From: ae547@yfn.ysu.edu (Ronda Hauben)
Subject: In Defence of Technology(PtI)Updated Draft for Comment
Reply-To: ae547@yfn.ysu.edu (Ronda Hauben)
Organization: St. Elizabeth Hospital, Youngstown, OH
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 17:44:07 GMT


  Following is the latest draft of the article "In Defence of 
Technology:`Arte', Computers and The Wonderful World of Usenet
News. This post is of part I. Part II will be posted separately.

  The comments that people made both online and email have been
very helpful in continuing to work on this. Some people missed
the original posting of the first draft of this and wanted to see
a copy. Hopefully this newsgroup will help people work on substantial
articles by being able to post them and get comments, both online
and via email, which will encourage them to do the hard work of 
revising and editing their work.

  I welcome comments, preferably in this newsgroup, but email is fine
as well.

  Thanks to those who have been offered their responses. It has been
very important.

  I have incorporated many, though not all. Feel free to continue
the comments if you still see a problem, and I will try to respond
more to the comments either in this newsgroup or via email. I fell
behind a bit in responding to previous comments and hope to do 
better now.


  Also, the question was recently raised about Usenet News as
being worthy of the Nobel Prize in Economics - this paper is offered 
as support for that nomination (both part I and part II of the paper).
Actually the nomination is of the pioneers who have built usenet.

                           Ronda

(More changes have been made to part II of the paper as there was a 
bit more discussion to clarify the need for the changes to that part.)



           In Defense of Technology:`Arte', Computers and 
 The Wonderful World of Usenet News: A Historical Perspective 
 
 "Another advantage of industry and of refinements in the 
mechanical arts, is that ...Minds...being once arous'd from their 
lethargy, are put into fermentation, turn themselves on all sides 
and carry improvements into every art and science."
               David Hume, "Of Refinements in the Arts" 
   
  "Can we expect, that a government will be well modelled by a 
people, who know not how to make a spinning-wheel, or to employ a 
loom to advantage?"
               David Hume, "Of Refinements in the Arts"
 
INTRODUCTION
     During the past two decades there have been important 
technological breakthroughs. The personal computer, a science 
fiction dream for generations, is now available as a household 
appliance in a way that only the typewriter was just a few years 
ago. Also, a public conferencing network called USENET News 
carried on a telecommunications networks like InterNet, UUCP, and 
others, encourages public discussion and exchange of ideas on a 
world wide scale.
 
     The social implications of these developments are rarely 
discussed in the public arena. Instead the voices dominating any 
public discussion are those of condemnation of the computer and 
of criticism of technological change a
nd development. This 
article is an effort to begin serious discussion of these 
technological advances. It is also an effort to examine how such 
technological developments can increase the wealth of our 
society. 
 
     Part I looks back to how philosophers and other serious 
thinkers historically evaluated the role of such new technology 
in increasing the social wealth of a society. It examines how 
they established the principles needed to answer critics of 
technological change and development. The second part describes 
one of the most important technological achievements of the 20th 
century - USENET News.  Finally this article concludes that it is 
only by the active encouragement and participation in the 
computer and technological revolution that a better world can be 
won.
 
                             Part I
      The Role of "Arte" in the Production of Social Wealth
 
 
     The question of whether technological development benefits 
society is an important question. Recently there have been 
numerous articles, books, journals, etc. that claim such 
developments are only harmful to society. (For references to some 
of this literature see " Questioning Technology", "The Whole 
Earth Review, No. 73, Winter 1991.) The social implications of 
new technological developments like the computer and the 
telecommunications networks it has made possible, should not be 
dismissed as harmful developments as this literature implies. 
Voices defending these developments as the significant social 
advances they are, need to become part of the public debate. To 
gain some perspective of the principles at stake in this 
controversy, it is helpful to look back to early economic writers 
and their studies about the value to a society of "arte" or what 
modern writers would call the development of technology.
 
