Ned Ludd's Bad Rap

Back when I was seriously formulating a dissertation, before I got tired (finally, at about 45 years of age) of being a graduate student, I was trying very hard to be a philosopher of technology. This, to me, provided a focus that made sense of the enormous variety of courses I'd taken (in both the social and natural sciences, as well as in the humanities) over some (then) 25 years of higher education.

It made sense to me that if one of the things that helped us define ourselves was our use of tools (for everything from hunting and preparing our food to expressing ourselves in art and music), then we ought to be able to examine critically the uses we make of these tools, and to assess their impact not only on ourselves, but on our fellow beings--animal, vegetable, and even mineral. When I first started looking around at the developing fields of technology assessment, environmental ethics (now more broadly characterized as environmental philosophy), and other branches of philosophy (mostly pragmatism and the Continental tradition), I wondered why there wasn't a more coordinated effort to study questions that seemed to be on everyone's minds: what are we doing to ourselves?

Some folks were, in fact, writing about this very question, and I discovered them when I started thinking seriously about what human beings were up to. Continental philosophy had, in fact, produced one of the most enduring critiques in 1954, when Martin Heidegger published his essay "The Question Concerning Technology." Even earlier, Karl Marx, John Dewey, Lewis Mumford, and William Morris (among many others) had written about technology in philosophical terms. The idea of questioning technology, I discovered, had been around since the Greeks. I wasn't exactly on to something new.

Nonetheless, pursuing the subject led me deeply into Morris and his work on the technologies of art and design, and on the social and political aspects of active critique. Some folks, it seemed, hadn't just written about this stuff--they went out and tried to whack people on the side of the head to try to get them to think about where all these new machines (steam engines, power looms) were leading us. Hence the notion of sabotage (and the rather odd choice of image to illustrate this post), perhaps related to the development of the Luddite movement during the Industrial Revolution.

Of course, terms like "sabotage" and "Luddite" carry primarily negative connotations these days, but their origins lay in the act of criticizing technologies--not in terrorism or the refusal to immediately adopt every damned toy that comes on the market. My question is this: How much different might the world be today if we actually stopped to think about new tools, and took a bit of time to imagine where they might lead?

I'm absolutely convinced that the manifold problems associated with the internet, for example, would not have arisen if we hadn't all jumped higgeldy piggeldy onto the bandwagon, brandishing our cherished American gospel of individualism and waving our technical superiority, trying to convince the rest of the world that if it wants to join the future, it had better become like us. Only it's not just us--it's the entire West (trying to be like us--or perhaps trying to convince themselves that they were like us before we were). The impact of computer technology alone, from manufacture to use, on the rest of the world has created such rapid and rampant change that nobody has a choice about it any more. Traditional tribal peoples all over the globe are (thanks to Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child initiative) being introduced to the internet, and their children are being seduced by technology in the name of "progress" and "modernity" and the inevitability of globalization. The real crime here is that nobody asked them if they wanted it. We in the West are all for freedom of choice (walk down the supermarket cereal aisle to see where that's led us), but only when it comes to "choosing" which brand of computer to buy--not choosing whether or not to buy them in the first place.

The irony of the market, of course, is that choice exists only in the beginning. The "winning" technology eventually takes over (VHS beats out Betamax; DVDs beat out VHS; Blue Ray beats out HD DVD), and then those of us who bought into the "wrong" technology are left with stacks of obsolete, expensive crap that the conscientious person has to agonize over what to do with, and those who don't give a damn simply dump into the landfill.

I held out on using a cellular telephone for much longer than most (although I did own one briefly, about ten years ago, while my mother was still alive and under my care). It was only my daughter's emergency surgery a couple of months ago, and the ensuing difficulty of trying to contact me, that I finally acquiesced. And I didn't just buy a little pay-as-you-go model as I had originally planned. I bought an iPhone, because this way I could convince myself that I wasn't buying a phone--I was buying a little tiny laptop. In fact, most of what I use it for is checking e-mail, so it doesn't seem quite so much like selling out.

But of course I have sold out. I became a techno-whore when I bought that Commodore 64 back in the eighties and stopped writing my essays out by hand and then typing them on an electric typewriter. I was convinced, like Stewart Brand and Kevin Kelly, and the rest of the Whole Earth crowd on The Well (which I never did join, however) that the internet was going to bind people together and make the world a better place. Our optimism was a bit over-frought, as Lee Siegel has rather succinctly pointed out in his new book, Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob. If only we had thought it through a bit more carefully.

