Loewen's talk of environmental responsibility, zero economic growth, and the corollary of the archetype of progress: the notion that America's cause is the cause of all humankind; reminded me of arguments I recently put forth on engineer Samuel Florman's tragic view of technology.
* Florman, who has long debated the anti-technological movement on college campuses, would fall into that "progress is our most important product" camp. Whereas, I would agree with Loewen on most of his points in this chapter - I disagree that social science instructors foster a notion that the United States is the only present-day progressive society. Here, Loewen falls into his characteristic apologist mode. Florman states, "Technology is revolutionary. Therefore, hostility towards technology is antirevolutionary, which is to say it is reactionary." These are important debates to have with our students and issues which I believe they are aware of and want to discuss.
Host debates and assign effective homework. Students evaluate, analyze, and synthesize topics on a deeper level through intellectual interaction with their peers.
* Samuel Florman defines his pro-technological viewpoint as the “tragic view.” Thus characterizing the mature, responsible technocrat as one who neither places blame nor shirks from the responsibility technology has placed upon him. This anthropomorphic description of technology is a somewhat apologetic resignation that technology is inevitable and unstoppable. Florman’s oversimplification of critics such as Jacques Ellul or Neil Postman comes from his misunderstanding their opinions and his inability to recognize his own biases. Florman has become blinded by technological refinery, akin to author and pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s description of the wonderment man experiences when finding a pebble smoothed by the sea. Hence, subtle improvements only manifest into solutions for human problems. Florman’s willingness to live in a world full of ambiguity comes from the belief that human beings are incapable of being satisfied, so individuals must fall into only one of two categories: those who agree with the tragic realities of life or those who would seek to find scapegoats. Florman believes man no longer has the natural curiosity nor desire to control the technological agenda.
The most important technological and scientific developments of the last century to which Florman’s tragic view may best be applied are related to the growth of the military-industrial complex of which President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of in his farewell address to the nation. The desire to subjugate others through violent means is woven throughout the entire history of mankind, but the methods by which to wage infinite war crystalized with the Manhattan Project and the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Upon the success of the Trinity implosion, Robert Oppenheimer is said to have thought of the Hindu
Bhagavad Gita verse: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” The world had indeed become a tragic reality from which the utmost responsibility of Technology (emphasis added) would lay in the hands of an ambiguous few. The long path from America’s isolationism at the beginning of the twentieth century through two World Wars, the “containment” of communism, and finally the “Shock and Awe” start of the 2003 war in Iraq were built on the expansion of commercial markets more than moral outrage. Wars no longer require shared sacrifice of an entire society (go shop!), industry need not change production to supply the machinery of war, and countries can be drawn into conflict without debate.
So passive is the public to the militarization of every aspect of our lives that we fail to see that hostility from any point of view is categorized as reactionary in order to purchase technological solutions resulting in further reductions to our civil liberties. Mandatory drug sentencing, border defense systems, Occupy Wall Street protestors require police forces that need to be armed with military weaponry and budget strapped States need to turn prisons over to private companies. Currently, the number of border crossings may be at a forty-year low, but a permanent wall between the United States and Mexico was still being called for in the 2012 Republican presidential primary debates. The Supreme Court’s Global Positioning Case is considering how much privacy we can expect with new surveillance technology. The sobering fact is that as warrantless surveillance has increased as a result of the “war on terror”, expectations forbidding such surveillance have fallen. The rise of social media and cloud computing have eroded privacy and as we expect less, we are entitled to less.
Florman’s “Keep Calm and Carry On” attitude skews our national priorities. It shifts money and resources from what the nation and the world need to the desires of the “1%” or in the case of the military-industrial elite: the top 0.01%. War profiteering isn’t new, however Congressional Supercommittee members and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s warning that sequestration cuts would “decimate” the Pentagon budget by lowering it to 2007 levels are brazen statements during the largest income inequality distribution in the history of the United States. Lobbying groups spend billions of dollars a year in Washington shaping laws and regulations in their interests. The newly formed tech industry has recognized its role and profit potential in shaping national security. Increasingly wired Americans receive their information from an Internet tailored to past search histories, personal information shared with the government to prevent supposed cyber attacks, and network neutrality is in jeopardy. Eisenhower recognized this growing misalignment when he tied interstate highway system improvements to wartime emergency routes, as did Kennedy with the race to moon after Soviet unmanned lunar probes followed Sputnik.
In 2009, 70% of high school graduates went onto to attend college or university, a historic high. Yet, as National and State government(s) decrease higher education funding the importance of building campus amenities, improving college rankings, and expanding sports teams to attract students increase. Bodies of students are born out in suburban sprawl and artificially amalgamated by financially savvy admissions officers in order to associate with those who think as they do and reinforce mass delusions. Theodore Roosevelt warned of the educated man who shrinks from contact with the “rough people who do the world’s work.” Florman’s essay written at a time following “youthful enthusiasm” on college campuses didn’t foresee the role technology would have in creating sizable numbers of students technologically socializing while simultaneously “participating” in their studies. Technology, of course, doesn’t place blame. Students don’t place blame. Parents don’t place blame. It’s not the anti-technological that fail to consider the consequences, but the technocrat by not taking any action. Florman and Saint-Exupery shared the belief that “the machine does not isolate the man from the great problems of nature, but plunges him more deeply into them.” What human adventure or transcendent victories can be made when opportunity is wasted? Perhaps it is as Saint-Exupery states of the locomotive, “time had to pass before men forgot what it was made of”. In the current socioeconomic shift from a manufacturing to service economy, we still stare at the Technology in our hand as the smoothed pebble found on the beach.
