Date: Sat, 21 May 1994 22:14:01 -0500
To: technology-AT-world.std.com
From: kirez-AT-cornell.edu (kirez korgan)
Subject: Re: The technological "we"


More specific treatment:

Malgosia writes:
>make a living.  If the craftsman is lucky, he will get retrained
>and thus, through no choice of his own, learn to adjust to a means
>of production which he did not help create.  If he is unlucky, he may
>have to endure the humiliations of unemployment.  Yet it is common to
>talk about technology as "our" technology, as if "we" (who?) 
>could be thought to represent a cohesive, unified set of interests in 
>this context.
>
>
>- malgosia 

First of all, we all have to work in order to make a living.  This is
unavoidable.  Only slaveowners who, by force, have others work for them and
collect from this work, don't.  They are dependents.  Deprived of their
force they must also earn a living.

I think that this is a very degrading view of the craftsman.  A craftsman
is perfectly capable of having goals in his life, and of educating himself
and striving to achieve that goal.  Craftsmen are not passive, helpless
people who "get retrained" or who "learn to adjust".  They go out and take
advantage of new technologies to become better and more productive at their
jobs.  The craftsman does not "get lucky" - he proves his worth to someone
who needs his product, and then those people trade, value for value. Nor
does he get "unlucky" - work is a matter of being able to offer a value to
someone, and only if you are unable to offer someone a good economic value
will you be employed.   Unemployment is not about humiliation - it
certainly can be humiliating, but this is trivial and inessential. 
Unemployment is serious in terms of not being able to provide for one's
life.  
        The craftsmen is also said to have to learn to adapt to a
technology he did not help create.  As I indicated, this is not an
imposition on the poor craftsman by the upper hierarchies - this is, and
should be, the craftsman availing himself of the increased productivity
offered to him by someone else's invention.  Is this supposed to be bad? 
Should the tens of thousands of people now employed as computer technicians
have been the same as designed and developed the computer?  Where would
they be, if they couldn't exploit this new source of opportunity, of
employment?  Or should they reject this source of employment?  It is the
case that technologies are developed by stepwise development, with a single
individual responsible for each new development, whether it is the trivial
adjustment to an existing system or the radical, creative invention of an
entirely new device, and thus MANY benefitting from the work of a few.
        This view of the worker - as some helpless dependent person who
waits for society to give him a job - is sad.  The correct model should be:
I have an ability, I can offer that ability to someone who needs it, and
we'll both benefit.  I will be able to live, and she will be able to
further her goals by using my services.
        As for the "cohesive, unified set of interests" - I almost could
not have said it better myself.  This is exactly the case with technology. 
Human nature demands technology.  The practice of healthy technologies is
universally beneficial. But it is only "our" technology if we ignore those
who run from the life-giving promise of science.  By "our" I guess we mean
"the rational among us".
        It appears that your opposition to this stems from a world view in
which human existence is predatory  - where the benefit of one person is
gotten at the expense of another.  Where interests are in conflict. 
Utterly false.
But I'll have to address that at another time.

happy flourishing,
Kirez
 
       
___________________________________________
"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data."
                                                - Sherlock Holmes

Kirez Korgan, hardcore technophile
kirez-AT-cornell.edu