     Writing in the "Great French Encyclopedia," Diderot (1713-
1784) pointed out the striking contradiction of modern society. 
Even though the wealth of society is produced by those who do the 
work of that society, they are the least respected and the study 
of the "mechanical arts" which is necessary to make work most 
productive is treated with disdain and disrespect. Diderot, 
defining "Art" describes this contradiction. He writes: "Place on 
one side of the balance the real benefits of the most exalted 
sciences and the most honored `arts' and on the other side those 
of the `mechanical arts', and you will find that the esteem 
granted to both has not been distributed in the correct 
proportion of these benefits; and that people praised much more 
highly those men who were engaged in making us believe that we 
were happy, than those men actually engaged in doing so. What odd 
judgments we make! We demand that people be usefully employed and 
we scorn useful men."(1)
 
     The 17th and 18th centuries were a period of profound social 
and economic change. This period of history saw great 
transformation in the ability of society to produce the 
necessities and conveniences of life for a growing propulation.  
Accompanying this social transformation was a growing concern 
with the role that the mechanical arts (called "arte") play in 
the production of social wealth on the part of those who tried to 
apply the methods of science to economic questions.
 
     Such concern with the question of "arte" was not new. 
Philosophers like Plato and Aristotle had examined this economic 
category, considering it one of the important categories to be 
studied.  For Plato, as he explains in his dialogue "Protagoras," 
the mechanical arts were akin to a gift from the gods, the sole 
advantage that humans had in their struggle for survival with the 
rest of the animal kingdom. They were the essential element which 
gave people the ability to survive in a hostile world. 
 
     Plato tells the story of how the gods Prometheus and 
Epimetheus were charged with populating the world with living 
creatures. They created a variety of life, giving to each species 
an advantage to help it to survive. But by the time they came to 
create humans, they had exhausted the traits they could provide. 
"Man alone," remarks Plato, "was naked and shoeless, and had 
neither bed nor arms of defense." Plato then explains how 
Prometheus, not knowing how else to be helpful to humans, "stole 
the mechanical arts of Hephaestus and Athene, and fire with them 
(they could neither have been acquired nor used without fire), 
and gave them to man." Thus Plato, via this parable, shows how 
only the mechanical arts, which differentiated humans from the 
rest of the animal kingdom, have made human life sustainable.(2) 
 
     Aristotle demonstrates a similar high regard for "arte" 
which is defined as "scientific knowledge and the corresponding 
skill of how to produce something in accordance with that 
knowledge."(3) In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle distinguishes 
art from nature and explains that "Every art is concerned with 
bringing something into existence and to think by art is to 
investigate how to generate something which may or may not exist 
and of which the [moving] principle is in the producer and not in 
the thing produced." (4) He goes on to explain that arte is 
concerned with things which do not have this [moving] or 
regenerating principle in themselves. That arte is concerned with 
the production of things that nature does not create on her own. 
Hence arte requires the human creator and makes possible the 
manifold creations which nature does not provide for on her own. 
 
     Several British writers of the 17th and 18th centuries 
continued the Greek tradition of respect for "arte" or "techne" 
as the Greek word is transliterated.  The mechanical arts were 
necessary for the production of the food and clothes and shelter 
needed to provide for a population that was moving from the land 
under feudalism into the towns and cities that would characterize 
the industrial revolution. The annual production of such food, 
clothing, shelter and other necessities and conveniences of life 
were considered social wealth by these writers. And the economic 
category "arte" was seen as the means of facilitating the 
production of this social wealth. Thus the economic category 
"arte" became a pressing concern.
 
     Sir William Petty (1623-1687) who has been called "The 
Father of Scientific Political Economy" isolated four economic 
categories as being crucial for the production of social wealth.  
They were labor, land (i.e. nature), arte and stock. Petty 
maintained that the two essential categories were labor and land, 
and that labor was the active element and nature the passive 
element. He wrote "Labor is the Father and active principle of 
wealth as lands are the mother." Though human beings could 
survive without arte, Petty believed that arte was an important 
component of life, in making it possible to produce more of the 
goods and necessities of life with less labor. "Art," he explains 
is "equal to the labour and skill of many in producing 
commodities." (6)
 
       In order to increase the public wealth available to the 
society, Sir William Petty saw only two alternatives. "People 
must either work harder," he wrote, "or introduce labour saving 
processes."  These labor saving processes, according to Petty, 
save the labor of many hands and provide more riches for 
government. "One man by art," Petty writes, "may do as much work 
as many without it." (7)  He gives several examples: "viz one Man 
with a Mill can grind as much Corn as twenty can pound in a 
Mortar; one Printer can make as many Copies, as a Hundred Men can 
write by hands; one Horse can carry upon Wheels, as much as Five 
upon their Backs; and, in a Boat, or upon ice, as Twenty...."(8)  
 
