Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life

A Philosophical Inquiry

Albert Borgmann

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780226066295, 9780226066288
• eBook ISBN: 9780226163581
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory
• Index: Social Sciences

Blending social analysis and philosophy, Albert Borgmann maintains that technology creates a controlling pattern in our lives. This pattern, discernible even in such an inconspicuous action as switching on a stereo, has global effects: it sharply divides life into labor and leisure, it sustains the industrial democracies, and it fosters the view that the earth itself is a technological device. He argues that technology has served us as well in conquering hunger and disease, but that when we turn to it for richer experiences, it leads instead to a life dominated by effortless and thoughtless consumption. Borgmann does not reject technology but calls for public conversation about the nature of the good life. He counsels us to make room in a technological age for matters of ultimate concern—things and practices that engage us in their own right.

PART 1

The Problem of Technology

Part 1 of this study is introductory. The main topics are presented in Part 2 and in Part 3. The first of these major topics is the character of contemporary life. The modern world and contemporary life particularly, so I will argue, have been shaped by technology, which has stamped them with a peculiar pattern and so given them their character. But although our world bears the imprint of technology, the pattern of technology is neither obvious nor exclusively dominant. It competes with and threatens to obliterate certain focal things and practices that center and order our lives in a profoundly different way. These focal concerns represent the other major theme of this inquiry. Part 2, then, is intended to clarify and explicate the pattern of technology and the prevailing character of our time. Given a clear and intelligent view of technology, Part 3 is to show how in the midst of technology we can become more conscious and confident of our focal concerns and how, against the background of technology, we can give them a central and consequential place in our lives.

These remarks must appear dubious and perhaps cryptic. They are so in part because they are brief, but partly also because they summarize views at variance with the common understanding of technology. A careful introduction is thus needed to connect the major concerns of this book with current thought on technology and to clear the ground for another way of approaching the problem of technology. This is the task of Part 1. It begins in Chapter 1 with a more detailed sketch of the contrast between the established views of technology and the position developed in this book. In particular, it provides introductory illustrations of what is meant by the pattern of technology, the pivot of Part 2, and by a matter of profound concern, the focus of Part 3. It presents brief surveys of those two parts and, at the same time, clarifies the significance of scholarship and method for the task before us.

In Chapter 2, the concept of technology that will guide this essay is tentatively sketched against the background of the presently dominant views of technology. The perspective on theories of technology is further elaborated in Chapter 3 through a comparison of the present classification with one developed by Carl Mitcham. This discussion points up more clearly and urgently the need for a fundamental and fruitful notion of technology; and it also suggests that the clarification of science and its connection with technology is the first task if that need is to be met. Accordingly, Chapter 4 considers what status science as a mode of viewing and explaining the world has in the technological society. This leads, in Chapter 5, to an examination of the structure of scientific explanation. Chapter 6, finally, develops and extends the understanding of science to include the problem of technology. It concludes that modern science is a necessary condition of modern technology and so is an understanding of one for the appreciation of the other; but science and technology are not the same thing nor essentially continuous with one another. Hence the character of technology requires an investigation and a method in its own right.

The chapters of Part 1 are brief, and some readers may find them a needless obstacle. That would be a misunderstanding. Strong and unusual claims of the sort that can be found on occasion in Part 2 and Part 3 are easily made by themselves. Even if one finds them immediately persuasive, or perhaps precisely when one does, one remains accountable to the established views, and one has an obligation to standards of thoroughness and circumspection in giving an account of one’s views. Part 1, though not Part 1 alone, is intended to meet those requirements.

1
Technology and Theory

The advanced technological way of life is usually seen as rich in styles and opportunities, pregnant with radical innovations, and open to a promising future. The problems that beset technological societies are thought to be extrinsic to technology; they stem, supposedly, from political indecision, social injustice, or environmental constraints. I consider this a serious misreading of our situation. I propose to show that there is a characteristic and constraining pattern to the entire fabric of our lives. This pattern is visible first and most of all in the countless inconspicuous objects and procedures of daily life in a technological society. It is concrete in its manifestations, closest to our existence, and pervasive in its extent. The rise and the rule of this pattern I consider the most consequential event of the modern period. Once the pattern is explicated and seen, it sheds light on the hopes that have shaped our times, on the confusions and frustrations that we have suffered in our attempts to realize those hopes, and on the possibilities of clarifying our deepest aspirations and of acting constructively on our best insights.

