Advanced Technology, Part One

A few months ago, I stumbled into a conversation with a most inquisitive student about the role of advanced technology in modern life, and specifically how our age’s technological obsession has blinded us to fundamental questions, not only about the ultimate human value of our rapid material changes, but also about the terms on which we categorize technological innovations as “advances” in the first place. In that conversation, I casually mentioned the historical transition in sound recording from vinyl records to compact discs, citing the warmer and more natural sound reproduction of LPs as a simple example to highlight the problem of defining what constitutes a technological “advance,” by demonstrating that a new technology might be seen as a genuine improvement over its predecessor in certain terms, but not in others, indicating the need for establishing a standard, or perhaps a hierarchy of standards, to determine how, or in what sense, any given technological innovation may be judged an advance. 

In a subsequent written communication, my student picked up the theme, poking me with a few pointed questions intended to draw me into the deeper philosophical implications of this issue. I happily accepted the challenge, and answered her questions in a three-part correspondence, which I shall reproduce, with some cosmetic alterations, in three posts, beginning here.

1. Why is it determined by your subjective experience whether CDs are advanced or not?

I do not think that the question is determined by my subjective experience. That was not my point at all. Let me explain what I meant using a real example that just occurred during one of my classes an hour ago.

The theme of the first unit in this class is happiness. Before doing the reading for that unit, we have some discussion questions to get comfortable with the topic. One of the questions is, “How would you rate your level of happiness these days, from 1 to 10?” During the previous meeting with this class, I had gone around the room and asked everyone his or her current level of happiness. Naturally, I got a wide range of answers, from about 3 to 8 in this group. Today, I returned to that topic and, choosing someone who said her happiness level is an 8 these days, asked her what happiness means. Of course, she was unable to answer. I tried a few other students, and they could not answer either. I then explained the problem: Everyone has an opinion about whether he or she is happy, and yet no one has a clear definition of happiness, which means no one has a clear standard for determining whether he or she is really happy at all. How can you say “I’m very happy,” “a little happy,” or “very unhappy,” if you do not know what happiness means?

Now, to draw an analogy with our current topic, I did not say that CDs are less advanced than LPs without qualification. What I said, or tried to say, was this: Whether CDs are more advanced than LPs depends on some factors that must be defined before we know what standard we are using to judge whether something is “more advanced” or not. Are we judging on the basis of durability, efficiency of production, or storage capacity? If so, then certainly we would have to say that CDs are an advance over LPs, because they are measurably more durable, more efficient to produce, and have a larger storage capacity – the original CDs could hold up to 74 minutes of music at maximum sound quality, whereas an LP loses sound quality if you try to squeeze more than 46 minutes onto it. But if we are judging by other factors, such as warmth of sound or natural representation of the ear’s way of hearing music, then the LP might be better, and in that sense “more advanced.”

In other words, the CD is more advanced if we are judging on standards of convenience and efficiency, but the LP is more advanced if we are judging on the standard of natural sound reproduction. This is not a judgment based on subjective experience. Nor is the judgment relative to each individual. I am merely saying that we have to define the terms we are using to determine whether something is advanced or not, or else it becomes almost meaningless, or at least ambiguous, to say “X is more advanced than Y.” The relevant question is not about subjective preference, but rather, “More advanced in what sense?”

Perhaps the significance of the distinction I am making, or the definitional issue I am raising, will become clearer when we move to your second question.

2. Then is the 2nd statement, below, a conclusion derived from the 1st?

• “I think X is technically advanced but I personally prefer the past technology’s features, even its inefficient, inconvenient aspects.”
• “I don’t think X is advanced.”

