TECHNIQUE AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE

For approximately 300 years, since the appearance of Francis Bacon's New Atlantis in 1627, the triumphant march of science and the increasing application of discoveries and inventions associated with it, enjoyed the virtually unanimous support of lay and learned opinion. Only in the early decades of this century did scepticism about the merits of this development begin to receive the attention and respect earlier reserved for its support. Since then, the chorus of adversary critique has grown considerably in volume, seriousness, and urgency. Today, it is necessary to distinguish between two arguments opposing the continued advance of technology. One concerns its direct impact on the environment and on human health. Here we hear about the exhaustion of resources, pollution, diseases, and injuries caused by industrial processes and products, and the deleterious effects of mechanization and automation on mental health. The second argument proposes that advances in technology cause a radical transformation in the nature of human existence, quite apart from the specific effects identified in the first argument, and possibly even in their absence. In a rather obvious way the first argument is the more pressing one. The imminent depletion of the stock of fossil fuels, the ravages caused by carcinogens, and the debilitating effects of oppressive industrial processes constitute an immediately felt burden of harm and cost. Even though controversies about these matters usually pit advocates of technological progress against people who favor its slowdown or even halt, it is actually a debate that is internal to technology. What is at issue is the proper handling of problems that are amenable to remedial manipulation, by the same kinds of methods that caused them. That is, the same kind of mentality that devised the uses of asbestos in the first place was also at work in identifying its pathogenic consequences, and is at work to find and administer remedies for them, and to prevent them from occurring. Within this framework, then, the question is not whether we should employ techniques to fireproof schools, but whether we should let technological progress stumble forward on a path strewn with casualties of its promoters' improvidence, opportunism, and greed, or take charge of its course. The second argument differs from the first in more than one way. It lacks specificity, and tends to be loosely speculative. At times the case is not really argued but merely importuned prophetically. And it is not at all clear what its practical implications are. The target of concern is the influence of technology on the conduct of life. The projected effect involves a radical transformation in the ways we feel and think about ourselves, and how we live with one another; and there is fear that the prevalence of technical hardware in our environment and of the technical mentality within us will lead to a form of human existence ordered in all its important aspects by mechanical regulation. At times the second argument is alluded to in connection with presentations dedicated primarily to the first argument, as for example in the last sentence of Seligman's (1966:404) splendid book: "With the victory of the machine - a most notorious victory -the attainment of human autonomy is at best moot." On the surface, the statement is the kind of toned-down expression of alarm to which we have become accustomed: the cause is notorious yet the outlook is still moot. But below the "you-know-what-I-mean" meaning there is a remarkable paradox. First, we