Technological Pessimism Research Articles

Technological Philosophy on Technology Education

이 연구의 목적은 기술과 기술철학의 의의와 흐름을 탐색하고, 이를 바탕으로 기술교육을 고찰하여, 기술철학적 관점에서 기술교육을 위한 유의미한 시사점을 얻는 것에 있었다. 이를 위하여 기술과 기술철학의 역사와 의미, 기술철학자들의 사상, 기술철학에 대한 비판적 논의 등을 문헌을 통해 살핀 후, 기술철학의 흐름을 정리하였다. 그 결과 현재까지의 기술철학은 기술의 본질에 대한 입장에 따라 고전적 기술철학, 경험적 기술철학, 생성적 기술철학으로 나눌 수 있었다. 이후, 기술철학에 기반하여 기술교육의 정의 및 성격을 고찰하였다. 고찰의 결과 몇 가지 시사점을 얻을 수 있었는데 기술교육은 철학적으로 경험적 기술철학의 사조를 기반으로 하고 있다는 것과 앞으로의 기술교육은 고전적 기술철학의 기술비관론을 경청하면서, 생성적 기술철학으로의 진전을 이루어 나아가야 한다는 것이었다. 추후 기술철학에 대한 여러 철학자들의 사상이 심도있게 연구될 것과 이를 토대로 기술교육의 세부적인 영역에 대해서도 기술철학적 고찰이 이루어질 것을 제언한다.The purposes of this study were to explore the significance and the flow of technology and technology philosophy, and to examine technology education based on this and obtain meaningful implications for technology education from the viewpoint of technology philosophy. To this end, after examining the history and the meaning of technology and philosophy of technology, the thoughts of philosophers of technology, and the critical discussions on philosophy of technology, the flow of technology philosophy was summarized. As a result, technology philosophy up to now can be divided into classical technology philosophy, empirical technology philosophy, and generative technology philosophy according to its position on technology. After that, the definition and the characteristics of technology education were examined based on the philosophy of technology. As a result of the study, several implications were obtained. Technology education is philosophically based on the current of empirical technology philosophy, and future technology education is expected to progress toward a generative technology philosophy while listening to the technological pessimism of the classical technology philosophy. In the future, it is suggested that the thoughts of various philosophers on the philosophy of technology will be studied in depth, and based on this, the philosophy of technology will be considered on the detailed areas of technology education.

Shock digitalisation of education: The perception of participants of the educational process

Introduction. The relevance of the study is determined both by the importance of the problem of digital transformation of education in general, and by the specific conditions, which arose during the crisis caused by COVID-19. The long-termconsequences of the emergency transition of Russian education to the distance format, taking into account the ongoing pandemic, have yet to be assessed, but the reaction ofthe participants in the educational process to the first period of the total distance learning should be analysed immediately as a basis for future management decisions.Aim. The aim of the present research is a comprehensive analysis of the perception of the experience of an emergency transition to a distant education format by the main participants in the educational process.Methodology and research methods. Online survey based on Google forms was employed as the main method. The respondents to the survey included participants in the educational process, mostly permanently residing in the Sverdlovsk region (99% of the respondents). The survey was conducted in September – October 2020. The survey participation was voluntary and completely anonymous. As a result of the survey conducted, more than 24,500 original responses were received and processed. The data obtained were compared with the results of secondary studies (primarily, with the monitoring studies of the Higher School of Economics).Results. The research findings demonstrate a number of significant shortcomings in the strategy of digital transformation of education, such as the insufficient development of the digital communication infrastructure in the regions, the technological and competence-based digital inequality, the lack of well-developed methods of using digitaleducational tools, the lack of high-quality content, the lack of full-fledged integrated educational resources on the market. The shortcomings mentioned above apparently led to a decrease in the quality of education during the period of self-isolation and provoked a reaction of rejection of digital educational forms and an increase in technological pessimism among a significant part of the respondents. The results are presented in correlation with secondary studies, which confirms the reliability of the general conclusions.Scientific novelty. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the attraction, systematisation and analytical generalisation of original material on the urgent problem of digital transformation of education, collected in one of the largest and technologically advanced regions of the Russian Federation.Practical significance. The current article makes it possible to more accurately assess the situation in regional education and provides reference points both for conducting longitudinal research and for making current and strategic management decisions in Russian education at the regional and federal level.

