make something easier or to make something harder (or some combination of the two). This is never going to be value neutral.

Developing weapons technology is making killing easier. Developing communications technologies is making communications easier. Developing systems that collect personal data is making surveillance easier. All technology choices are value choices.

derleth• 15 years ago

> Developing weapons technology is making killing easier.

Not universally a bad thing, as it helps in self-defense.

> Developing communications technologies is making communications easier.

Not universally a good thing, as it aids in the commission of crimes and, as we've seen, makes it increasingly easy to commit crimes that are both very hard to prosecute and, due to that, very good excuses for taking down walls that on the whole protect liberty.

> Developing systems that collect personal data is making surveillance easier.

Not universally a bad thing, if it helps stop serious crimes.

I admit to guessing at which statements you expected me to go "Yay!" or "Boo!" at. My point isn't so much that the fault is not in our microchips but in ourselves, but that it's surprisingly difficult to imagine a technology, or even a use for a technology, that really has no potential to be genuinely positive.

rbarooah2• 15 years ago

I didn't actually expect people to go 'yay' or 'boo' at any statement in particular. The point is that there are value judgements associated with each one - trade offs. They are not neutral.

I have to disagree with you about the fault being not in our technology. I'd say the faults are in both. The technology is an embodiment of our flawed judgement, but is real nonetheless. We make choices about what technology to create, but once we have created it we have to live in the new environment we have made. Technology reifies our ideas. That environment affects us. Some environments bring out more positive traits in us, and some bring out more negative ones. We do have the capacity to design for the positive.

I agree that we can imagine a potentially positive use for almost anything. But we can equally well imagine a world with unicorns and fairies. What matters is the effects technologies actually have in the real world.

Our technology can never be separated from ourselves.

What Technology Values

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