Toward a philosophy of technology

ion, and subtlety, the unlocking of electricity marks a decisive step. Here is a universal force of nature which yet does not naturally appear to man (except in lightning). It is not a datum of uncontrived experience. Its very "appearance" had to wait for science, which contrived the experience for it. Here, then, a technology depended on science for the mere providing of its "object," the entity itself it would deal with-the first case where theory alone, not ordinary experience, wholly preceded practice (repeated later in the case of nuclear energy). And what sort of entity! Heat and steam are familiar objects of sensuous experience, their force bodily displayed in nature; the matter of chemistry is still the concrete, corporeal stuff mankind had always known. But electricity is an abstract object, disembodied, immaterial, unseen; in its usable form, it is entirely an artifact, generated in a subtle transformation from grosser forms of energy (ultimately from heat via motion). Its theory indeed had to be essentially complete before utilization could begin. Revolutionary as electrical technology was in itself, its purpose was at first the by now conventional one of the industrial revolution in general: to supply motive power for the propulsion of machines. Its advantages lay in the unique versatility of the new force, the ease of its transmission, transformation and distribution-an unsubstantial commodity, no bulk, no weight, instantaneously delivered at the point of consumption. Nothing like it had ever existed before in man's traffic with matter, space, and time. It made possible the spread of mechanization to every home; this alone was a tremendous boost to the technological tide, at the same time hooking private lives into centralized public networks and thus making them dependent on the functioning of a total system as never before, in fact, for every moment. Remember, you cannot hoard electricity as you can coal and oil, or flour and sugar for that matter. But something much more unorthodox was to follow. As we all know, the discovery of the universe of electromagnetics caused a revolution in theoretical physics that is still underway. Without it, there would be no relativity theory, no quantum mechanics, no nuclear and subnuclear physics. It also caused a revolution in technology beyond what it contributed, as we noted, to its classical program. The revolution consisted in the passage from electrical to electronic technology which signifies a new level of abstraction in means and ends. It is the difference between power and communication engineering. Its object, the most impalpable of all, is information. Cognitive instruments had been known before -sextant, compass, clock, telescope, microscope, thermometer, all of them for information and not for work. At one time, they were called "philosophical" or "metaphysical" instruments. By the same general criterion, amusing as it may seem, the new electronic information devices, too, could be classed as "philosophical instruments." But those earlier cognitive devices, except the clock, were inert and passive, not generating information actively, as the new instrumentalities do. Theoretically as well as practically, electronics signifies a genuinely new phase of the scientific-technological revolution. Compared with the sophistication of its theory as well as the delicacy of its apparatus, everything which came before seems crude, almost natural. To appreciate the point, take the man-made satellites now in orbit. In one sense, they are indeed an imitation of celestial mechanics-Newton's laws finally verified by cosmic experiment: astronomy, for millenia the most purely contemplative of the physical sciences, turned into a practical art! Yet, amazing as it is, the astronomic imitation, with all the unleashing of forces and the finesse of techniques that went into it, is the least interesting aspect of those entities. In that respect, they still fall within the terms and feats of classical mechanics (except for the remote-control course corrections). Their true interest lies in the instruments they carry through the voids of space and in what these do, their measuring, recording, analyzing, computing, their receiving, processing, and transmitting abstract information and even images over cosmic distances. There is nothing in all nature which even remotely foreshadows the kind of things that now ride the heavenly spheres. Man's imitative practical astronomy merely provides the vehicle for something else with which he sovereignly passes beyond all the models and usages of known nature.* That the advent of man portended, in its inner secret of mind and will, a cosmic event was known to religion and philosophy: now it manifests itself as such by fact of things and acts in the visible universe. Electronics indeed creates a range of objects imitating nothing and progressively added to by pure invention. And no less invented are the ends they serve. Power engineering and chemistry for the most part still answered to the natural needs of man: for food, clothing, shelter, locomotion, and so forth. Communication engineering answers to needs of information and control solely created by the civilization that made this technology possible and, once started, imperative. The novelty of the means continues to engender no less novel ends-both becoming as necessary to the functioning of the civilization that spawned them as they would have been pointless for any former one. The world they help to constitute and which needs computers for its very running is no longer nature supplemented, imitated, improved, transformed, the original habitat made more habitable. In the pervasive mentalization of physical relationships it is a trans-nature of human making, but with this inherent paradox: that it threatens the obsolescence of man himself, as increasing automation ousts him from the places of work where he formerly proved his humanhood. And there is a further threat: its strain on nature herself may reach