Predictive policing: utopia or dystopia? On attitudes towards the use of big data algorithms for law enforcement

The use of predictive AI tools to improve decision-making in relation to crime prevention and investigation is a reality. They are being implemented almost before we fully understand how they work, while we make relevant legal decisions that may determine the progress of the technology, and long before we can predict their full impact. This paper addresses the attitudes towards this technological revolution applied to criminal justice, focusing in particular on its use by police. The first section summarises and describes the techniques and technologies that make up predictive policing. Subsequently, the main part of the study analyses the attitudes with which this technology has been received. These range from the optimism of those who defend its immediate implementation as a way to improve police objectivity and efficiency, to the pessimism of those who see its use as strengthening a dystopia of state control and surveillance. Two apparent extremes that correspond to the transition from optimism to technological pessimism of the twentieth century. The article concludes with a defence of a realistic, critical and informed view of the use of these predictive algorithms. A vision that, on the one hand, accepts that there are no neutral technologies, yet does not fall into fatalism and technophobia; and, on the other hand, places the human being and the legitimate police function at the centre of the algorithmic equation while redefining its objectives based on the scientific evidence applied to each individual technology.

The Role of the State in Creating an Innovative Economy

Creating and ensuring sustainable development is impossible without active innovation in all areas of social production. Today, our country has achieved high and even record-breaking indicators in certain industries. All this happens, including through innovation. Technological competition is a key factor in the global competition between the States. However, technological pessimism remains the prevailing sentiment among groups of domestic experts. It is aggravated by the sanctions policy of Western countries and the risks of further isolation. Thus, further breakthrough development of the Russian economy is possible only with comprehensive support from the state and a systematic orientation towards the creation of an innovative economy.

Caminhos de ferro portugueses na década de 1890

Na historiografia ferroviária nacional, a década de 1890 praticamente não é analisada criticamente, por se ter tratado de um período de forte retração no setor, que contrastou com os pesados investimentos feitos nos decénios anteriores, especialmente o de 1880. Neste artigo, proponho uma análise global desta época, abrangendo tanto o setor ferroviário do continente como o das colónias, uma vez que a situação de um não pode ser totalmente compreendida sem se conhecer a situação do outro. Realço a oposição entre a manutenção da crença no technological fix, característica da Regeneração e da classe engenheira nacional coeva, e um pessimismo tecnológico advindo das desilusões com os resultados do investimento ferroviário e com as companhias privadas estrangeiras que o agenciaram, e que atingiram o seu auge com o ultimato de 1890 e com a bancarrota parcial de 1892. Recorrendo aos debates mantidos no parlamento, a relatórios de engenheiros coevos e à literatura existente, explicito como, no final do período em estudo, a fé na tecnologia prevaleceu e conseguiu suplantar um grave momento de crise.

Rockets and Revolution: A Cultural History of Early Spaceflight by Michael G. Smith

