Every so often, it occurs to me what a unique time period I live in. I just so happen to have been born right as
one not only one century, but also as one millennium drew to a close. That fact by itself shows that I was born on
the brink of a new era in human history.
But, in truth, these numbers mean relatively nothing if society doesn’t change
from one epoch to the next. Although many
big changes have occurred throughout the course of human history, these changes
have often been slow, occurring over hundreds, even thousands of years. But when I think back to when I was a small
child, I realize that not a single person in the entire world had a smart
phone. Or a Facebook account. And when I
imagine my parents at my age, I realize that they didn’t even have a concept of
“the internet”. These things may seem
somewhat trivial, but the truth is that the very things that define much of my existence
today have only come into being within the last 25 years or so. But that’s nothing compared to what I can
imagine the future will hold. We all
truly sit now on the very precipice of an immense and sudden turning point in
human history.
But this raises major questions,
as well. If your first thought after all
this talk is “Does this mean the end is nigh?”, then you are not out of
line. Whether this radical change in the
nature of human life means we are finally headed towards a utopia, or we are
one wrong move away from global disaster, there may not be much we can do about
it. However, we are nevertheless forced
to consider the all important question of how exactly we should be using
technology as a society, when its effects are having such a dramatic impact all
around the globe.
Technology, in its
essence, is a disruption of nature. One
may easily place humans within the realm of the “natural”, and claim that
whatever we do is a part of our evolutionary pathway and is completely normal. This
school of thought dates all the way back to ancient times with the Greek
philosopher Parmenides’ doctrine of “being is one”, that the universe is all
one complete natural entity (McDermott 62). This is a completely fair take on things. However, it ignores the fact that concepts
like “natural” and “unnatural” have essentially no meaning if everything is in the domain of the
natural. We continually use these terms
in our daily lives, so they must refer to something. Though there may not be some scientific criteria
for what is natural and what is not, the concept most often is used to describe
that which is not produced as a
result of intelligent life, and “unnatural” is that which is. “Technology” is really any tool used by
intelligent life for the purpose of creating any of these “unnatural” changes,
or in other words, a direct manipulation of nature.
To many people, this
in itself is something immoral. But,
truthfully, how can something be immoral if there is no choice in the matter? Simply by living and using any tools at all,
humans are using technology. We have no choice, if we want to survive. And humans have understood since ancient times
the idea that the universe is in constant “flux”, or change of some sort
(McDermott 59); and because of this we have to constantly use our resources to
adapt the way we live. For these
reasons, technology is not a choice. The
choice that does exist, and which bares moral implications, is how we should use technology.
The moral dilemmas
created by technology are extremely vast.
In every facet of our lives there are potential down sides to
technology. The two categories these can
fall under are damage to nature and damage to ourselves. Damage to nature includes the obvious
environmental destruction (through pollution, habitat destruction, etc.), but
also treatment of animals within our own systems (such as the food industry),
and other things. Damage to ourselves is
widely recognized and includes everything from the dehumanizing effects of
advanced warfare to the negative effects on our waistlines from watching too
much TV. But, of course, technology
provides endless benefits and necessities to humans, allowing us to exist in the
highly interconnected, complex world that we do today. Indeed, technology has a quality that 16th
century thinker Giordano Bruno might describe as “natural magic”; it “does wondrous
things merely by manipulating active and passive powers” (105). So, there’s a balance that must be
created. How can we fully utilize the
wonder and utility of technology, while avoiding as many of the downsides as
possible?
The truth: there is no
satisfying answer. The world is much too
complex to slap down any specific universal rules about what should and shouldn’t
be done with technology. But, rules and
regulations are incredibly important for specific cases. Pollution, warfare, and safety mechanisms for
transportation, to name a few things should of course be guided by proper
policy. The most important thing,
however, is simply a strong moral compass that each of us must strive to be
guided by. With each of our own personal
uses of technology, perhaps the best thing to ask is “will the positive effects
of what I’m doing be worth the negative effects”? It’s not always easy to answer, but it gets
us somewhere.
A few decades from
now, the technological landscape of our world could well be unimaginably
different from what we see today. Today’s
smart phones and laptops could seem as primitive as many things from a
generation ago seem today. However, the
same moral guidelines should continue to persist if we want to use the coming
waves of technology responsibly.
Works Cited
Bruno, Giordano, and Alfonso Ingegno. Giordano Bruno:
"Cause, Principle and Unity" and Essays on Magic.
Trans. Richard J. Blackwell and Robert De Lucca. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. Print.
McDermott, John J. A Cultural Introduction to Philosophy.
New York: Knopf, 1985. Print.
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