     For Petty, the choice facing society was to have "few hands" 
"labouring harder" or "by introducing the Compendium and 
Facilitations of Art" to have a few workers doing the work of 
many. (9)
 
     He refers to the example of Holland which had the advantage 
of being able to use Windmills instead of hand labor and thereby 
the "advantage of the labor of many thousand Hands is saved, for 
as much as a Mill made by one Man in half a year, will do as much 
Labor as four Men for five years together."(10) Petty reasoned 
that the use of arte to save human labor was a continuing benefit 
to society.  He demonstrated the long term social advantage 
gained from arte over simple labor by an illustration comparing 
the production by arte with that of simple labor. "For if by such 
Simple Labour," writes Petty, " I could dig and prepare for Seed 
a hundred acres in a thousand days; suppose then, I spend a 
hundred days in studying a more compendious way, and in 
contriving Tools for the same purpose; but in all the hundred 
days dig nothing." If he takes the remaining nine hundred days to 
dig two hundred Acres of Ground, "then,"Petty concludes, " I say, 
that the Art which cost but one hundred days Invention is worth 
one Man's labor forever; because the new Art, and one Man, 
perform'd as much as two Men could have done without it."(11) 
 
     The social advantage of arte, according to Petty, is that a 
large portion of the population is freed from having to produce 
the goods needed by society and thus available for other 
important work, especially for scientific pursuits. The remaining 
people, Petty writes "may safely and without possible prejudice 
to the Commonwealth, be employed in Arts and Exercises of 
pleasure and ornament; the greatest whereof is the Improvement 
of natural knowledge."(12)  
 
     When Petty identifies and describes "arte", his writing is 
but part of a body of economic literature during the 17th and 
18th centuries which set out to scientifically define this 
economic category. In his article "`Art' and `Ingenious Society"' 
reprinted in his book "Predecessors of Adam Smith" [1937] (New 
York, 1960 reprint, Chapter XIII), E. A. J. Johnson gathers 
several descriptions of "arte" and looks at what Petty and other 
17th and 18th century economic commentators considered as the 
role of "arte" and the effect it has had on the development of 
society.
 
     David Hume (1711-1776), one of the economists Johnson refers 
to in his article, echos Plato's emphasis on the importance of 
"arte" in distinguishing human beings from other animals. "There 
is one fundamental difference between man and other animals," 
Hume wrote, "....Nature has `endowed the former with a sublime 
celestial spirit, and having given him an affinity with superior 
beings, she allows not such noble faculties to lie lethargic or 
idle, but urges him by necessity to employ, on every emergence, 
his utmost art and industry'." ("Predecessors of Adam Smith," p. 
264.)
 
     In this sense `Art' is, according to Johnson, "an ennobling 
faculty, implanted by Nature, which separates man from the rest 
of the zoological world by making greater production possible." 
(Ibid.) Writers like Petty and Hume saw "arte" as the ability to 
utilize technology to abridge labor, and thus as a wondrous 
faculty peculiar to humans as part of the animal kingdom. 
 
     Other literary figures, like Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) in 
"Plan of the English Commerce" and writers of economic tracts 
like "The Advantages of the East-India Trade to England 
Consider'd" (1707), provide examples of the environmental and 
economic benefits which accompany the increased use of tools and 
machines to abridge the labor necessary for production. In 
Russia, Defoe explains, where "Labour was not assisted by Art" 
there was "no other Way to cut out a large Plank, but by felling 
a great Tree and then with a multitude of Hands and Axes hew away 
all the Sides of the Timber, till they reduc'd the middle to one 
large Plank." The Swedes or Prussians, on the other hand, Defoe 
explains, "could cut three or four, or more Planks of the like 
Size from one Tree by the Help of Saws and Saw Mills. The 
Consequence" Defoe points out, is "that the miserable Russian 
labour'd ten times as much as the other (the Swedes and the 
Prussians-ed) for the Same Money." (13) Not only does arte make 
it possible for more goods to be produced by less labour, but 
arte also makes it possible to produce more planks of lumber from 
each tree. When arte is used, fewer trees need to be cut down. 
And high wages can be paid to those workers using the most modern 
technology as they produce more goods with less labor than 
workers using backward production techniques.
 
