Steps in knowing how
beneficial tool complexes can have negative consequences.
Write for five minutes:
What sorts of lasting changes
does automated technology make that mechanical tool complexes did not?
Pacey – Meaning in Technology.
Postman – everything you ever knew is wrong!
Basic Tenner – anything
you have can extract revenge.
Thesis:
The substitution of automated
for mechanical devices to sustain mass consumption of textile, lumber, food,
fuel and household appliances was not always complete but was sufficient in
scope and breadth to leave lasting changes in technical relations –
organizational behavior, and the cultural imagery of progress.
Examples.
á
Mechanized agriculture
vs. automated factory
á
Garden vs. Frederick
Winslow Taylor, Scientific
Principles of Management.
á
Pacey on Landscape
á
Pursell – Dirt and
Disorder
á
Tenner Medicine
Pacey conclusion –
removal from reality
Postman
Scientism is a signal, a clue
to the profound alteration of our senses and intelligence.
Technopoly describes the existing
world we live in.
Write for five minutes:
If technology and science,
have altered or eclipsed traditional guardians of our culture, then how can we
tell when technical systems, or automated tool complexes turn from promoting a
positive end into vehicles for negative outcomes?
Pursell defined science and
technology
á
They do not mean what
you think they did originally
á
They do not mean what
you think they mean today
Pacey
á
Changes in landscape are
a clue
á
Changes in the
character, organization and meaning of work are indicators
Postman
á
Scientism, or the
misapplication of science to humanistic and ethical questions is a real signal
of technological disruption.
á
Misplaced concreteness:
o
Three stories in the New
York Times are ludicrous
o
Milgram experiment
o
Kinsey on sexual
behavior
o
Òa profound
misunderstanding of the aims of the natural and social studiesÓ
pp. 160-161.
á
The emperor (authority)
has no clothes, but no one has the courage to point that out.
á
Thus technology, as a
system of automated responses, dominates decision-making, instead of our
relying on human mental analysis.
There is a moral crisis
today, because we wonÕt or canÕt reason, we let machines reason for us and we
fail to grasp the enormity of our situation.
We are poised on the verge of
four scientific and technical revolutions that are unprecedented in history:
electronics, digital data, fission, genetic engineering.
(see Kaku, Visions.)
At the very time we have damaged
the capacity of the Earth to sustain our ever growing, frequently insatiable,
and often unrealistic appetites.
(see Tenner, ÉBite Back.)
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| Tools of Toil: what to read. | ||
| Tools are historical building blocks of technology. | ||
