Technological Criticism
To be unable to criticize technology is to be insane. This particular kind of insanity is the hallmark of modern society.
Allow me to justify the preceding statements.
The Logos of Techne
It is difficult to think of a word for what we call "technology" in any ancient tongue or culture. In fact, it occurred to me recently that the word is rather bizarre in itself--something approaching a contradiction in terms. Logos and techne were fundamental categories to the Greeks and especially the Greek philosophers, but they existed in strong contradistinction to each other. Logos is the realm of knowledge, of discourse, of accounting for a particular reality, whether by means of abstract philosophy, mathematical calculation, or narrative. Techne, in contrast, is the realm of craft, of skilled practice aimed at creation and action.
It is by this time a very old intellectual-history commonplace to point to the connections between magic and technology, even to say, as C.S. Lewis did, that the main or only distinction between magic and technology is that one worked, and the other did not. There is truth in this, but it is nonetheless somewhat deceptive. Techne or craft in the pre-modern sense is in fact closely allied to magic, precisely because by its very nature it defies logos in the sense of pre-determined abstraction and calculation. The magician is a practitioner of a craft, but like many pre-modern craftsman, his craft cannot be neatly set out in a mathematical simulation or technical manual; he operates on a mixture of innate skill, honed practice, habit, planning, improvisation, and technique. Wizardry operates on the guild system, with masters and apprentices; there is no magical proletariat. Books of spells or alchemical texts read much like the Byzantine recipes for paints and metal alloys that I translated earlier this year: succinct sets of directions for already skilled and practiced craftsmen to achieve practical ends, given in imprecise proportions, with many options and lots of freedom to alter and experiment baked in.
Technology, though, is not techne. It is not a skill inhering in a skilled laborer operating on technique and instinct beyond the realms of abstract knowledge and calculation. It is, by its very nature, totally calculated and determined in advance, through the distinctively modern and scientific obsession with applied mathematics.
Neither, though, is technology logos in the general sense of that word. Plato in many of his dialogues provides what could be rather more fittingly described as technologies: that is, rational accounts of techne in general and its particular species, describing their rational ends, the skills involved, and how to become a better practitioner. Technology, while totally calculated, is aimed emphatically at merely practical and immediate ends; it is rarely analyzed in philosophical or moral terms, and no practitioner of technology would regard such analysis as essential to its nature or operation.