     The anonymous author of "The Advantages of the East-India 
Trade to England Consider'd" (1707) equates advanced tecbnology 
with the ability to produce goods that are cheaper though the 
workers continue to earn higher wages. This writer maintains, 
"Arts, and Mills, and Engines, which save the labour of Hands, 
are ways of doing things with less labour, and consequently with 
labour of less price, though the Wages of Men imploy'd to do them 
shou'd not be abated." (pg 66) He also demonstrates the 
beneficial catalyst such modern technology provides in 
encouraging new inventions and discoveries. He writes, "And thus 
the East-India Trade by procuring things with less, and 
consequently cheaper labour, is a very likely way of forcing Men 
upon the invention of Arts and Engines, by which other things may 
also be done with less and cheaper labour, and therefore may 
abate the price of Manufactures, tho' the Wages of Men shou'd not 
be abated." (pg 67) By using arte, this writer contends, all 
aspects of the production process are improved. He writes that 
arte "is no unlikely way to introduce...more Order and Regularity 
into our English Manufactures...." (pg 67)
 
     John Cary, in "An Essay on the State of England in Relation 
to its Trade" (1695, reprint England, 1972), observes that 
because of "arte" the price of many manufactures like glass 
bottles, silk stockings, sugar, etc. went down even though the 
wages of the workers weren't cut. "But then the question will be, 
how this is done?" he asks, and he answers "It proceeds from the 
Ingenuity of the Manufacturer, and the Improvements he makes in 
his ways of working, thus the Refiner of Sugars goes thro' that 
operation in a Month, which our Forefathers required four Months 
to effect." And "the Distillers draw more Spirits, and in less 
time...than those formerly did who taught them the Art." (pg 145-
6) 
 
     Cary goes on to list numerous other examples of how 
improvements in arte have led to changes in production that have 
increased the goods available to the population though they cost 
less labor and so are cheaper. He writes: "The Glassmaker hath 
found a quicker way of making it out of things which cost him 
little or nothing, Silk-Stockings are wove instead of knit; 
Tobacco is cut by Engines instead of Knives; Books are printed 
instead of written;...Lead is smelted by Wind-Furnaces, instead 
of blowing with Bellows; all which save the labour of many Hands, 
so the Wages of those imployed need not be lessened." (pg 146)
 
     Cary observes that the price of goods has come down, even 
though their desirability has improved. He writes, "The variety 
of our Woollen Manufactures is so pretty, that Fashion makes a 
thing worth both at Home and Abroad twice the Price it is sold 
for....Artificers by Tools and Laves fitted for different Uses 
make such things as would puzzle a Stander by to set a price on 
according to the worth of Men's Labour; the Plummer by new 
Inventions casts a Tun of Shott for Ten Shillings, which an 
indifferent Person could not guess worth less than Fifty."(pg 
146) After showing how a similar trend has occurred in the 
Navigation trades,  Cary concludes, "New Projections are every 
day set on foot to render making our Manufactures easy, which are 
made cheap... not by falling the Price of poor People's Labour." 
 
     Also, he shows how these advances lead to a general 
environment of improved methods of production. "Pits are 
drained," Cary writes, "and Land made Healthy by Engines and 
Aquaeducts instead of Hands; the Husbandman turns up his Soil 
with the Sallow, not digs it with his Spade; Sowes his Grain, not 
plants it; covers it with the Harrow, not with the Rake; brings 
home his Harvest with Carts, not on Horseback; and many other 
easy Methods are used both for improving of Land and raising its 
Product, which are obvious to the Eyes of Men versed therein, 
though do not come within the Compass of my present Thoughts." 
(pg 147-148) And, he notes, these improvements not only lessen 
the number of laborers needed to do the work, but also make 
possible the payment of higher wages.
 
     According to these early British economists, Government has 
a role to play to support the development of technology. "It 
should therefore," writes Johnson, "be the duty of the state to 
increase `art'."("Predecessors", pg 266)
 
     Once the sense of  "arte" as the abridgement of labour via 
some mechanical or scientific means is established, it is useful 
to look at the effect "arte" has on the life and health of 
society.
 
