We are born in a world of machines and are increasingly dependent on them for our everyday actions. This is particularly true of digital technologies such as the internet and the smartphone. Given that we are already immersed in this technology, how can we think about it in any meaningful manner? One could respond by noting that there is really nothing to think about since these machines are primarily produced for a purpose. But this is precisely the point about philosophy as it repeatedly alerts us to the need to think more deeply about what we take for granted. Our response to technology might be similar to that about our world.
Why think about what we are already so familiar with? But as we have seen so far in this series, what we take for granted often hides complex layers behind it. Unlike nature which is already ‘given’ to us, technology is produced by human interests. There is nothing natural about technology. Nor can it be defined only by its use and function. The production of technology serves specific human purposes and human desires. So a philosophical inquiry into technology is important for it illuminates our innermost nature. A philosophy of technology is not really about the nature of machines and gadgets, but actually about us, about who we are, and what we aim to be.
Like medicine, every technology has its proclaimed uses, as well as many lesser known side effects. One might think that we can rationally balance the pros and cons of technology and then decide what technology we want to use. This is a fallacious belief. We do not choose the technology that impacts us. There is nothing democratic about the discovery and dissemination of technologies. The nature of technology is such that the common people are always merely receivers and users of technology, and never decision-makers on what kind of technology they would like to use. Technological gadgets are not produced by ideas alone; they need a huge investment of money and human resources for their development.
This is similar to the case of modern allopathic drugs. To produce one drug, pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars. Patients have little real choice in what drug they would like because there are only a limited set of available drugs. Capitalism is built on the foundation of modern technology and it is the Capitalists who decide what technology (and medicine) is good for all of us!
So it is not realistic to argue that humans have agency in deciding what technologies they want. True, gadgets do not tell us what to do or how to behave, but they control our behaviour to a great extent. When it comes to children and young adults, it is these gadgets that have agency and not the youngsters. In fact, technologies are designed so as to make the young get more easily addicted to them. There are conscious attempts at entrapment and seduction, but technology escapes censure because of the rhetoric of their use and their ‘inevitability’.
The question of agency in human’s relationship to technology underscores an important – and I think essential – quality of technology, which is that all technology is primarily geared towards some human characteristic, either as augmenting or adding new, human capabilities. Sometimes, this quality leads to the mistaken inference that technology is subservient to human interests and under human control. It is precisely the belief in the subservience of technology to humans that is challenged by digital technology and the technologies associated with Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Technology does augment human capabilities, but why would we want to do that? Who wants this constant “upgradation” of our bodies and minds? Some people claim that it is part of the natural evolution of human beings that we want to produce tools to enable us to escape the constraints of our body/mind. But is this really natural? Do all humans and cultures want to escape constraints? Not so, since many individuals as well as communities argue that to live a meaningful life is to learn to live within our constraints. The claim that these technologies are a consequence of natural human evolution is also difficult to understand. How is the specific technology of nuclear bombs part of a “natural evolution” of humans? How is the unimaginable amount of destructive weapons in every nation a part of evolution? More aptly, the growth of technologies should rightly be seen as a reflection of the desire of a few people or groups who produce these technologies.
Technology is closely related to desire but this desire is not “natural”; it is a particular form of desire produced by social forces. We cannot fly since our bodies are not constructed in this manner. But we can build machines that can make us fly. Wherefrom this desire to do what we cannot do? Animals, birds and insects do not try to do what they cannot do. Historically, technology has been used to distinguish humans from other creatures, as illustrated in the definition of humans as tool-making animals. However, the basic question is why we want to be different from what we are. One might argue that it is in the nature of human beings that we want to transcend what we are born with. But is this really our “nature” or is it something that is taught by an aggressive society?
Technological gadgets always exceed their purpose, of what they are meant to do. One might think that vehicles, such as scooters, motorbikes and cars, are only a means for faster travel. We cannot imagine a world today in which there are no such mechanised machines, although in the history of humans, they are very recent since these machines are only about 150 years old. It is true that these machines have made movement easier, especially across long distances, but it is also equally true that they have produced significant changes not only in our body structures but also in our personal and social behaviour. Technology is not just a means for humans to do something; it is an agent that changes our bodies and culture in strongly perceptible ways. In the case of cars and bikes, studies have shown how our body postures have changed over time. Our bodies have become weaker and more prone to diseases. Today, one of the most important causes of modern diseases is this lifestyle promoted by technology.