Reviewed by: Rockets and Revolution: A Cultural History of Early Spaceflight by Michael G. Smith Guillaume de Syon (bio) Rockets and Revolution: A Cultural History of Early Spaceflight. By Michael G. Smith. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014. Pp. 448. $34.95. In his intriguing prehistory of the space age, Michael Smith invites us to view rocket science as an infusion of cultural influences. In so doing, he suggests that rocketry can serve as an allegory of the human understanding of science, and also illustrate how a transnational flow of ideas can shape human knowledge. Smith’s emphasis centers on the Russian experience, but uses the metaphor of the parabola that brings ideas back to Russia or the Soviet Union. Purists may argue that a more accurate description would involve an ellipsis, but the parabola idea works if one accepts the linearity of history, a concept popular in the science fiction that also influenced early rocketry. [End Page 276] Starting in the nineteenth century, Smith surveys the popularizers of science and how their message helped popularize not only relativism, but also such concepts as cosmism as well as a notion of plurality of worlds. A notable quality of his study involves the drawing on writings not usually associated with flight. (Henri) Bergsonian philosophy’s argument that human intellect is bound up with space, for example, helps frame the diversity of thoughts that characterized the start of the twentieth century. Moving on to rocketry pioneers, notably Konstantin Tsiolkovskii’s and Robert Esnault-Pelterie’s works, Smith ably demonstrates how fantasy played an important role in clearing the way for rational explorations of rocket propulsion. This canvassing of a seamless web of knowledge, though successful, is done to show how the arc heads to Russia, whether through private correspondence (including Robert Goddard’s dealings with Russian rocket enthusiasts), through popular media, or through the writings of Tsiolkoskii (who freely incorporated foreign ideas into his own work.) Many elements of Smith’s canvas will be familiar to readers of Asif Siddiqi’s and Scott Palmer’s works on Russian aerospace, but Smith’s own combination of these sources provides a remarkable image of the fascination with space travel. Rocketry also served as a fulcrum to push the USSR toward a positive vision of technology, in stark contrast to the Western pessimism of Oswald Spengler and others. True, the Bauhaus and the likes of Joan Miró echoed technological fascination, but the Russian interpretation thereof emphasized ideology and revolutionary optimism reaching a form of escapism that carried interesting connotations of religiosity. This Russian, later Soviet, fascination with space extended beyond the obvious fascination with the “red planet.” Echoing cosmism, it emphasized the notion of immortality and thus served as a metaphor for ideological permanence. One could speak of worlds, rather than workers uniting. Any cultural history, even one as rich as Smith’s, overlooks certain chronological elements. Very little is discussed in relation to the technological pessimism following World War I, for example, and Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity was devised in 1915, not 1916. Also, some interpretations may surprise readers. When Smith compares Tsiolkovskii to Charles Lindbergh, for example, he does not do so on the basis of their achievements but their inspirational effects on others. (Tsiolkovskii after all kept his eye on the future, whereas Lindbergh became obsessed with the past.) On the other hand, the author offers an attractive interpretation of the stratonauts, an often overlooked realm of aeronautics at the intersection of ballooning, scientific inquiry, and treading on the edge of space. Western nations engaged in such “pre-space” races, but the place of stratonautics as an example of dialectical materialism fits nicely into the Soviet context: the balloon was revolutionary, the airplane matched Russian culture, and the rocket would be Soviet, with stratonauts acting as intermediate portents of [End Page 277] revolution. This element of Communist ideology paradoxically relied, through Friedrich Engels, on Newton’s third law of motion. As such, it confirms further the Soviet obsession with space flight, a fascination Stalin was only too happy to capitalize on even as his own actions sent the likes of rocket scientist Sergei Korolev to the Gulag during World...

Perspectives on The Rise and Fall of American Growth

This paper summarizes the book and assesses the reviews contained in the four contributed papers. Gregory Clark provides convincing arguments that extend the book's forecast that future technological change will be slower. Nicholas Crafts shows declining mortality and shorter work hours greatly increase welfare-augmented TFP growth during 1929-50. Benjamin Friedman points out that optimism about future technological change casts doubt on future employment growth, while technological pessimism implies employment optimism. Daron Acemoglu and co-authors emphasize the institutional environment that influences the timing and magnitude of innovation.

Iconic Images of Virtual Reality in Popular Culture

The article analyzes the history of virtual reality images’ emergence and development in popular culture. The images of the virtual reality are considered in the context of the influence exerted upon them by philosophy of technology as well as by the conceptions of technological optimism and technological pessimism. Ideological roots of the virtual reality images can be traced in the field of utopian literature and futurology. Popular books and movies about virtual reality have served as the main source material for this analysis.

Forkert nummer - Telefonen som ledemotiv i Botho Strauß’ forfatterskab og slægtskabet med den pessimistiske teknologitænkning

Kasper Schiølin: “Wrong Number: The Telephone as a Leitmotif in the Work of Botho Strauß and the Affinity with the Pessimistic Philosophy of Technology”The article explores the telephone as a central leitmotif in the writings of German author Botho Strauß. It stresses that Strauß in different ways deliberately ‘short-circuits’ the phone, so that it does not facilitate meaningful communication but only increases loneliness and despair. The last part of the article shows how this artistic inversion of the phone becomes a questioning of technology, corresponding to the technological pessimism of early philosophy of technology.

