The Deceiving Virtues of Technology (2001)
netfuture.org
netfuture.org
The author uses the story of Odysseus blinding the Cyclops in the cave as an example of techne (guile/cunning), and of the emergence of the self/ego out of the dark, primitive child state. Thrusting a sharpened beam into the Cyclops eye suggests the power of the focused, penetrating individual intellect overcoming an older, perhaps more innocent vision of the world.
There is a parallel between physical mechanical devices and contrivances we make, and devices and contrivances of the mind. The contrivances of the mind are associated with deceit and guile, this also occurs in Homer's greek.
The lame craftsman god Hephaestus is lame, representing the bias that is inevitable with technology, which implements only one aspect of our mental activity.
Technology can "serve as midwife" to the birth of the individual
This midwifery requires a well-calculated balance between the challenges we take on and our self-possession, our wide-awake, conscious resourcefullness.
Technology assists the birth of the individual by separating him from the natural world.
Today, 3K years after Odysseus, the technical world is much bigger and more powerful than wild nature. It is the ravening beast of technology that we must restrain. Techne helped Odysseus escape from anonymity, but today it cocoons us and promises endless entertainment, distraction, freedom from cares.
We are engaged in a continual conversation between what might be called frozen techne and the conscious, living techne within ourselves.
The powers of our minds crystallise almost immediately into gadgetry, we live within a crystal palace indistinguishable from a prison. The machinery we make, this inert cleverness, is the greatest threat to our future.
This essay reminded me of "The Abolition of Man"; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gux4Ldy8cN8
I have an alternative theory, something like an Anti-Singularity. Or maybe the Peter Principle of engineering development - every piece of software and hardware will be developed one stage beyond what is possible to debug or make reliable. Thus, we will end our technological days desperately trying to make disparate and barely-functional systems do something useful.
For evidence of this theory, be a sysadmin.
If there is anything to remark on, it is that software tech as distinct from hardware that is very directly, almost tangibly so, an externalization of our internal machinations.
While any concrete silicon technology already circumscribes a certain universe of "tricks", it is, in-principle, much more agnostic as to what we do with it.
It is in the programming of the stuff where literaly people directly express their inner world: e.g., using a keyboard to configure devices as contrivances that will exploit and diminish other people instead of empowering and improving our collective predicament.
Ofcourse, with the hindsight of two decades, we know that the downward spiral is self-reinforcing. Once a software machination "proves" itself it drives the development of hardware that will further "enhance" its effectiveness.
The trick is really (and that is a social tech contrivance that much predates digital tech) to get ordinary people do the wrong thing without feeling bad. Silos, obfuscation, long chains of command, dependency, limited attention span, distractions, fake enemies, you name it, its been used.
is a very simple statement that should be universally applied. Somehow, people have been convinced that "tech", now re-defined as "the latest and greatest internet-connected widget", is the best tool for every job, when (for example) regularly meeting up with friends is actually the best way to form deep social bonds and reap the rewards in personal development, or finding some other way to entertain yourself than passively staring at a screen is a more productive way to occupy your brain and life energy.
We really have become ensnared by our own creations.