Technology Uber Alles

[mattd]

Technology Tech-nol-o-gy n. According to Webster's: industrial or applied 
science. In reality: the ensemble of division of 
labor/production/industrialism and its impact on us and on nature. 
Technology is the sum of mediations between us and the natural world and 
the sum of those separations mediating us from each other. it is all the 
drudgery and toxicity required to produce and reproduce the stage of 
hyper-alienation we live in. It is the texture and the form of domination 
at any given stage of hierarchy and commodification. Those who still say 
that technology is "neutral," "merely a tool," have not yet begun to 
consider what is involved. Junger, Adorno and Horkheimer, Ellul and a few 
others over the past decades - not to mention the crushing, all but 
unavoidable truth of technology in its global and personal toll - have led 
to a deeper approach to the topic. Thirty-five years ago the esteemed 
philosopher Jaspers wrote that "Technology is only a means, in itself 
neither good nor evil. Everything depends upon what man makes of it, for 
what purpose it serves him, under what conditions he places it." The 
archaic sexism aside, such superficial faith in specialization and 
technical progress is increasingly seen as ludicrous. Infinitely more on 
target was Marcuse when he suggested in 1964 that "the very concept of 
technical reason is perhaps ideological. Not only the application of 
technology, but technology itself is domination... methodical, ascientific, 
calculated, calculating control." Today we experience that control as a 
steady reduction of our contact with the living world, a speeded-up 
Information Age emptyness drained by computerization and poisoned by the 
dead, domesticating imperialism of high-tech method. Never before have 
people been so infantalized, made so dependant on the machine for 
everything; as the earth rapidly approaches its extinction due to 
technology, our souls are shrunk and flattened by its pervasive rule. Any 
sense of wholeness and freedom can only return by the undoing of the 
massive division of labor at the heart of technological progress. This is 
the liberatory project in all its depth. Of course, the popular literature 
does not yet reflect a critical awareness of what technology is. Some works 
completely embrace the direction we are being taken, such as McCorduck's 
'Machines Who Think' and Simons' 'Are Computers Alive?', to mention a 
couple of the more horrendous. Other, even more recent books seem to offer 
a judgement that finally flies in the face of mass pro-tech propaganda, but 
fail dismally as they reach their conclusions. Murphy, Mickunas and Pilotta 
edited 'The Underside of High-Tech: Technology and the Deformation of Human 
Sensibilities' , who's ferocious title is completely undercut by an ending 
that technology will become human as soon as we change our assumptions 
about it! Very similar is Siegel and Markoff's 'The High Cost of High 
Tech'; after chapters detailing the various levels of technological 
debilitation, we once again learn that its all just a question of attitude: 
"We must, as a society, understand the full impact of high technology if we 
are to shape it into a tool for enhancing human comfort, freedom and 
peace." This kind of cowardice and/or dishonesty owes only in part to the 
fact that major publishing corporations do not wish to publicize 
fundamentally radical ideas.
Zerzan.(extract)