Now, I have to admit that there are things about the internet that I love. I truly enjoy writing this blog, and doing so actually forces me to think more carefully about the world and what's going on in it. It allowed me to publish my book without having to sell myself or pander to the whims of the book trade. I've also made some good friends that I'd never have even come in contact with without the rapid development of internet communication devices and programs. Best of all, I enjoyed a long and lively correspondence with my father in the years before he died, which would certainly never have happened otherwise because I'm so lousy with the phone and so bad at getting around to writing letters.

But this is only one technology, really, as all-encompassing and pervasive as it is. We don't tend to think seriously about the consequences of anything we do: cloning, genetic engineering, nanotechnology, nuclear power (well, that does cause some contemplation, thanks to Chernobyl). Unless we endure some whacking great disaster related to one or all of the above, we're not even likely to discuss potential problems before they're already out of our hands entirely. Anyone who does ask questions is an alarmist, or worse: a Luddite.

In her sort-of utopian novel, Always Coming Home, Ursula K. Leguin describes technology as "morally dangerous." The computers are all located somewhere in a city, most people live in low-impact rural enclaves, and even solar-powered electricity is looked upon with suspicion. As she explains in an appendix on practices, the "arts of the uses of the energies of sun, wind, water, electricity, and the combinations of things to make other things are all practices of exchange. They want vigilance and clarity of mind, a bright imagination, modesty, attention to detail and to implication, strength, and courage" (479). Imagine how different the world would be if we became equally mindful about the technologies we now so thoughtlessly pursue, oblivious as we are to the varieties of potential--not just the prophesied advantages.

Thanks to the wonders of technology, I'm still alive and able to wallow in my low-fi Luddism. I'm fully aware that were I to move to the valley in my own utopia, I'd last a couple of years at best, because I'm so dependent on the drugs that mitigate my unfortunate combination of genes (and my sedentary way of life, pounding away at a computer keyboard rather than charging around the garden as I should be doing). But that doesn't mean that it's a useless exercise, and it doesn't mean we shouldn't be doing much more thinking about technological consequences, much more frequently.

To some extent, we are. The back-to-the-land movement that came out of the sixties has become more sophisticated and has begun to focus on permaculture and sustainability. "Green" blogs and websites abound (some are noted in my sidebar entries). People are more interested in the quality of their food, and the market is responding, at least on a small scale. But I did discover, while conducting a bit of background research for this blog, one ominous sign. The U. S. Government office of technology assessment has closed. I'm not sure whether it ever accomplished anything anyway, but if we're officially closing up shop in this regard, it makes one wonder whether Our Guys in Washington have permanently given up thinking about consequences, or whether it's just a temporary blip. It'll be interesting to see what happens after November.

We should not, however, need a government agency to do our thinking for us. We really need to be asking questions ourselves, every time we make a purchase, especially of the latest high-tech gadget. What went into its making? Did any being or environment suffer or die as a result of its manufacture? Will this object (or complex of objects) truly enhance my life? How will it affect my relationships with my family and friends? My ecological footprint? How long will it last? Does it have the potential to cause social or environmental harm? Do I really need it? It wouldn't hurt to treat any technology we adopt as if it were potentially dangerous not only to our physical selves, but to our moral being.

Heidegger himself put it best, at the end of "The Question Concerning Technology": "The closer we come to the danger, the more brightly do the ways into the saving power begin to shine and the more questioning we become. For questioning is the piety of thought."

Photo: Panthouse's own clogs (modified), from Wikimedia Commons.
Citation: Ursula K. Leguin, Always Coming Home. New York: Harper & Row, 1985.

Pollution, Poverty, and the Nano

The introduction of the ultra-cheap, Tata “Nano” car in India has prompted significant media response. Just this morning two articles appeared in the “Points” section of the Sunday Dallas Morning News: a reprint of Slate’s essay by Anne Applebaum, “The Nano Challenge,” and another (“The People’s Car”) by Mira Kamdar, author of Planet India: How the Fastest Growing Democracy is Transforming America and the World (Scribner 2007).