Concrete, everyday life is always and, it seems, rightly taken for granted. It is the common and obvious foreground of our lives that is understood by everyone. Therefore it is almost systematically and universally skipped in philosophical and social analysis. But if the determining pattern of our lives resides and sustains itself primarily in the inconspicuous setting of our daily surroundings and activities, then the decisive force of our time inevitably escapes scrutiny and criticism. I want to argue that this is in fact so, and not only because everydayness in general seems inconsiderable but because of the particular way in which the ruling pattern of our time arose and came to be articulated.

The pattern of which I have been speaking inheres in the dominant way in which we in the modern era have been taking up with the world; and that characteristic approach to reality I call (modern) technology. Technology becomes most concrete and evident in (technological) devices, in objects such as television sets, central heating plants, automobiles, and the like. Devices therefore represent clear and accessible cases of the pattern or paradigm of modern technology. Giving these claims conviction will occupy us for much of the book. But the note of alarm in the foregoing remarks and their abstract and perhaps peremptory tone as well as the unusual focus of the perspective that they advocate make it advisable to provide an early illustration of the device paradigm. Surely a stereo set, consisting of a turntable, an amplifier, and speakers, is a technological device. Its reason for being is well understood. It is to provide music. But this simple understanding conceals the characteristic way in which music is procured by a device. After all, a group of friends who gather with their instruments to delight me on my birthday provide music too. A stereo set, however, secures music not just on a festive day but at any time, and not just competent flute and violin music but music produced by instruments of any kind or any number and at whatever level of quality. To this apparent richness and variety of technologically produced music there corresponds an extreme concealment or abstractness in the mode of its production. Records as unlabeled physical items do not bespeak, except to the most practiced of eyes, what kind of music they contain. Loudspeakers have no visible affinity to the human voice, to the brass or the strings whose sound they reproduce. I have little understanding of how the music came to be recorded on the disk and by what means it is retrieved from it. I have a vague conception at best of the musicians who originally performed the music; I may not even know how many there were, and in some cases I will not be able to distinguish or identify their instruments from the reproduction of their playing.

When we consider such a technological device and the things and practices that it replaces, varied and conflicting intuitions come to mind. What are the gains and what the losses in the rise of technologically recorded and reproduced music? If a consistent and revealing answer can be found to this question, does the finding have general significance? Is it an instance of a pervasive pattern? In the pursuit of an answer to these questions, we will have to pay attention to the sharp division between the commodious availability of music that a stereo set procures and the forbiddingly complex and inaccessible character of the apparatus on which that procurement rests. It is the division between the commodity, e.g., music, and the machinery, e.g., the mechanical and electronic apparatus of a stereo set, that is the distinctive feature of a technological device. An object that exhibits this central feature clearly is a paradigm of the technological device. I use “paradigm,” however, not only in the sense of “clear case” but also for the pattern the clear case exhibits so well; and that pattern in turn can be drawn from various points of view and at different levels of abstraction. Obviously this definition of technology conflicts with many others that have been developed. It is helpful to consider these, and I will do so in Chapter 2. But it is not my purpose to establish the sense of technology that I have proposed as somehow superior or privileged. What the word “technology” should provide for this essay is a concept, a conceptus, in which the most helpful insights and experiences are gathered in a tentative, prereflective way.

