Advanced Technology, Part Three

Having outlined my basic premises and principles in Parts One and Two, I have arrived at a point where I may finally reply directly to the last of your original questions, which, once again, was…

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

You phrase the question in two parts, which makes perfect sense. After all, in order for any examples to be helpful, it would be appropriate to lay out my understanding of what “advanced” means in this area. I was trying to do that over the course of my previous replies. To summarize, my main ideas were:

1. There are many senses in which something may be called an advance, and these different senses are not subjective or relativistic. They merely derive from the fact that we may judge improvements on various standards. Hence, a new technology might be considered an advance over its predecessors with regard to some of its characteristics or achievements, but not others.

2. However, if we are going to try to be philosophical about saying whether a supposed advance represents a true improvement in the ultimate sense – according to the highest or strictest standard of judgment – then we must isolate a standard of standards.

3. Since all manmade material “advances” of any kind are by definition technological, in the sense of being produced by technē (skill or craft), and since the reason humans develop technology is to enhance or develop human life in some way, we should conclude that the standard of standards will be this itself: the enhancement or development of human life. In other words, all the other standards for judging something as “progress,” although they may be legitimate on their own terms (such as durability or storage capacity in our old example of CDs versus LPs), must be subordinated to this highest standard, such that if there is an advance according to some lower standard that conflicts with the sense of advance appropriate to the highest standard, then the technology in question may be called an advance only in a qualified sense, but not in an ultimate sense. On the other hand, if the technology in question clearly represents an advance in relation to the highest standard, then even if it is “less advanced” according to a lower standard, it must be regarded as a genuine advance without qualification, when judged according to the standard of standards.

4. To be specific and properly philosophical, we must say that the standard of “enhancing human life” must be defined according to the highest or defining activities of human nature. These highest or defining activities are primarily thinking, understanding, and seeking wisdom (along with every other aspect of our nature that is implied by these activities), and secondarily living our practical lives in a way that is consistent with, and supportive of, the life of seeking self-knowledge and wisdom about the whole. (“The whole” here means “the cosmos and our place in it,” or “Being itself.”) By including both the highest philosophic life and the lower practical life that supports the philosophic activity, I am carefully creating a “standard of standards” that may be applied to the human good in general, and not only to people living the absolutely best life (philosophic), who of course will always be a small minority of the population, and perhaps almost no one in an absolutely pure form.

To encapsulate the essence of the above points, let me reiterate the principle I formulated in Part Two:

“Any new invention or development may be considered an advance if it can be shown to improve the human condition (actually or potentially), in some way that is consistent with, and helps to promote our growth in accordance with, human nature.”

So a new technology may be quite amazing and impressive from a purely technical point of view – “I can’t believe they can do that now!” – while actually constituting a regression on the standard of human nature, rather than any advancement of the human condition.

And this brings us at last to the final and most amusing part of your series of questions:

I would like to know the examples of advances from your point of view.

In light of everything I have said on this topic, you can see that my idea of a proper and unqualified “technological advance” describes not merely an object that employs the most up-to-date, the fastest, or the most materially impressive discoveries or developments. Rather, an advance that is materially impressive in those ways but ultimately harmful to the human condition on the standard of the human good itself, should be judged as a regression or corruption, and not an advance at all, except in a qualified and ultimately negative sense — progress toward destruction, so to speak. Now, I obviously cannot run through every example of technology in the world and rate all of them on the standard of standards. I think a small but representative sample of cases should suffice to establish my general beliefs about this topic, and how I apply the principles I have explained above to real human life and real-life innovations and inventions. And I remind you, at the outset, that I reject the modern scientific bias in favor of counting as “technology” only those inventions based on modern theories of physics, and involving electrical or electronic elements.

Since the very concept of technology is derived from the ancient Greek technē, which was used by the ancients to describe all manmade practical production or know-how that results from, or involves, intentional manipulation of the material world (medical knowledge and household management, for example, fall within the range of technē in the thinking of Plato and Aristotle), there is no legitimate argument for limiting the word only to modern inventions. And even if we choose, for the sake of accommodating modern thinking, to limit our use of the word “technology” to the manmade material products of such skill or craft, rather than including the practical knowledge itself, there seem to be no grounds for ignoring the many examples of ancient technē that have enhanced human life on the material level, often in ways that appear to me to be far more world-changing and fundamental than any of the recent innovations over which we are all indoctrinated to clap like trained seals as though all human life prior to the smartphone or the microchip was trapped in an abysmal Dark Age. On the contrary, technology (literally “logos about practical craft or skill”) is as old as the birth of civilization, or rather much older than that. The first time a primitive cave dweller figured out how to start a fire on purpose by rubbing two sticks together, the human race was employing technē to enhance practical life. And the real expansion of human possibilities entailed by this “basic” discovery cannot be overestimated; by comparison, the invention of the internet looks quite insignificant. The internet facilitates the high-speed communication of endless information around the Earth. Manmade fire made the human settlement of most of this Earth possible in the first place. Manmade fire has saved more lives, not to mention making more lives possible, than modern medical technology could ever boast. The growth in human knowledge and self-understanding — the sense of individual and species empowerment — entailed by the discovery and dissemination of the art of producing fire at will defines a spiritual advance of almost immeasurable proportions; indeed, it implies not so much an enhancement of civilization, as a seminal event in the begetting of civilized existence itself.