Now, the “Nano” is certainly not the first automobile to be introduced as “The People’s Car” (remember the Volkswagen and the Model T?), but this one is being hyped as the car that will transform the Indian economy. According to Robyn Meredith in Forbes, “it would herald the emergence of Tata Motors on the global auto scene, mark the advent of India as a global center for small-car production and represent a victory for those who advocate making cheap goods for potential customers at the ‘bottom of the pyramid’ in emerging markets. Most of all, it would give millions of people now relegated to lesser means of transportation the chance to drive cars” (April 2007).

What’s particularly interesting to me is the promotional video hosted by Ratan Tata himself, in which he describes the evolution of his idea, inspired by seeing entire families precariously perched on motor scooters. The culmination of the research team’s efforts develops dramatically on-screen in the video, first as an engineering sketch, and finally as the fully-realized car—all to the haunting strains of Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, better known as the theme to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The future has arrived! At last!

Tata claims in the video that the car meets existing emissions standards—in India. But India’s pollution problems can only be exacerbated if more and more cars enter already-crowded city streets (most of them ill-suited to motorized traffic in the first place), adding particulates to already horrific air pollution. As Kamdar points out, adding millions of cars in India and China essentially dooms the planet—probably in the sense that it might produce a tipping point that finishes the job the West has already started. Despite the fact that most Indians will actually be unable to afford even the $2500 price tag, the growing middle class will be targeted, persuaded, and sold on owning one of these little status symbols.

Which brings up a central question: why not simply rely on human-powered local transportation (walking, riding bikes, taking pedicabs) for short distances, and on fuel-efficient, low-emissions public transportation for most long distances? Especially in developing countries where air quality is already miserable because of badly-designed factories, why are these people being persuaded that the only way to be “modern” or to “enter the twenty-first century” is to buy into the Western cult of waste and excess?

“Well, it’s okay for you to say,” some will retort. “You live in a comfortable house, drive a car, have plenty to eat. You already have all the stuff I want. How can you criticize my economic choices?”

I grew up in a country where we rode pedicabs and busses to get where we wanted to go. Merchants on bicycles carried crates of their wares all over the city, selling as they went; I remember buying everything from soba to a baby rabbit. These drivers and hawkers were mainly wiry old war veterans who didn’t fit into the emerging Taiwanese economy, but who needed to support their families. Taipei in the late fifties and sixties may not have been a shining beacon of cleanliness (it did, after all, sport open sewers), but the air was far cleaner then than it is now, with its streets choked with cars and motor scooters (despite the shiny new rapid transit system). When my mother returned to the States in the late nineties, she had emphysema, which doctors attributed to a combination of smoking and pollution.

This is not an argument to return to the stone age, as some technophiles would claim it is (not that a stone-age economy doesn’t appeal to my ornerier self). But before Big Capitalism starts foisting more pollution-generators on people who probably don’t really need them, shouldn’t we make sure that the quality of their lives improves first? Shouldn’t they be allowed to make a living that doesn’t require them to ingest toxic fumes all day in order to afford a bit of rice? Are people who grow enough food for themselves and their families, and who live in communities that carry on age-old traditions really poor?

These questions occur to me frequently, as I drive down the highway through suburban sprawl, past strip-malls selling millions of units of absolutely useless frippery, in my eight-year-old fuel- efficient car to a job I really enjoy. The admixture of pleasure and annoyance I experience is probably pretty typical of many liberal-minded, environmentally conscious citizens, even in this part of the world. I would love to live closer to work, but chose this town—thirty miles north, with its historic preservation district—so I wouldn’t have to anguish over the fact that great old houses like mine are being torn down in Dallas to make room for huge, tastelessly-designed, monster mansions. I would love to take the train every day to work (and get off at the station located less than a block from the college), but local voters seem reluctant to raise taxes in order to bring the train this far north, and the state itself makes raising local taxes difficult.

People like me are in no position to tell those in developing countries how to live their lives. But we also shouldn’t be foisting new technologies on them and demanding that they emulate our values and “lifestyles.” I fail to see how filling Indian streets with tiny little cars that cost ten times the annual income of an average Indian family will improve the general economic lot of the citizenry. It will certainly make Mr. Tata wealthier (although, in all fairness, he seems like a reasonable guy) and his corporation even more powerful.