     Several essays written by David Hume consider the role arte 
plays in determining whether a society flourishes or decays, and 
thus whether the society can produce the wealth needed to support 
its people. Hume observes the correlation between a society's 
support for the mechanical arts and its political and 
intellectual achievements.(14)
     
    "The same age," writes Hume, "which produces great 
philosophers and politicians, renoun'd generals and poets, 
usually abounds with skillful weavers and ship-carpenters." 
 
     Johnson outlines the model presented by Hume of the role of 
arte in the evolution of social progress. Johnson writes: 
          "The metamorphosis of society from a rude and simple 
     state to a refined and polished one was clear: first came 
     the development of `art' whereby the products of the earth 
     were worked up; this increased the productivity of a 
     nation's land and its population, thereby permitting the 
     population to expand further; the existing `art' and its 
     cumulative progress increased the number of occupations 
     (together with the incomes derived therefrom); lastly, 
     higher incomes and higher levels of comfort `gave birth to 
     new desires'." 
                         (from Johnson, p. 276-7)
     
     Hume maintains that a vibrant intellectual environment is 
the product, not the cause of social support for mechanical 
invention and the mastery of mechanical techniques. "By means of 
the `arts'," he writes, "the minds of men, being once rous'd from 
their lethargy, are put into fermentation, turn themselves on all 
sides and carry improvements into every art and science."("Of 
Refinement in the Arts," in Writings on Economics, p. 22) Thus 
every area of human thought is affected by the development of 
arte, every area becomes subject to scientific analysis. By 
example, Hume shows how social support for technology and 
mechanical invention will lead to more productive means of 
farming as the farmer will then subject agriculture to analysis 
and observation and, as Hume writes,
     "When a nation abounds in manufactures and mechanic arts, 
     the proprietors of land, as well as the farmers, study 
     agriculture as a science, and redouble their industry and 
     attention....By this means, land furnishes a great deal more 
     of the necessaries of life...."
               ("Of Commerce," in "Writings on Economics," p. 11 
     [Johnson ref. p. 271])
 
     Thus attention to the mechanical world stimulates ferment in 
all other intellectual areas. As Hume explains in his essay, "Of 
Refinement in the Arts":
     In times when industry and the arts flourish, men are kept 
     in perpetual occupation, and enjoy, as their reward, the 
     occupation itself, as well as those pleasures which are the 
     fruit of their labour. The mind acquires new vigour; 
     enlarges its powers and faculties; and by an assiduity in 
     honest industry, both satisfies its natural appetites, and 
     prevents the growth of unnatural ones, which commonly spring 
     up, when nourished by ease and idleness."  
                    ("Writings on Economics," p. 21)
 
     Similarly, there is a negative effect when people are 
deprived of the ability to interact with the mechanical arts:
     "Banish those arts from society, you deprive men both of 
     action and of pleasure; and leaving nothing but indolence in 
     their place, you even destroy the relish of indolence, which 
     never is agreeable...  (Ibid., p. 21-22)
 
     Hume explains how the development of the liberal arts is 
dependent upon the development and support for the mechanical 
arts. He writes:
     "Another advantage of industry and of refinement in the 
     mechanical arts, is, that they commonly produce some 
     refinements in the liberal (arts-ed);" (Ibid., p. 22)
     
     He sees the development of the mechanical arts as the 
primary activity which leads to the development of the liberal 
arts. However, to develop each, he explains, attention must be 
paid to the development of the other as well: "Nor can one be 
carried to perfection, without being accompanied, in some degree 
with the other." (Ibid.)
 
     "The same age," he explains, "which produces great 
philosophers and politicians, renowned generals and poets, 
usually abounds with skilful weavers, and ship-carpenters. We 
cannot reasonably expect," Hume observes, "that a piece of 
woollen cloth will be brought to perfection in a nation, which is 
ignornant of astronomy, or where ethics are neglected. The spirit 
of the age affects all the arts....Profound ignorance," he 
writes, "is totally banished, and men enjoy the privilege of 
rational creatures, to think as well as to act, to cultivate the 
pleasures of the mind as well as those of the body." (Ibid.)
 
