On the somewhat skeptical side are certain philosophers like Herbert
Marcuse and John Zerzan, who believe that technological societies are
inherently flawed. They suggest that the inevitable result of such a
society is to become evermore technological at the cost of freedom and
psychological health.
Many, such as the Luddites and prominent
philosopher Martin Heidegger, hold serious, although not entirely
deterministic reservations, about technology (see "The Question
Concerning Technology[45])". According to Heidegger scholars Hubert
Dreyfus and Charles Spinosa, "Heidegger does not oppose technology. He
hopes to reveal the essence of technology in a way that 'in no way
confines us to a stultified compulsion to push on blindly with
technology or, what comes to the same thing, to rebel helplessly against
it.' Indeed, he promises that 'when we once open ourselves expressly to
the essence of technology, we find ourselves unexpectedly taken into a
freeing claim.'[46]" What this entails is a more complex relationship to
technology than either techno-optimists or techno-pessimists tend to
allow.[47]
Some of the most poignant criticisms of technology are
found in what are now considered to be dystopian literary classics, for
example Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and other writings, Anthony
Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.
And, in Faust by Goethe, Faust's selling his soul to the devil in return
for power over the physical world, is also often interpreted as a
metaphor for the adoption of industrial technology. More recently,
modern works of science fiction, such as those by Philip K. Dick and
William Gibson, and films (e.g. Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell)
project highly ambivalent or cautionary attitudes toward technology's
impact on human society and identity.
The late cultural critic Neil
Postman distinguished tool-using societies from technological societies
and, finally, what he called "technopolies," that is, societies that are
dominated by the ideology of technological and scientific progress, to
the exclusion or harm of other cultural practices, values and
world-views.[48]
Darin Barney has written about technology's impact
on practices of citizenship and democratic culture, suggesting that
technology can be construed as (1) an object of political debate, (2) a
means or medium of discussion, and (3) a setting for democratic
deliberation and citizenship. As a setting for democratic culture,
Barney suggests that technology tends to make ethical questions,
including the question of what a good life consists in, nearly
impossible, because they already give an answer to the question: a good
life is one that includes the use of more and more technology.[49]
Nikolas
Kompridis has also written about the dangers of new technology, such as
genetic engineering, nanotechnology, synthetic biology and robotics. He
warns that these technologies introduce unprecedented new challenges to
human beings, including the possibility of the permanent alteration of
our biological nature. These concerns are shared by other philosophers,
scientists and public intellectuals who have written about similar
issues (e.g. Francis Fukuyama, Jürgen Habermas, William Joy, and Michael
Sandel).[50]
Another prominent critic of technology is Hubert Dreyfus, who has published books On the Internet and What Computers Still Can't Do.
Another prominent critic of technology is Hubert Dreyfus, who has published books On the Internet and What Computers Still Can't Do.
Another, more infamous anti-technological treatise is
Industrial Society and Its Future, written by Theodore Kaczynski (aka
The Unabomber) and printed in several major newspapers (and later books)
as part of an effort to end his bombing campaign of the
techno-industrial infrastructure.