Cyborg Resistance on the Digital Assembly Line: Global Connectivity as a Terrain of Struggle for the Commons in Alex Rivera’s Sleep Dealer

This article explores the politics of global connectivity in Alex Rivera’s film Sleep Dealer (2008), focusing on this science fic\tion film’s critical engagement with the problems and possibilities of connectivity in digital capitalism. Through its depiction of an imaginable, near-future world governed by digital connectivity, the film reflects back on contemporary global connectivity as a terrain of proliferating antagonisms. In so doing, Sleep Dealer dispatches celebratory technological fetishism and totalizing technological pessimism alike by evoking the political possibilities offered by emergent transnational networks of social cooperation amid an increasingly clenched and contested infrastructure of digital connectivity.

Technology between utopia and dystopia

Deep changes technology brought to everyday life in twentieth century had lead to sharp polarization of attitudes about this pervading phenomenon. In terms of interpretations of social and political implications of technology, it is hard to avoid associations with concepts of utopia and dystopia. These concepts were, from the very beginning, closely intertwined with positions on technological progress. These two extreme positions are also visible in scientific works on technology and society, and can be named technological optimism and technological pessimism. There is, however, third, more moderate position, technological realism, promoted mainly by constructivists and proponents of technology as value-neutral phenomenon.

Editorial: In praise of pessimism—the need for negativity in educational technology

The author reflects on the need for negativity in educational technology. He notes that most individuals employed in the field of educational technology believe that digital technologies are capable of improving education, which is the reason for the positive approach of educational technologists. Topics include the author's case against technological optimism in education and the need for technological pessimism in education.

STS and the City

Many recent studies on network technologies and cities share an alarmist view of the impact of technological or regulatory change in utility sectors on the social and spatial fabric of cities, pointing to growing discrimination and inequalities, alienation, enhanced social exclusion and urban “splintering” on a universal scale.A science and technology study (STS) perspective on these matters is helpful in moving beyond this “universal alarmism” by emphasizing the ambivalence inherent to all technologies, the significant potential of contestation of, and resistance, to technology-supported forms of discrimination, and the deeply contingent nature of the process of appropriation of new technologies and, as a consequence, of the social “effects” of technologies. Adopting this perspective would mean actively searching for and exploring these context-dependent and often conflictive appropriation processes. For it is in these spaces that we might begin to identify urban technological politics that break free from an intellectually and politically disabling technological pessimism.

Extraordinary Journeys around Ordinary Technologies in Ordinary Lives

From its advent in the latter 1980s, the 'new' sociology of technology purposefully focused its attention on the emergence and design of major new technologies. This was due in large measure to the intellectual heritage of the sociology of scientific knowledge. But it was also, justifiably, a reaction against the technological determinism of most 'impact' studies in the 'technology and society' tradition. Yet, the 1987 book which really put constructivist sociology of technology on the map, The Social Construction of Technological Systems, included in its collection an article by Ruth Schwartz Cowan, 'The Consumption Junction',' which challenged the emerging orthodoxy by calling for research into the sociotechnical processes surrounding users, not just designers in particular, ordinary people and consumer technologies rather than the powerful institutions and large industrial or military technologies which have been the focus of most seminal work since. Making Technology Our Own? is a collection of work which analyzes the dynamics between technology, gender and everyday life, very much in the spirit of Cowan's appeal. Significantly, it comes from Norway, where there are already established streams of work on these topics,2 and a wider civic commitment to increasing user influence over the shaping of technology (for example, in the workplace). Making Technology Our Own? is thus explicitly a political as well as an academic project, with the question mark apparently challenging both technological optimism as well as technological pessimism. In a very thoughtful introductory synthesis of relevant theory, Merete Lie and Knut Sorensen argue that the concept of everyday life which spans traditional sociological boundaries of work and home, reproduction and production is vital to understanding 'the highly ambiguous nature of modern technology [because] technology is a standardizing globalizing, and bureaucratizing effort [which] is always appropriated and re-embedded in a local context when it is put to use' (16-17). Although the book is largely written for a technology studies audience, the editors

