The Irish Times

If We Fear Technology, We Really Fear Ourselves

The Collins English Dictionary defines technology as 'the total knowledge and skills available to any society for industry, art, science etc.' People generally feel uneasy about technology. We recognise that we are dependent on it but at the same time we feel in a vague way that we are in thrall to an alien influence.

In my opinion these widespread feelings are supported by two feet of clay. One foot is the alienation resulting from the general lack of understanding of the technical and scientific basis of our everyday technology (I devoted a column to this on July 19th). The other leg, which I will deal with in this article, is the mistaken idea that technology is an unnatural interloper into an otherwise natural world.

Technology is natural, and to fear technology is to fear ourselves. Tools are not unique to humans. Some animals use tools in hunting and some birds use tools in nest-building. Archaeology shows that mankind developed and used technology from the very beginning. Early men and women used clubs to hunt and warmed themselves by covering their bodies with animal skins. This early human technology may have developed by imitating nature, e.g. the bird which breaks a snail shell by banging it against a stone, but the subsequent human invention of improved tools distinguishes us from animals.

Man's earliest tools were simply extensions of the body. The arm was extended and strengthened by the club, the foot was hardened by the shoe, the skin was protected by clothes. Later technologies, such as the wheel and the bow, went far beyond simple imitation of nature but because they grew from human creativity they must be classified as natural.

Apart from facilitating labour and relieving burden the development of technology was also driven by a desire to achieve predictability. For example, the earliest agriculture simply harvested whatever came naturally to hand.

But this provided a very unpredictable food supply and therefore humans developed the technology of agriculture - planting, fertilising and irrigating crops - in order to ensure reliable food supplies. Modern industrialised agriculture is still largely driven by the desire to ensure predictability of outcome.

Three stages can be recognised in the development of technology. The first is called the tool stage in which human energy is guided by human intelligence, such as the use of a wrench to tighten a nut. The second is the machine stage where non-human energy is guided by human intelligence, e.g. the pneumatic wrench. The third stage is the automated machine which uses non-human energy and directs its own activities, e.g. robots on a car assembly line.

Technology inexorably develops to the automated state. We are surrounded by innumerable examples - thermostatically controlled heating and cooling, telephone answering machines, automatic car transmissions and chokes, automated assembly lines etc. Automation is often portrayed as particularly unnatural and threatening to human freedom. However, there is nothing unnatural in the concept of automation. Most of the human body is automated - we breathe automatically, our hearts beat automatically, our guts constrict and dilate automatically etc.

Human psychology tends to fear that which it does not control. This is often to ignore the fact that many automated processes work more reliably and safely than technology that is under human control. For example, most aircraft accidents result from human error and not machine error. Most road accidents result from human error and not from malfunctioning cars. More domestic fires result from human error than from malfunctioning devices.

But the question of control should not be considered in isolation from the question of understanding. In many cases where the individual feels he/she has no control over technology, it is also the case that he/she doesn't understand the technology either. Achieving an understanding would probably greatly ameliorate the unease felt over the lack of control. And residual (and understandable) fears about lack of control could be dealt with in many cases by providing a facility for manual intervention or override.

It also seems to be part of human psychology to look backwards with a rosy romantic eye and to look to the future with a wary and untrusting outlook. We tend to be uncritical of the 'good old days' before life became so 'mechanical' and before the environment became so 'polluted'. We gaze at a painting of a rustic village scene from a past century and idealise the simple healthy lifestyle. We ignore the squalor, disease and deprivation that we know existed then but that isn't pictured in the cosy scene.

We even idealise past technology, such as the steam engine, as having a noble and unthreatening character compared with the technology of today, ignoring the fact that, in its time, the old technology was criticised in exactly the same fashion as is the modern technology now.

The analysis that underpins the philosophy of the Green Movement is heavily informed by a romantic view of the past and an antipathetic view of modern science and of science-based technology. The notion that technology is intrinsically unnatural is wrong and leads to a mindset that divides the world into 'goodies' and 'baddies'. This occasionally degenerates into completely self-defeating actions such as the recent illegal vandalising of the Monsanto genetically modified beet experiment in west Cork.

Technology is no more unnatural than music, philosophy or any other product of the human intellect. Just as with these other activities, you can have good and bad technologies, and the process needs to be monitored. We have learned in recent decades that we are part of the natural environment and must also accept that technology is a natural product of human activity and a natural extension of the human capacity.