The Dead End of Technological Progress
And where we should be heading instead
Reading Brave New World is a far more disconcerting and challenging experience [than 1984], because you are hard-pressed to put your finger on what exactly makes it dystopian. The world is peaceful and prosperous, and everyone is supremely satisfied all the time. What could possibly be wrong with that?
How would you define ‘technological progress’? Amidst the looming figures of a mental health epidemic, political polarisation, and the threat of nuclear evaporation, perched on the shaky ground of environmental extractionism, it seems strange for us to assert so boldly that our modern technology epitomises ‘progress’. Yet that is overwhelmingly how we use the term: technology has ‘progressed’, ‘improved’ and steadily ‘gotten better’ throughout the years. I’m interested in how we have come to this strange-looking definition, what it assumes about us as people, and if there might just be a better way to think about progress in technology.
To begin, I believe that a linear equation that more technology = more progress is misleading. To say that a technology contributes to ‘progress’ is a normative judgement, and one we do not extend equally to every new instance of technology. Think about the difference between the bicycle and the Segway. A descriptive account of technology would judge each ‘advancement’ equally: the bicycle represents just as much ‘technology’ as the Segway. In order to arrive at the widely held conclusion that the bicycle represents a much greater technological advancement than the Segway, we have to employ a more discriminatory set of value-laden criteria than simple novelty.
This is an important jumping-off point. If we agree that our conception of technological progress rests on normative criteria, we can begin to work out what those criteria are. As a result, we can see the ends to which they constrain and direct technology, and judge whether our current conception of technological progress is suitable. In order to begin teasing apart these criteria, I believe that we first have to look at what the point of technology is.
What is the problem represented to be?
What are we attempting to ‘fix’ through our devotion to technology? By adopting Carol Bacchi’s WPR (what is the problem represented to be?) analytical framework, and asking what problems technology proclaims to address, we can get a better understanding as to the nature of our demands on technological innovation. With Bacchi we can consider how the problem has been represented and how this representation has occurred.
i) How has the problem been represented?
Such an abstract concept as ‘technological progress’ requires us to think in overarching general trends: anything other than a big-picture approach and the innumerable mass of technological innovations would soon become incomprehensible. Such a trend was outlined in the year 1984 by philosopher Albert Borgmann, who described what he saw as the device paradigm.
The average pre-industrial technology was a ‘thing’– something ‘inseparable from its context’ which facilitates ‘the experience of the world through the manifold sensibility of the body’. A good example is cooking. Before the propagation of industrial technology, people engaged directly and extensively with their world to prepare food: they chopped wood and made fire, processed their own ingredients, and may even have grown or slaughtered the food themselves. Through this engagement with reality, these people gained skills, created rituals, enmeshed themselves in the community, and strengthened their relationship with the land.
With Borgmann’s conception of the device paradigm, we can see that through our propagation of industrial technology we are trying to shrug the burden of means — to make life easier and more comfortable by extracting ourselves from our surroundings.
However, innovations in technology have turned many elements of cooking from ‘things’ into ‘devices’. Instead of learning how to cut wood and build fires, we twist the knob on our ovens. Instead of going to the mill to grind flour, we go to the supermarket to pick one out of twenty identical products. Instead of bartering at a market, we float through self-checkout. Or, consider the ultimate ‘device-ification’ of cooking: instead of interacting with our environment at all, we open UberEats.
The purpose of the device is to shorten the means and prioritize the ends. By lifting the burden of interacting extensively with our environment, the device furnishes us with the end result without demanding time, attention, skill, or effort. The complexities of the device are hidden and made subtle, and our interaction with the means and the wider context is reduced as the ends become more prevalent. The device paradigm is an observable trend within industrial and post-industrial society, and I think it captures an important part of what we mean when we classify something as ‘technological progress’.
With Borgmann’s conception of the device paradigm, we can see that through our propagation of industrial technology we are trying to shrug the burden of means — to make life easier and more comfortable by extracting ourselves from our surroundings. In his own words,
Technology, as we have seen, promises to bring the forces of nature and culture under control, to liberate us from misery and toil, and to enrich our lives. (Borgmann 1984, p.41)
Here, life is represented as being a difficult, impoverished, and dangerous activity. It is a materialist ‘problem’, one which can be solved by developing more and more stuff. Our reliance on effort and time to achieve necessarily limited ends, our discomfort with boredom and desire for constant stimulation, and our fear of pain and death are the problems that a given technology attempts to fix.
Because of this, I think we judge technological progress by three metrics: convenience, entertainment, and safety. Technologies that succeed by these metrics are considered ‘progress’, while technologies that fail on these metrics (such as the Segway) are deemed ‘failures’ and further innovations are discouraged. Our discriminatory notions of progress prune the tree of technological innovation, imposing a structure on its growth and clipping those branches that yield improper fruit.
ii) How has this representation of the problem occurred?
What has caused us to view pre-industrial life as such an onerous and boring problem that must be solved through technology? What was it that pushed us to develop more and more complex tools; to pastoralize, industrialise, digitize? Over the centuries, thinkers have referred to forces as varied as religion, human nature, and class struggle to explain our drive to ‘solve’ life through technology. These are all big questions, and ones that I have no illusions of answering.