Technology, Pessimism, and Postmodernism ed. by Yaron Ezrahi, et al

technology and culture Book Reviews 533 and Jacques Ellul (none of whom is ever given a first name), but only the third is included in the bibliography. “Conviviality” is a major touchstone, but reference to the ex­ tended work of Ivan Illich is no more than a single bibliographic citation of Toolsfor Conviviality. (In his discussion of technology and equity, it is amazing that Sclove completely ignores Illich’s Energy and Equity.) Conversations with other major interlocutors, such as Albert Borgmann and Kristin Shrader-Frechette, are reduced to footnotes. Finally, any book of this length and complexity should include a full table of contents, notjust a skeleton of chapter titles. Carl Mitcham Dr. Mitcham, a member of the Department of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University, recently served as the Hennebach Visiting Professor in Humanities at the Colorado School of Mines. His most recent book is Thinking through Technology: The Path between Engineering and Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). Technology, Pessimism, and Postmodernism. Edited by Yaron Ezrahi, Everett Mendelsohn, and Howard Segal. Amherst, Mass.: Univer­ sity of Massachusetts Press, 1995. Pp. 216; notes. $14.95 (paper) This book originated in a 1992 conference held in Israel. Despite its title, few of the essays seriously engage recent theorists of post­ modernism. It is not a tightly unified group of essays but a confer­ ence volume with weak or nonexistent links between many of the contributions. Apparently due to page limitations, these tend to be either surveys of large topics or summaries of focused research. The topics range from the Renaissance to the present and deal with the United States, Britain, and Germany. Four authors focus on intellectual history. Gabriel Motzkin de­ votes thirteen pages to Heidegger and the complex relationship be­ tween our construction of historical time and technology’s inelucta­ ble role in that process. Jeffrey Herf expands his earlier work on the “reactionary modernism” of Nazi Germany (which rejected the Enlightenment but embraced technology) by surveying conservative intellectuals. He concludes that the defeat of Nazism was crucial to the emergence of technological pessimism on the Right. Robert B. Pippin examines “the notion of technology as ideology” from Karl Marx’s false consciousness to Heidegger’s argument that technology provides a pretheoretical “horizoning of experience,” to Lukacs’s “reification.” He argues that “ideology critique seems inevitably linked either to some controversial account of origins ... or to the notion of some sort of structural encroachment by one domain or ‘world’ over another.” (p. 105) Pippin then examines Habermas and calls for a more broadly conceived historical and contextual ap­ proach to the project of “ideology critique,” one that would be 534 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE more responsive to the claim that “modernity and its technological implications” maybe “legitimate.” (p. Ill) Only Leo Marx’s excel­ lent “The Idea ofTechnology and Postmodern Pessimism” focuses on postmodernism. He questions the legitimacy of the affinities be­ tween the “new conceptions of power favored by influential post­ modern theorists” (Lyotard and Foucault) “and the functioning of large technological systems.” He concludes that the postmodern outlook “in effect ratifies the idea of the domination of life by large technological systems” and promotes a “shrunken sense of the self” that denies human agency and fatalistically accepts technological domination. Three interesting papers deal with earlier time periods. Klaus Reichert examines Joseph Glanvill’s interest in witches and appari­ tions as an example of what was suppressed by the triumph of the 17th-century mechanist world picture. He could have done more to engage postmodernism, however, than quickly refer to Edmund Husserl and Michel Foucault in the final paragraphs. Ido Yavetz ex­ amines a British controversy in the 1880s about lightning protection as a measure of one’s commitment to the idea of progress and then turns to a series of examples of pessimism about technology, from Carlyle to Kelvin; he concludes by asking if current pessimism is any­ thing novel, or “are we just continuing a well-established tradition of assimilation by criticism of new technologies?” (p.72). Based on archival newspaper sources, Menahem Blondheim provides a lucid account ofthe early diffusion ofAmerican telegraphy and its shifting public image, as it ceased to be a sublime...

