The Quandary of Technology
Humankind has been the master of technology since its humble beginnings. Actually, our ability to use higher brain functions in order to create and handle tools is essentially what sets us apart as a species, however able some other apes may be. Our creativity defines us and whatever we choose to do with it will mark the progress of our civilization. After all, technology is no longer defined only by useful tools of creation, but by weapons of destruction too.
Unfortunately, even in the Western world people have a strange ambivalence towards science and modern technology. It is certainly understandable -generations still alive vividly remember the horrors of World War II. Specifically, they remember the atomic bomb. There is nothing to argue, is there? It was a horrific and inexcusable invention of mass destruction. One of the fathers of the Manhattan Project, J. Robert Oppenheimer, said as much, quoting the Bhagavad Gita, an ancient Hindu scripture: "Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
But lest we forget that the power of the atom has also brought us immeasurable advances in energy harnessing, medicine and knowledge itself. Much would be lost without these advances, such as the CERN Large Hadron Collider that is currently unearthing the mysteries of the early universe and challenging the Standard Model of particle physics by putting the existence of the Higgs boson elementary particle to the test. Nuclear power -just as any other piece of technology- can also be a tool for creation. As the late astrophysicist Carl Sagan declared:
"That same rocket and nuclear and computer technology that sends our ships past the farthest known planet can also be used to destroy our global civilization. Exactly the same technology can be used for good and for evil."
Science - and its actualization in modern technology - is neutral. The good and the bad of technology are not to be found in it but in whatever we end up doing with that knowledge. Humanity has the key to both moral goodness and pure wickedness and greed -technology is nothing more and nothing less than a conduit, a tool we can use for creation or destruction.
The future of our species and maybe even the fate of this pale blue dot suspended in space depend solely on us. Only tools of creation can bring us to that future – or to any future.
(Read the original article at "Citizens of the World")
- blogue de Luka Nieto Garay
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Autor
I manage a blog concerning a resource based economy and similar matters, "Ciudadanos del Mundo" or in English "Citizens of the World": www.ciudadanosmundo.com
·Certificate of Proficiency in English
·Translation Studies at University
Comentários
Isak Oqvist
Karma: 1
Luka, you consistently manage to produce articles that are as thought-provoking as they are qualitative. This was especially relevant to me because I wrote about it in a comment on facebook yesterday. My comment was directed at Charles Eisenstein, author of the books "Ascent of humanity" and "Sacred economics" and a very fascinating individual with an amazing ability to express subtle truths. Where I find myself at odds with him, however, is on the subject of the value and nature of the scientific mindset. He has written some great articles on this topic(here's one", and another) and even though I have the greatest respect for his point of view I cannot seem to agree with him. It's a complicated issue and I won't go too far into the details of it here, but I can copy what I wrote on facebook yesterday:
"As always I'm loving the message and the way you present it Charles, but I can't help but feel that it is slightly spoiled by your somewhat anti-scientific sentiments. By equating the scientific mindset with what you refer to as the "logic of the self", I fear you're guilty of perpetuating a view of science that is limiting and, ultimately, destructive. In his book "The Master and his Emissary", Iain McGilchrist beautifully describes science as "neither more nor less than patient and detailed attention to the world", but the majority of the book is spent analyzing and describing the mechanistic reality of the left hemisphere; what Robert M. Pirsig called "the Classical mind" and what most of us would refer to as "cold logic". This is what you're criticizing, and I really recommend McGilchrist's book for a detailed understanding of this fundamental phenomena. Science, rightly used, can be as beautiful as poetry and art. As with any tool, it is the mind that wields it that determines the outcome."
I've previously written about McGilchrist's book here, and it appears I keep coming back to it in most conversations I have about science. It is my belief that to deal with the warped image some people have of science, we must find better ways to describe what it is they confuse it with, namely the "cold logic" mentioned earlier.
Luka Nieto Garay
Karma: 1
Very interesting indeed. I will look him up.
If you are still interested, other essays I've written are pretty much based on the same ideas and actually reinforce each other.
http://www.ciudadanosmundo.com/2012/01/postmodernist-deceit.html
http://www.ciudadanosmundo.com/2011/03/virtue-of-faith.html
http://www.ciudadanosmundo.com/2011/03/meaning-of-life.html
I should write a book some time, welding all my essays together. Now it is an incoherent mess...