Helpful for what? The chief concerns of this book are two, and they are interrelated as follows: The first is to provide a concise, illuminating, and, as far as possible, cogent description of the device paradigm. This description reveals a fatally debilitating tendency in the present rule of technology. But that aspect of its rule can be made intelligible only if we turn explicitly to those forces in our lives that are endangered by the rule of the device paradigm. I use “focal things and practices” as approximate terms for those forces. My second major concern is therefore with the nature of focal concerns. Here too an introductory sketch may aid the reader’s orientation. A focal practice is one that can center and illuminate our lives. Music certainly has that power if it is alive as a regular and skillful engagement of body and mind and if it graces us in a full and final way. Our daily and mundane endeavors are then centered around music and invigorated by it. In such a practice the musical instrument occupies a privileged place. In many cases it embodies a long tradition of a craft, of a method, and of a musical literature. In it the melodious power of the world is gathered concretely. And it challenges humans to develop and exercise the finest bodily movements of which they are capable. In this sense a violin, for instance, is a focal thing. These observations will again evoke a variety of responses. We may applaud the value of music and yet wonder if musical practice can have a secure, a consequential, and a widely shared place in a technological setting. Still, it may have become apparent that there is a crucial connection between the rule of the device paradigm and the destiny of focal concerns. The present essay, at any rate, is primarily concerned with the explication of the technological paradigm and the elucidation of focal concerns.

These two major tasks are taken up in more specific or subsidiary investigations. The first of the latter are preparatory and methodological. Since I regard “technology” as the most appropriate and helpful title for what is characteristic of our lives, it is necessary to take account of presently available theories of technology. And since I am urging a shift in philosophical attention and description, reflection is needed on what it means to describe, explain, and evaluate something. There is a particular need to take account of natural science both because it sets new standards of description and explanation and because it is a crucial, though poorly understood, contributor to the rise of technology. These matters are taken up in Part 1, “The Problem of Technology.”

Part 2, “The Character of Technology,” turns to the central task of describing the concrete features and idiosyncrasies of technology. Though I claim that these are usually and even systematically overlooked, it would be most unlikely, and no one would reasonably assume, that what is most characteristic and consequential in our time has been altogether missed or ignored. It is possible, however, that a failure of focus has deflected, confused, or limited social and philosophical analyses of technological culture. My task, therefore, is not to reject or deny such inquiries but to point out how their best insights are rendered more incisive and consistent when the technological pattern of our time is clearly seen. Moreover, the investigations of social scientists have collected many data which, however limited or one-sided in perspective, have a strong claim to objectivity and generality. The kind of description and analysis that I propose is, roughly speaking, in a phenomenological style, and such analyses often run the risk of being anecdotal and parochial. For these reasons the description of the device paradigm must be tested and elaborated against pertinent work in philosophy and especially in the social sciences.

I regard scholarship as essential to a serious and credible inquiry. Still I have made no attempt to exhaust the scholarly material. Technology is at the intersection of so many currents and disciplines that the literature has become boundless in its extent. But the essential positions, I have found, appear to be limited in number. What can be expected from the treatment of scholarship is not exhaustiveness but a thorough consideration of some of the eminent and representative schools of thought and the possibility of extending fruitfully and consistently the major theses of the book to arguments and evidence that have been ignored. Though scholarship must be given its due, the esoteric features of its language and arguments are not needed in an essay of the present sort. Accordingly I have tried to write in a style that is accessible to any literate reader. I have tried to do this through simplicity of presentation and through the explanation and illustration of technical matters where the latter are unavoidable.

In Part 3, “The Reform of Technology,” I turn to the focal forces whose predicament and dignity is what finally motivates my critique of technology. Here again, my concern in general is not unique. Just as there is an abundant literature devoted to the analysis of the technological society, so there is an abundance of pleas for the victims of technology and of reform proposals. But the lack of focus that I have claimed for the common analysis of technology infects the literature of accusation and reform more harmfully still. Since most writers fail to have a clear view of the pattern according to which we orient ourselves and take up with the world, their allegations are often misdirected and their proposals ineffective. The latter are so because they frequently play into the hands of what they oppose or they fail to connect with the real openings for reform.

Assuming that this essay accomplishes what it sets out to do, is it not one of social analysis and commentary? In what sense does it constitute a philosophy of technology? To begin with, I believe that there is no sharp dividing line between social science, or perhaps social studies, and philosophy. To be sure, this is to take philosophy in a sense which is not the dominant one in the modern era and is only now being recovered...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Part One. The Problem of Technology
• Part Two. The Character of Technology
• Part Three. The Reform of Technology
• Notes
• Index