Instead of aiming for a comprehensive response, I want to focus on two interconnected aspects of modern society that have significantly influenced and perpetuated our current perception of technological progress: the marketing industry and entrenched materialism. These factors drive our desire for technology that is convenient, entertaining, and safe.
it is partially the influence of our economic system that causes us to label technological progress as that which increases our comfort and affluence, rather than our humanity and freedom.
The biggest benefactors of the idea that life can be ‘fixed’ through technology are those in the private sector, for such a ‘fix’ leads to increased demand for profitable goods (and an impossible ‘fix’ leads to an insatiable demand). Although classical economic models can explain such a relationship in terms of supply and demand, they are unable to account for the trillions of dollars invested into marketing firms each year and how this may manipulate both demand and supply side factors. One impact of the marketing industry that crawled out of the 20th century has been to convert us all into consumers; to have us believe that an easy life with lots of comfortable devices is genuinely in our best interests. The amount of resources dedicated towards convincing us that we need more technology to escape the tedium and struggle of life indicate that our materialist conceptions do not represent a ‘natural state’ — if what we really want is comfort, entertainment and safety, then the advertising industry would have no reason for existing.
A related, general factor is that the economic dominance of capitalism has transferred to ideological and cultural dominance. Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism explores how capitalism’s claim to being uniquely compatible with human nature has resulted in a strange alignment between public morality and material accumulation. Complimentary to Fisher, Herbert Marcuse argues that advanced industrial societies such as our own manufacture ‘false needs’, where we exchange our freedom and dignity for increased comfort (convenience, entertainment and safety), shedding our status as people and donning that of the consumer. In this sense, it is partially the influence of our economic system that causes us to label technological progress as that which increases our comfort and affluence, rather than our humanity and freedom.
Does this work for us?
What sort of world are we creating with the constrictions that our definition of ‘progress’ place on technological development? The implicit ideal in my hypothesis — that ‘progress’ means more comfort, more entertainment and more safety — seems to be a world without struggle; a post-scarcity society where everything is done by technology, we are all constantly engaged and entertained, and no one need bother themselves with pain and danger. Whether or not this ideal is possible is irrelevant: it is what we demand from the technology that we create and consume.
Perhaps this sounds great to you. What could be better than a society where we all get to sit around and write poetry while eating grapes, released from the unforgiving struggle of survival! After all, none of us dream of labour… If this sounds appealing to you then that’s fine– such a judgement is deeply personal, and I can’t sit here and pretend like my conclusions are anything other than idiosyncratic. However, I do find it a strange intellectualist conceit to imagine that inside every hardworking electrician or nurse is a frustrated creative just waiting for the opportunity to sit around and compose.
Instead, I find myself aligning with Austrian psychologist and holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, who argued that people can develop meaning from accomplishing something, loving someone or something, or through developing a relationship with our suffering. Work and suffering are therefore important aspects of life that help us find meaning and define ourselves in the world. Depressive hedonia; the inherent lack of struggle (and resulting lack of meaning) that curses the socialites of Brave New World, gives us no space to exercise virtue, exert duties and responsibilities, or connect meaningfully with our environment. This isn’t to say that suffering should be fetishised or celebrated, but instead to argue that by attempting to sever ourselves from it — as we are currently doing with our specific notions of ‘technological progress’ — is an attempt to abstract away from what it means to be fully human. Instead of preferring technology that increases our convenience, entertainment, and safety, I argue that we should adopt a set of technological criteria directed towards promoting human dignity, community, and a dialogue with reality. Cleft-palate surgery and insulin can stay, Uber Eats and the Apple Vision Pro really should go.
Perhaps I’ve lost you over the last two paragraphs. That’s fine: although you might disagree with my particular suggested solution, I hope you can sympathise with my representation of the problem, and that you agree that an idea of technological progress built on convenience, entertainment, and safety represents a worrying trend. Although the path we coin ‘progress’ is deeply misaligned with our ability to lead meaningful lives, our direction is ultimately up to us. Greener pastures may well be on the horizon– we just need to look up when we’re wading in the mud.
Elliott Collins is a part-time hater, full-time PPE student (second year), and first-time Statecraft contributor. His cabin in the woods is currently being refurbished.
Mammoth thanks to Harry Shakespeare-Davies and Luca Bisogni for their conceptual and practical feedback, energetic support, and unnatural patience.
Header Image Credits:
Woman Wearing Apple VR Headset: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/01/apple-vision-pro-available-in-the-us-on-february-2/
Katy Freeway: https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/katy/news/article/Bragging-rights-or-embarrassment-Katy-Freeway-at-6261429.php
Glasgow Smoke Print: https://www.mediastorehouse.com.au/mary-evans-prints-online/glasgow-smoke-c1880-592490.html
Office With Computers: https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/photo/business-woman-working-late-royalty-free-image/93909723?
Brave New World: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World
Pedestrians and facial recognition: https://habs.uq.edu.au/article/2023/07/ai-and-human-team-best-facial-recognition
