The Question of Technology

Abstract

While modern civilization takes pride in its commitment to reason, its discourse of technology remains confused and paradoxical. Technology has what the chapter calls a noisy presence in everyday life, art, advertisements, corporate propaganda and popular culture, characterized by the interplay between boyish enthusiasm and dark presentiment. Oddly, the noisy acknowledgment of the historical force of technology tends to transmute into embarrassed silence in critical debate and political life. Therefore, technology stands out as a scandalous affront to the paramount ideal of modernity, self-determination. The chapter’s diagnostic suggestion is that the paradoxical status in the discourse of technology is produced and upheld in the interplay between four incompatible notions of technology, namely that technology is progressive, unstoppable, neutral, and natural. It closes with some remarks on the moral dynamic that allows the preservation of much noise and little reason in the modern discourse of technology.