With that explanatory context, then, I can now give you a short representative list – or rather two. To make my idea as clear as possible, and to answer your question as thoroughly as possible, I think it will be best to offer two simple lists, according to the following categories:

1. Technologies that may be shown, in historical practice and in theory, to represent an unqualified advance according to my standard of standards, i.e., inventions which cause a true improvement or enhancement of the human condition on the standard of “living according to human nature.”

2. Technologies that must still be regarded as, at best, qualified advances seen on the standard of enhancing the human condition, which is to say “advances” that may actually prove to be more harmful than helpful to human life and civilization in the long run, and therefore cannot (yet) be judged as true advances in the proper sense, although they are surely impressive from a purely material scientific point of view.

List 1: Unqualified technological advances.

• Fire
• Wheel
• Knife, spear, net (hunting/fishing tools)
• Money
• Ploughs; farming and irrigation tools in general
• Utensils and cooking implements (forks, spoons, chopsticks, ladles, pots, frypans, ovens, etc.)
• Boat and ship (in many variations, from the simple raft to the giant cargo ship, military trireme, and so on)
• Buttresses and other similar architectural techniques that allow larger stone buildings to be erected safely and remain standing for many centuries
• Aqueducts and later water distribution systems
• Printing press
• Electricity; electric power generators; electric lights and power outlets
• Telephone

List 2: Qualified technological “advances”

• Photography
• Motion pictures
• Television
• Sound recording
• Horseless carriage (automobile)
• Airplane
• Nuclear power
• Personal computers
• Internet

In the case of List 1, I am suggesting that these inventions or discoveries (along with many others of course) have turned out to be the sources of more benefit than harm, i.e., to be essentially beneficial, in the arena of human development and civilized living. In the case of List 2, I am suggesting that these inventions have either caused measurable regressions in the quality of human life and civilization (judged on the standard of human nature), or at least have not yet clearly proved themselves to bring more benefits than harm on this standard.

You will notice that List 2 is comprised of inventions that I myself use regularly, or at least have used at times. This is the reality of practical existence. We all live in a real time and place, in a society with norms and in some cases requirements of living, which we will defer to or employ for their perceived benefits, even if we are personally unsure whether these benefits are ultimate in nature, or merely provisional.

To offer a very simple or even simplistic example, take the case of television. Even as an independent adult, in what we may call my post-indoctrinated life, I will still watch The Twilight Zone, along with a relatively small handful of other television programs that have been produced over the history of this technology, because I believe they are artistic or informative enough to justify their use of this questionable medium. On the other hand, if you asked me whether the ultimate effect of television on modern life and society has been beneficial or harmful on the whole, I would certainly say harmful. It has nearly killed family time and conversation, has filled people’s minds with endless stimulation of the most banal and distracting types, at the expense of quiet thinking and meaningful reading. It is an addictive stimulation machine, in fact, which has ruined far more minds than it could ever enhance. So have there been a relative few glorious or at least elevating exceptions which use this medium in a way that can add artistic worth and color to a worthy human life? Yes. But does the medium tend toward such higher products, or rather toward the production of instant and worthless gratifications to kill time and brain cells by making jittery flashing-image addicts of us all? The answer, by now, is obvious.

Likewise, modern recording technology is a remarkable way of giving us access to well-played music at any time, in any place, on almost any budget. But this has had at least two seriously harmful effects that can easily be observed, and can hardly be overcome. First, it has greatly reduced the moral and spiritual value of music itself by making it a ubiquitous and cheap product for random and casual amusement, rather than a relatively rare joy that overwhelms and ennobles us because it is rare and difficult to procure. Secondly, it has fostered the “music industry,” which, since it is focused entirely on financial profit (and/or mind-fogging moral propaganda), tends to encourage and habituate simplistic, childish, and blandly conformist tastes and attitudes, exploiting our lowest instincts and passions in order to get us all addicted to Huxley’s “twenty piddling little fountains” of sexual immorality, artificially-manufactured “violent passion surrogate,” and emotional immaturity, for the sake of satisfying corporate greed at the expense of human decency, rationality, and emotional growth. I love good music, and I can listen to music all day long with pleasure thanks to modern technology. But I never forget that as with the case of television, my preferences for the complex, subtle, and challenging are the minority taste, that I will never convince the world to follow my example, and that even in my own case I know that some of the harmful effects I have outlined here have already affected me to some degree, certainly when I was growing up. Hence, for all the lovely advantages I experience thanks to recorded music, I cannot help wondering whether these advantages (as I imagine them) might be coming at the price of various forms of genuine harm, even in my own relatively self-aware case, let alone in the cases of the majority of my contemporaries, who indulge in the “benefits” of this technology in blissful blindness to the many ways it may be diminishing their souls and stifling their capacities for rational thought.

Well, I would love to carry on much, much further with this discussion. And I know we will. Of course I am sure I have raised more questions than I have answered. But as you know, that is the nature of all serious examination and conversation. We make a lot of progress on our self-development with these investigations, and part of that progress is realizing how much more we have to learn than we had previously recognized. That is what the thinking life is all about, and also what makes it the most beautiful and therefore desirable life. This, in fact, is precisely the desire that most essentially defines the human soul, and which, as I have tried to explain here, is increasingly endangered by so many of the thought-diminishing and focus-blurring distractions that we are all trained to accept and embrace without question as “technological advances.”