     Not only does the fermentation stimulated by mechanical 
activity and invention lead to a renaissance in intellectual 
development, but it also affects sociability. Hume writes: 
     "The more these refined arts advance, the more sociable men 
     become: nor is it possible, that, when enriched with 
     science, and possessed of a fund of conversation, they 
     should be contented to remain in solitude, or live with 
     their fellow-citizens in that distant manner, which is 
     peculiar to ignorant and barbrous nations. They flock into 
     cities; love to receive and communicate knowledge; to show 
     their wit or their breeding; their taste in conversation or 
     living, in clothes or furniture...." (Ibid.)
 
     This ferment leads to the development of social 
organizations, Hume explains:
     "Particular clubs and societies are everywhere formed: Both 
     sexes meet in an easy and sociable manner: and the tempers 
     of men, as well as their behavior, refine apace. So that, 
     beside the improvements which they receive from knowledge 
     and the liberal arts, it is impossible but they must feel an 
     encrease of humanity, from the very habit of conversing 
     together and contribute to each other's pleasure and 
     entertainment." (Ibid., p. 22-23)
 
     He summarizes, "Thus industry, knowledge, and humanity, are 
linked together by an indissoluble chain...." (Ibid., p. 23) 
 
     People privately benefit from the development of technology 
and industry; more importantly, a public benefit is achieved. 
"But industry, knowledge, and humanity," Hume writes, "are not 
advantageous in private life alone: They diffuse their beneficial 
influence on the public, and render the government as great and 
flourishing as they make individuals happy and generous. The 
encrease and consumption of all the commodities, which serve to 
the ornament and pleasure of life, are advantageous to society; 
because, at the same time that they multiply those innocent 
gratifications to individuals, they are a kind of storehouse of 
labour, which, in the exigencies of state, may be turned to 
public service." (Ibid., p 23-24)
 
     Not only did Hume show how attention to and support for the 
mechanical arts leads to an increase in social wealth, he also 
contends that the form of government, and the development of the 
political structures of the society are dependent on the level of 
development of the industry in that society. He writes:
     "Laws, order, police, discipline; these can never be carried 
     to any degree of perfection, before human reason has refined 
     itself by exercise, and by an application to the more vulgar 
     arts, at least of commerce and manufacture. Can we expect, 
     that a government will be well modelled by a people, who 
     know not how to make a spinning-wheel, or to employ a loom 
     to advantage?" (Ibid., p. 24)
    
     Similarly, Hume connects bad government with ignorance in 
the mechanical arts, "Not to mention that all ignorant ages are 
infested with superstition, which throws the government off its 
bias, and disturbs men in the pursuit of their interest and 
happiness." (Ibid.)
 
     Furthermore, Hume relates the development of political 
liberty to the development of technology. He writes, "The 
liberties of England, so far from decaying since the improvements 
in the arts, have never flourished so much as during that 
period." (Ibid., p. 27) 
 
     He finds a symbiotic relationship between the progress of 
the mechanical arts [i.e. `arte'- ed] in a society and the 
possibility of good government. In societies which encourage the 
mechanical arts to develop, larger sections of the population 
have the time and know how to fashion a more democratic and 
responsive government. Where technological development is 
discouraged, a greater part of the population has to spend all of 
its time producing for subsistence and has no time to devote to 
oversight of the government. Hume explains:
     "If we consider the matter in a proper light, we shall find, 
     that a progress in the arts is rather favourable to liberty, 
     and has a natural tendency to preserve, if not produce a 
     free government. In rude unpolished nations, where the arts 
     are neglected, all labour is bestowed on the cultivation of 
     the ground; and the whole society is divided into two 
     classes, proprietors of land, and their vassals or tenants. 
     The latter are necessarily dependent and fitted for slavery 
     and subjection; especially where they possess no riches, and 
     are not valued for their knowledge in agriculture; as must 
     always be the case where the arts [i.e. mechanical arts - 
     ed] are neglected." (Ibid., p. 28)
 
     He observes that in a land based society, tyranny is the 
norm. "The former naturally erect themselves into petty tyrants; 
and must either submit to an absolute master, for the sake of 
peace and order; or if they will preserve their independency, 
like the ancient barons, they must fall into feuds and contests 
among themselves, and throw the whole society into such 
confusion, as is perhaps worse than the most despotic 
government." 
 