Fearing electricity: overhead wire panic in New York City

Many historians have portrayed the late nineteenth century as a period of great technological utopianism or enthusiasm. Closely intertwined with this technological enthusiasm, however, was also a strong strand of technological pessimism. Americans of this period desired innovations like electric lighting and communication, rapid transit, and gas cooking and heating, but they also feared the physical hazards created by these innovations. They believed that new technology would improve society, but at the same time worried that they had no control over the pace and direction of this change. An early example of the technological pessimism of this period was the electric wire panic that took place in New York City in the 1880s. At this time, the streets of the city were darkened by dangerous, overhead electric wires. The failure of the city to bury these wires, along with debate over electrical safety, generated great fear of electricity. This fear reached its height in 1889 when a series of horrible electrical accidents terrorized the city. Despite their fears, most New Yorkers found it impossible to give up electrical technology. The tension between technological enthusiasm and pessimism created a profound anxiety about electricity and the new urban world it was creating.

Future imperfect: the mixed blessings of technology in America

The repeated failure of technology to fulfill its utopian promise has in recent years created disillusionment with the very idea of progress. Indeed, if technological optimism has characterized modernity, then technological pessimism may become the hallmark of the future. Nowhere has this crisis of faith been more evident than in the United States, where a series of disasters has challenged the long-standing belief that technological innovation necessarily leads to social improvement. Even the surge of renewed confidence in American technology spurred by the alleged efficacy of high-tech weapons systems during the 1991 Persian Gulf War has proved short-lived. In a series of case studies, Howard P. Segal reconsiders the American ideology of technological progress and its legacy for our contemporary high-tech world. He offers concrete examples - drawn from United States history, literature, and museums - of the role of technology in American life and the complex relationship between technological advances and social developments. In each instance, he finds technology neither wholly good nor wholly bad, but rather a mixed blessing.

The Shrew Environment

The ArgumentThe paper begins by addressing the notions of technological pessimism, society and environment from the point of view of geography and planning. It identifies two pessimistic waves in the recent history of geography and planning thought: “technological or explanational pessimism” in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and “understanding pessimism” in the late 1980s. The first is a distrust of positivist geography and rational planning to explain and control the environment; the second adds to the first a distrust of that part of social theory which in the early 1970s was thought to provide the alternative to positivism — a distrust of structuralist-Marxist-humanistic (SMH) geography and planning to understand (and thus to control intellectually) the individual, society, and the environment. The paper proposes that at the root of both types of pessimism is the essentially causal, mechanistic, and thus aspatial, property of social theory as a whole. It then examines the conjunction of Bohm's orders and Haken's synergetics as a source for optimism — not to control, but to participate and dialogue.

Cultural Origins and Environmental Implications of Large Technological Systems

The ArgumentThis essay argues that a prime source of contemporary technological pessimism is the loss of place that accompanied the conquest of space through the construction of large technological systems of transportation and communication. This loss may involve physical destruction, or it may involve the more subtle withdrawal of economic, political, and cultural meaning and power from localities in favor of these far-flung systems.The argument proceeds in five stages. First, key terms are defined, notably “environmental damage” and “technological system.” Second, the origins of the modern ideology of circulation are traced in the development of a capitalist world-economy, and in the historical theories of Enlightenmentphilosophes(with special attention to Turgot and Condorcet). Third, possible relations between that ideology and nineteenth-century systems-building are briefly sketched. Fourth, the ambiguous political character of these systems — at once liberating and constraining — is noted. Finally, the cultural challenge of overcoming spatial alienation is described with reference to some late nineteenth-century writers who sought to trace new pathways both spatially and linguistically.

Changes in Cuban health care: An argument against technological pessimism

Since the popular revolution in 1959, alterations in the organization and delivery of health care in Cuba have paralleled the country's broader political, economic and social changes. This paper discusses the evolution of the Cuban health care system during the past seventeen years within the wider context of societal development. The authors compare three “snapshots” of Cuba, the first in 1959, the second in 1970 and the last in 1976, and touch upon such issues as the organization of health care delivery, the recruitment and socialization of health workers and aspects of the process of receiving health care. They point out that the Cuban experience should be of particular interest to the underdeveloped world. For though it is true that a larger portion of national resources has been directed to the health and social services, nonetheless, it was largely through the reorganization and equalization of the pre-revolutionary health care system that improvement in the health status of the population was achieved. It appears that Cuba could well serve as an example for those who are skeptical about the possibility of combining technical development with improvement in the humane quality of care.