Actually, in the case of CDs vs. LPs, I did not say either of those things. Here is what I said:

• I think CDs are advanced if we are talking about production efficiency and practical convenience, but not if we are talking about improved sound quality, which I do not believe they have. So in that sense, if I am expressing a preference for LPs, I am not saying I prefer “even their inefficient, inconvenient aspects.” I am saying that I prefer LPs when I am focused on the quality of recorded sound, but I can also say I prefer CDs when I am focused on the other, practical issues. In other words, if we are thinking about the real reason we have developed sound recording in the first place, which is to preserve the best possible reproductions of natural sounds, then by that standard an improvement would have to mean a better reproduction of natural sounds.
• And on that standard, I do not think CDs are an improvement. On that standard, then, they are not “advanced,” although of course they have other features that do represent an advance – just not an advance related to sound reproduction.

Now, you could argue that my opinion that LPs offer a more natural sound reproduction is difficult to quantify, and that’s true. You could also argue that my built-in assumption that “more natural” equals better is a value judgment rather than an objective fact, and that may also be true, although in this case I think I could offer a pretty strong argument that my judgment is not merely a subjective preference, but is based on the logic of sound recording – what it is for, and what it ought to be striving for. So my point is not to say that there is no sense in which a newer technology is more advanced. Of course that would be ridiculous. Rather, my point is that we have to be clear what standard we are using to define what kind of advance we are talking about, and then also determine whether this advance ought to be preferred even if it entails a regression in some other sense.

And this leads us directly to your third question:

3. Then what makes something advanced? I would like to know the examples of advances from your point of view.

As I explained above, advanced can be defined in different ways, and how you define it in each case depends entirely on what goals you are focused on. To take a much broader example, there is no question at all that factory mass production is a brilliant advance in the history of civilization if we are judging it on the standards of wealth creation, efficiency of production, and the ability to make more goods available to a wider range of people of all social strata. But are there other standards we might also use to judge mass production, on which it might seem less like an advance? Certainly. We could focus on quality of workmanship, attention to detail, personalized adjustments, or the element of human excellence in the design and crafting. On these standards, I think we would agree that most of the goods we would like to purchase would be better – in quality, workmanship, and personal suitability – if they were produced individually by skilled and fully dedicated craftsmen, rather than mass-produced on an assembly line by people without special skills, or by machines working generically.

So was industrial mass production an advance? Yes, a very great advance – in terms of efficiency and providing universal access to many goods. And yet no, it is not an advance at all – in terms of excellence in workmanship and personal appropriateness. That, for instance, is why people still hire professional carpenters to come into their homes and build bookshelves that match their practical and aesthetic wishes perfectly. It’s more expensive and takes more time, whereas Ikea is cheap and efficient. I have bought Ikea shelves too. But if I had money to spare and really cared about using the most beautiful wood in my home and fitting the shelves to my wall space in the most practical way, I would hire a carpenter.

In the practical world, what is good is often determined by context, which means that things can be good in different senses – and the same item may be better in one way and worse in another.

Now there is a wider theme here, which I wish to get into because it is the most interesting question about all of this: What should be the ultimate factor in determining what counts as “advanced,” at least in the area of practical goods? In other words, there are various senses in which a thing may be regarded to determine whether it is advanced or not, but this does not mean that all those various senses have equal worth, or that their worth is determined subjectively. What, then, should be the standard of standards, meaning the highest consideration that we ought to refer to when deciding which standard (or sense) of “advanced” we ought to favor when deciding the real value of something?

Here we are stepping all the way into the most philosophical question concerning what constitutes a technological advance, the definitional question. For the moment, as a simple hint of where we are going, I will only say that since in all cases of technology, we are talking about objects that must be judged according to their relation to human needs and desires, it seems to make the most sense to say that the standard of standards will be human nature itself, somehow. That is, if you look back at the examples discussed above, or at many others you could conceive of for that matter, you will see that I am saying that each of these items may be called advanced in some senses while being judged inferior, or even regressive, in other senses; but all of these senses must be understood in reference to the ultimate standard of everything we make or do, namely whether it serves (or harms) the higher aims of human life.

In Part Two, I will flesh out what I mean by that, and how this principle might be applied to real examples, so that I may tell you more clearly which technological developments look like “advances from my point of view.”