Some thoughts on technology

A system is an organization of energy or information consisting of nodes, relations, and a network. A node is any concentration of energy or information. A relation is a flow of energy or information between two or more nodes. A network is the set of relations and nodes of a given system. There can be different kinds of systems; each system is distinguished by the specific content of its information or its energy flow. For practical purposes systems can sometimes be treated independently, but in terms of the ultimate energy flow that is the basis of all systems, all systems are interconnected and interdependent. Systems may be simple or complex: in simple systems, the number of nodes and their relations are finite and directly measurable; in complex systems, the number nodes and value of relations may not be fully knowable knowable or measurable. The science of statistics is used to measure complex systems. A systems analyst discloses and describes the nodes and relations of a network; a systems manager monitors, adds, removes, and alters nodes and relations and the network array of a system in order to attain a goal. A goal is a desired configuration of a system. Technology is the manipulation of a system in order to attain a goal.

All tools and machines belong in the realm of used objects; technology is not about objects but about systems: systems are a different kind of human invention, because they are not about the organization of physical material [i.e., shaping wood into a handle, stone into a blade, smelting ore into metal, casting metal into a machine], but about the organization of human relations into orders of information and energy based upon external characteristics [i.e., markets, populations, species, genders, races, classes, groups, societies, cultures, organizations, institutions, crafts, guilds, armies, economies, wards, precincts, denominations, nations, etc.]

Both tools and machines are used objects--the difference is that a tool is an extension of a human limb [hand (hatchet) or foot (spade)], where a machine is a used object too large to be used as the extension of a human limb: a log rolled across a stream to make a bridge is a machine. Some machines are small [logs, steps, ladders, cross-cut saws] while some are very big: shuttle rockets, oil platforms, marine dredges, aircraft carriers, strip-mine coal scoops]. Tools and machines manipulate, shape, alter, move materials. Technology manipulates system relations in order to attain goals. Technology is not about tools and machines: it is not about objects or collections of objects, but about relations. The only way to talk about technology is to talk about the forms of human relations.

Human relations can be based upon three things: affection, consent, and power. Affection is not an efficient basis of large-scale human relations because it requires unstable hierarchies of information [old friends, falling in love, nurture and care] to effect social ordering. Power has certain short term efficiencies [i.e. a curfew that forces rioters off the streets; economic power that raises the cost of gasoline to drive down consumption or abate pollution], but in the long terms power is too costly because it also requires excess information input [management hierarchy] and because it generates excess waste: either as social dysfunction [anger, rebellion] or waste/pollution. Some applications of power generate both social dysfunction and waste [war, industrial manufacturing, third world debt].

The most efficient form of relation is consent. Consent is the outcome of mutually perceived common good. Technology succeeds when it engenders participation in a common good; it fails when it destroys or lessens the common good. Community is the traditional life form of people who perceive themselves to be related through a common good. The way to evaluate technology is not to group objects into a "+" and "--" list of good and bad [evil], i.e., GOOD--pencils, pens, forks, spoons, rakes, shovels, stethoscopes, etc.; EVIL--guns, knives, cars, tractors, plastic utensils, imported sandals, calculators, TVs, computers, etc. All such lists have too little information for decisional management and when extended become self-contradictory. Technology should be evaluated in terms of its impact upon the life forms of the common good: does the technology promote the common good and participation in it or does the technology diminish or lessen the common good? The pyramid machine was bad technology; the Southeast Indian fur trade was bad technology. TV and computers and phones are good technology.

Technology is our capacity to lessen common labor or increase efficiency by the creation of a form of human relation that transcends--exceeds--our capacity to use tools or build machines; technology is our capacity to manipulate relations between nodes of energy or information in a network. Two people carrying a log is technology [the log is not technology; it is a machine]. A man using a hoe is using a tool; the hoe is not technology: the garden he uses it in [gardening] is the technology. The garden is simply a local [however stylized] form of agriculture. Agriculture is a vegetable/plant systems technology. It is the way a group of people [agriculturists, planters, farmers] have organized themselves to use certain aspects of the natural world [seeds, soil, light] to promote the common good by lessening effort [working together or by using a group concept such as hilled crops or laid rows] and increasing efficiency [boosting yield, generating and storing surplus].

Instead of talking so much about the evils of technology--and especially the evils of objects such as tools and machines--we should be talking instead about the common good: what promotes it, what lessens it. Technologies which lessen the common good--usually because they involve too much power--are bad: shooting flies with a shotgun, aborting babies because we will not do education or prevention, fighting wars to sublimate the effects of male hormonal surplus. Some technologies lessen the common good by generating too much waste: pulp paper processing, internal combustion engines, sugar cane farming, beef production, etc.

Some technologies can be good and then become bad; that is, at one time promote the common good and then at another time lessen it: when there were no other media, newspapers [=pulp-based-information-distribution-system] were once good technology; now they are not. Now they consume too many resources needed for other purposes and generate too much waste in production and consumption. Now we have media which can more efficiently replace the informational distribution needs of global society; newspapers are environmentally costly and so diminish the common good instead of promoting it.

In relation to the common good, every technology can be measured by the simple question, "Is it neighborly?" Technologies that make the water undrinkable, make the air smell bad or make people sick, technologies that poison the land and food or wipe out species are un-neighborly: they lessen the common good. The "common good" is not static, however. The common good of Greek shepherds or yeoman farmers or Niger spear-fishermen, or Masai lion hunters is not necessarily the common good for the descendants of those people today [however much we may be attached to their activities on the basis of our affection for folk ways]. The common good evolves--and in that evolution--transforms how nature is seen and used by the community of common good.

Freedom is our capacity to choose what we hold in common; it is not in our right to impose our choice on others. Democracy is one political expression of the common good. There can be trans-democratic political forms that also express the common good: rice paddy allotment by councils of village elders in Southeast Asia. Town meeting democracy is an old political technology; TV media democracy is a new political democracy which is more efficient: "More Americans get their news from ABC than from any other source." More Americans are exposed to the chronology of American history at Disneyworld than in the curriculum of American public schools. American commitment to town meeting democracy once promoted but now lessens the common good that transcends small towns. Regions, nations, the globe, cannot act as a town meeting democracy: we cannot wait for every little hamlet to vote against chloro-fluro carbons to save the ozone. Regulatory bureaucracy is a more effective technology than local political participation. Statistical market sampling is a more efficient means of shaping legislative political decision than the "will of the people."

The best way to rule [change, improve, alter] the world--to attain alternative system goals--is to change channels. The best technology is the information system that can motivate large populations at that point at which they control the button on the channel selector. Sesame Street has long since become more important than Mom or Apple Pie. Disney was a first order technocrat--information systems manager--because he understood sooner and better than any other person in the twentieth century the importance of packaging information for wide, effortless consumption. His success can be measured in the American attitudes which are more pro-Bambi than pro-baby. Disney understood what few Americans yet understand: technology is not about tools and machines; it is about information systems.

Benson said we needed to talk about technology. The problem with technology is not that there is some evil inherent in any technology; it is rather that any technology can and most likely will be downwardly transformed by sin. All technologies are subject to distortion by sin. The problem then as ever is not with technology but with people--with the nature of community and of responsible spiritual citizenship. The failure of technology is not a failure of machines but a failure to use the gifts of God for the people of God.