Perspectives on Technology and Society: Understanding the Interplay
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We need to contemplate on philosophical thinking about the relation between technology and society, and between technological change and social change. Consequently, our focus is on what Mitcham has called humanities philosophy of technology rather than engineering philosophy of technology. The latter is more interested in issues in engineering practice, like the nature and evolution of technological artifacts, design, and the nature of technological knowledge, while the first focuses more on technology as a social, cultural, and historical phenomenon, and its relation to society. The proponents of humanities philosophy of technology expressed a view on the relation between technology and society that conceives of technology as an autonomous force that determines society. While this view has been, and still is, influential, particularly in more popular discussions about technology, it has now been largely surpassed in professional philosophy of technology by a view that has arisen since roughly the 1980s under the influence of philosophers like Langdon Winner and the rise of the field of Science and Technology Studies. According to this second view, technology is basically a human product shaped by human interests and values, and it can also be shaped by these according to human will. In addition to these two views, I will distinguish a third one, which is of a more recent date but also has older roots. This third view stresses the co-evolution of technology and society and recognizes explicitly the sometimes-self-contained character of technology, and its unexpected and unintended consequences.
In current societal debates, we find elements of all three views. In current popular discourse, for example, about the fear that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will take over from humans, we can clearly recognize the idea of technology as an autonomous and determinate force. However, in these debates, we also witness the articulation of a range of values, which should guide the development of AI, which very much fits the second view.
Therefore, the three perspectives on technology and society that I sketch also function of tropes, or figures of speech that we have recourse to when we try to understand technological change and how it relates to, or affects, social change. Each perspective comes with certain core assumptions that define certain developments as threats, and others as opportunities. What in one mode of thinking may be seen as malleable and open to choice, in another mode may be seen as given and unchangeable. The different modes of thinking about technology and society are therefore not innocent: they help to determine not only how we interpret technology and its relation to society but also what we see as possible and desirable.