     Not only was Hume a proponent of public support for 
technological development, he also maintained that increasing the 
wealth available to all stratas of the population was beneficial 
to industrial development. He observed that increasing the share 
of the social wealth, and even of the luxury available to poorer 
sections of society makes possible more democratic political 
institutions. "But where luxury nourishes commerce and industry," 
he writes, "the peasants, by a proper cultivation of the land 
become rich and independent; while the tradesmen and merchants 
acquire a share of the property, and draw authority and 
consideration to that middling rank of men, who are the best and 
firmest basis of public liberty. These submit not to slavery, 
like the peasants, from poverty and meaness of spirit; and having 
no hopes of tyrannizing over others, like the barons, they are 
not tempted for the sake of that gratification, to submit to the 
tyranny of their sovereign. They covet equal laws, which may 
secure their property, and preserve them from monarchial, as well 
as aristocratical tyranny." (Ibid., p 28-9)
 
     Thus he traces the development of the government in England 
attributing changes to the level of technological development of 
the nation's industry.     
 
     Hume describes how the House of Commons in England evolved 
from the development and expansion of industry:
     "The lower house is the support of our popular government; 
     and all the world acknowledges, that it owed its chief 
     influence and consideration to the increase of commerce, 
     which threw such a balance of property into the hands of the 
     commons. How inconsistent then is it to blame so violently a 
     refinement in the arts, [i.e. mechanical arts- ed] and to 
     represent it as the bane of liberty and public spirit!"
                    (Ibid., p. 29)
 
     Hume's defense of technology against its detractors has a 
familiar ring. His writings stand as a condemnation of those who 
blame the computer for a supposed loss of privacy or who claim 
that this new technology has increased the ability of the 
government to control the lives of its citizens. Hume's writings 
challenge these efforts to blame the computer for such problems 
and instead they would point an arrow to the democratic 
achievements of the last part of the 20th Century that are the 
result of computer technology.
 
     One of the most exciting of these achievements is the 
development of what is known as USENET News, a worldwide computer 
conferencing network that makes possible democratic and 
uncensored debate and communication on thousands of subjects for 
computer users around the world. Hume's discovery that "arte" 
(i.e. the development and support of the mechanical arts) leads 
to the possiblity of a more democratic set of institutions and 
then to the ability to preserve those institutions is being 
demonstrated by some of the dramatic applications that have 
developed as a result of the widespread use of computer 
technology.
 
     Johnson's discussion of arte, the writings of Plato, 
Aristotle, Petty, Defoe, and others, the important essays David 
Hume wrote on the question of "arte", provide a theoretical 
foundation to understand the important advance represented by 
USENET News.
 
 
NOTES
 
(1)"Art", in "The Encyclopedia: Selections", edited and 
translated by Stephen J. Gendzier, N.Y., 1967, p. 60.
 
(2)From Protagoras, in the Works of Plato, vol I, The Franklin 
Library, Penn, 1979, p. 81.
 
(3) "Aristotle's Selected Works," translated by Hippocrates G 
Apostle and Lloyd P. Gerson, 1986, p. 676.
 
4. Ibid., Nicomachean Ethics, 1140a 6-23.
 
5.  "A Treatise of Taxes and Contributions," in "The Economic 
Writings of Sir William Petty, edited by Charles Hull, vol I, p. 
68.
 
6. "History of Trade", Petty Papers, vol I, London, 1927, p. 211. 
 
7. "Political Arithmetick," Writings, vol. I, p. 249.
 
8. Ibid., p. 249-250.
 
9. "Verbum Sapienti," Writings, vol I, p. 118.
 
10. "Political Arithmethic", Writings, vol I, p. 256.
 
11."The Political Anatomy of Ireland," Writings, vol I, Works, p. 
182.
 
12. "Political Arithmetick," Writings, p. 270 and 271.
 
13. "A Plan of English Commerce," 1730, Augustus Kelley reprint 
edition, N.Y., p. 36.
 
14. These essays are from "Political Discourses" [Edinburgh, 
1752]. Several of the essays have been reprinted in D. Hume, 
"Writings on Economics", ed. E. Rotwein [1955] Madison, 1970 
reprint)
-- 
Ronda Hauben                    email address:ae547@yfn.ysu.edu
Amateur Computerist Newsletter              or
P.O. Box 4344                   rhauben@heartland.bradley.edu
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