Photo credit: Aerosol pollution over India, Wikimedia Commons

Rethinking What It Means to Be Poor

A couple of recent television and radio programs reminded me that I had long wondered why people who live off the land and produce everything they need to survive are thought of as “poor”—whether they are economically well off or not—by folks who live in industrialized communities.

I was listening to the local public radio station’s afternoon talk show on the way to work not long ago, and the featured guests were talking about living simply and about voluntary poverty. I didn’t catch the names, so I hit the search engines later to find out who was currently talking about this stuff. What I found, on voluntary poverty, at least, was that it was something I had been familiar with decades ago when I was at Penn and heavily involved in conversations about religion and justice. Many of my Catholic chums were deeply committed to a kind of neo-Franciscan effort to shed the trappings of material life in order to concentrate more fully on the spiritual. But there was a practical element to it, as well, that had to do with helping to relieve poverty in the inner city, because Penn is an urban university that was then bordered by near-slums occupied by starving grad students and the genuinely poor.

I was pleased to notice that the conversation is still going on. One blog, in particular, Katerina Ivanova’s Civilization of Love, seems to carry forward the concerns that many of my friends voiced back in the seventies. Plus ça change . . . The blog is not focused on voluntary poverty per se (although there are a number of posts devoted to it), but on the kind of peace I was taught about by my mother’s missionary friends in Taiwan, particularly Fr. Bernard Druetto, the parish priest on Quemoy during the shelling of the island by the mainland Chinese in the late ‘50s.

What becomes apparent, though, if you search through the web for articles on the topic of voluntary poverty, is that 1) it’s primarily a Catholic movement and 2) not a lot of poor people appear to be involved. So these days it seems to be more about reducing materialism, and is more akin to the “simple-living” phenomenon, than to the radically idealistic efforts afoot when I was in college. I don’t mean to denigrate it, because I’m gratified to see people rejecting commercial capitalism for any reason. But it does seem to be different.

What really prompted this post was a News Hour rebroadcast on January 1 of an interview with Vandana Shiva (originally aired last March), the Indian physicist-turned-ecofeminist activist. It’s clear that I don’t get out nearly enough, because I hadn’t even heard of her, despite the fact that she is truly one of the most articulate voices against globalization that I’ve encountered in all of my travels around this topic.

In November of 2005, Ode magazine published Shiva's article on “Two myths that keep the world poor.” In it she notes that the myths (that poverty causes environmental destruction, and that if you only produce for yourself, you’re not contributing to the economy) lay the blame for poverty at the feet of the poor, rather than on the root causes—industrialization and economic colonialism. She goes on to describe an almost utopian picture of self-sustained living, which industrialization and growth-focused economics have made increasingly difficult to accomplish.

If we in the West persist in seeing small-scale, subsistence-level economies as “poor” simply because they don’t produce stuff for the rest of us to buy, or because they don’t have to buy stuff we produce in order to survive, there is little hope that we can save the world from environmental catastrophe. Things will just keep getting worse if we continue to seek technological fixes, and insist on spreading our own destructive habits to ameliorate “poverty” where it doesn’t really exist. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t try to deal with true poverty—bequeathed upon countless people by greedy corporations that make their money by degrading landscapes and water supplies, exploiting women and children, etc.—but we should certainly not require that everybody become just like us.

The irony, of course, is that in the West we have people seeking simplicity and a rather modest version of poverty (doing without excess), while the companies we work for and buy from are making it impossible for countries like India to maintain traditional subsistence economies. The situation reminds me of the mythical American dream of small-town life, family farms, and Sunday afternoons on the porch. We bemoan the demise of the dream while giant corporate farms, supermarkets, and discount stores are steadily obliterating it, and mourn the loss of what’s left of the rural landscape, but we chalk it up to progress--and then drive our SUVs over to the Wal-Mart to save 15 cents on a loaf of gummy white bread.

The trouble is, too many Americans (and other Westerners) think that we are living in utopia, and that everyone would be happier if they were just like us. This is the worst kind of evangelism, and evidence of a cultural blindness that will only be overcome if our children start learning more about geography, culture, and economic sustainability at an early age--before they've been taught that anybody who doesn't own the latest XBox is irredeemably poor.

Photo credit: Terrace Rice Fields in Yunan Province, China, by Jialiang Gao.
Source: Wikimedia Commons