The impact of technology is not limited to physiology. All technology has an impact on the idea of being human since it has always been imagined in relation to some human quality or the other. If in earlier societies physical labour was seen to be a measure of men, today it is “mental” labour that has value. This shift is actually a momentous one as it makes the mental domain of humans the most valuable quality of an individual. The use of machines and gadgets has changed our fundamental perception about ideas such as nature, society, other human beings, slowness, efficiency of human action, exploitation and so on. It has impacted human psychology so much that children and the young under the influence of technology are showing more signs of anxiety, an inability to do basic cognitive tasks, loss of physical mobility, addictive behaviour, and a sense of alienation that is more profound than anything seen before. Caught in the midst of this world not of ‘our own making’, how can we think about, and respond to, technology?
Unlike accounts in school textbooks, the era of technology did not begin with the Industrial Revolution in Britain/Europe. The practice of technology flourished centuries earlier in Asia and Africa. Some of the most important technological practices in India included metallurgical processes for producing high-quality steel, manufacture of alloys, distillation of zinc, and so on. The Chinese were known for introducing a large number of technologies including compass, printing and gunpowder. These technologies from India and China were well known in the Arab world, which served as a gateway for the transmission of this knowledge to Europe in the second millennia. It was these technologies, as well as scientific and mathematical knowledge from India, China, Greece and Persia, that were synthesised by the Islamic philosophers. It was this knowledge that directly influenced the origin of modern science and technology in Europe.
Each era of technology has added to our understanding of what it is to be human. While early technologies like building houses were technologies used for protecting humans, instruments like the plough enhanced the physical capabilities of humans. Whether it was building technology or agricultural technology, these artefacts were created with a particular intention and their use always transcended the individual. These technologies were social in character and needed human labour to make them operative. Much before the Industrial Revolution, ship-building technologies as well as navigation instruments were common in Asia and the Mediterranean region. These machines extended the capacity for travelling great distances in a manageable time. Industrial technologies produced machines that would augment human capabilities as well as introduce the notion of production on larger scales.
This imagination was not a technological one as much as it was an economic one. These technologies were built around the idea of human labour, which was not restricted to individual labour alone. Workers had to work together. Even the technologies that were produced, such as the railways, were not primarily meant for individuals but for a group. The introduction of domestic technologies like the washing machine replaced the ‘drudgery’ of daily manual labour with machine labour, and these had a significant social impact such as on the idea of liberating women from such labour as well as producing new ideas of leisure.
So each era of technology was characterised by some unique characteristics and it is wrong to lump the history of technology into one mould. A knife is not the same as a washing machine. This progression of machines across the humanscape over time had one thing in common: a constant engagement with core beliefs about human nature. With pre-modern and pre-capitalist technologies, a sense of balance was a necessary requirement. This meant that there was a balance between human use and natural resources, which was a way of moderating human desire and control.
A paradigmatic change occurs in the creation of a new genre of machines called “thinking machines”. These machines were supposed to augment and then eventually replace humans in all the activities related to thinking. This included having a machine do the job of remembering, calculating, deciding and so on, activities that we had thought were essential to being an autonomous individual. It is these thinking machines that have now progressed to AI machines. What these AI machines can do far outweighs the functions of any other machine in human history. These technologies are a manifestation of uncontrolled excess, both of resources as well as self-indulgence. None of these elements of digital technologies are natural or necessary. All technologies are produced under various social conditions. They are produced only from the vision and drive of a few individuals. The technological vision of a few individuals and groups has become a de facto imposition on the entire human population.
The modern era is often described as emphasising the autonomy of human beings. This idea of autonomy gave ultimate authority to humans by liberating them from the need for a “higher” authority to justify their thinking and actions. Machines, in contrast, were not autonomous agents in that they were always thought to be dependent on humans.
AI challenges the fundamental belief that technology is dependent on autonomous humans. Since autonomy was guaranteed through the processes of reasoning, machines that did the grunt work of physical labour were always under the authority of humans. Humans were needed to produce and run these technologies. So, however powerful a machine was, it nevertheless functioned under the ultimate control of humans. AI challenges these assumptions about technology. AI in principle is becoming an autonomous, independent domain. It can produce its own technology and it can control its technologies. It can make decisions on its own without any human hand holding it. The final frontier of AI is the replacement of humans by these machines.
Other articles in this series
Sundar Sarukkai on how philosophy can be a living tradition in our lives today
‘Do we perceive the world or do we think it?’ Sundar Sarukkai on thinking in philosophy
‘Philosophy is an act of illuminating the invisible’: Sundar Sarukkai on human perception
What is the original impulse to a philosopher’s questions? It is ‘doubt’, contends Sundar Sarukkai
What is the job of philosophy? Is it to make human beings better? Sundar Sarukkai poses the question
Another Story of Philosophy will be published by Westland Books. Sundar Sarukkai’s recent books include Philosophy for Children, The Social Life of Democracy, and the novel Following a Prayer. For more details, see the author’s website.
