Influencing technological change

One of the questions raised in the call for papers for this special issue was How is contemporary philosophy of technology affecting the process of technological change, or how should it be affecting it? These are actually two questions—two very different questions. The answer to the first, how is contemporary philosophy of technology affecting the process of technological change, is: it isn’t. The answer to the second, how should it be affecting it, is really very complicated. I will address each question in order.

One reason contemporary philosophy of technology isn’t affecting technological change is that there is no such thing as the philosophy of technology. Contemporary philosophy of technology is the product of a number of philosophers and some political scientists like Langdon Winner talking primarily to themselves about mostly philosophical issues. To the extent that they address issues in the real world it is generally to complain about the terrible impact this or that technology is having on the environment or social relations. Now there is nothing wrong with philosophers talking to each other, but if that is all they do, the exercise seems pointless. As we all know, the word “Philosophy” means love of wisdom. Wisdom is an action term. Having wisdom is knowing what best to do in this or that set of circumstances. In order to know what to do, one has to know what is actually going on. So, if philosophers are to talk meaningfully about technology, they need minimally to know something about the technologies they are talking about. Talking about technology tout court is unhelpful. One needs to talk to a specific technology, or technological system to begin to make any kind of sense or to make some kind of difference.

This complaint is similar to one leveled against the philosophy of science. For roughly the first two thirds of the 20^th century, there was no science in the philosophy of science.

The talk was all about “science”, which, of course, does not exist. There is physics, biology, chemistry, etc., but no science in and of itself. Finally, some work emerged in the philosophy of physics, then, thanks in large part to Marjorie Grene and Richard Burian, philosophy of biology began to develop, then philosophy of chemistry. And to do work in any of these areas you needed to know some physics or biology or chemistry.

The next question is “what kinds of things about a technology are of philosophical interest?” Up until recently most philosophers of technology were primarily concerned about how a technology improves or degrades our environment or our lives. This focus almost turned the philosophy of technology into an ethical enterprise, making it a subdiscipline rather than a discipline in its own right. But there are other important dimensions of various technologies. New and innovative instruments, for instance, help us extend our visual capacities (Pitt, 2005) and expand our understanding of what counts as evidence. In short, new instruments have epistemological ramifications. In a recent book (Pitt, 2020) I argued that in many cases change in science is a function of new technologies revealing something novel that cannot be explained using current theories, forcing the development of new theories, creating change. There are also metaphysical issues such as questions about the ontological status of computer programs. There remain, of course, questions about the impact of new technologies on our lives. Consider, for example, the massive transformation the smart phone has initiated. Many of my students cannot carry on a conversation, but they sure can text and they are inventing their own languages, which has a significant impact on how they think. Yes, there are many issues of philosophical interest when we turn our attention to our technologies, but that does not mean there is a unified philosophy of technology.

Now if we turn our attention to the second question embedded in the initial question I targeted at the beginning of this paper, ‘how should the philosophy of technology be affecting technological change?’, we enter into a controversial domain: what is the role of philosophy, nay, philosophers, in today’s world? During the 1960s when protesting the war in southeast Asia, many philosophers were frightened by the reaction of the government to their activities. The behavior of the Chicago police at the 1968 Democratic convention might have been the tipping point. The collective philosophical community withdrew from the public and hid behind our university walls. If I remember correctly, several years later the American Philosophical Association came out with an official statement asserting that it was not its role to comment on public policy. With the Civil Rights Movement, feminism, and environmental issues calling out for support, some of the less timid souls did get involved, but for the most part there seemed to be a collective looking the other way when it came to engaging in the world. Most of my colleagues were content to teach their classes and write papers on topics of interest only to the five people with whom they went to graduate school. We are still mostly in that mindset. Nevertheless, the question remains: what should philosophers do to affect technological change? From which it does not follow that they will do anything.

Returning to a theme introduced above, to be taken seriously by those engaged in technological innovation, which results in technological change, we need to know what we are talking about. While it remains true that the only valid law of technological change is the law of unintended consequences, from the fact that even the most knowledgeable people can’t predict with certainty what will happen when we introduce a new technology, it doesn’t follow that we shouldn’t find out as much as we can about any given proposed technological change. If we are concerned to be involved in a positive way in technological change, I repeat myself, we need to know what we are talking about. A good example of this is to be found in Ron Laymon’s forthcoming paper (Laymon, 2020) in which he examines the issue of patenting biologically created entities. Secondly, I believe that if we are to make a difference, we cannot be perceived as ideologically antagonistic to particular technologies that are alleged to harm the environment or to technological change in general. But to see why that is important, we need to get a handle on what we mean by technological change.

Technological change is a change in the way we interact with the world brought about by the introduction of novel and/or innovative technologies. That only leaves us with the task of figuring out what a technology is. I played around with trying to define “technology” in Thinking About Technology (Pitt, 2000). The result was a thoroughly inadequate account that so angered Ashley Shew that she devoted her doctoral dissertation to successfully showing why I was wrong (Shew, 2011). So, I am not going to try to offer a definition. Instead, I propose that “Technological” is at best the name of a category of things, phenomena, systems, etc., that have the unique characteristic of purportedly helping us to get around in the world (see Pitt, 2016). Technological change is accomplished by changing how we get around in the world by introducing something new which may or may not improve things.

For philosophers to influence technological change we need to know what is in the works and how it works. That means leaving the philosophy department and learning how to be conversant with engineers, architects, agricultural engineers, physicians, policy makers, designers in companies, manufacturers, farmers, transportation companies, etc. Obviously, no one can be in command of enough knowledge to handle all of that, so, we specialize. Pick an area of interest, like non-carbon-based fuels. Find out who is doing innovative work in that part of the economy, familiarize yourself with the issues and the proposed solutions. Better yet, get a degree in some aspect of that area. Yes, get credentialed. Introducing yourself as a philosopher interested in alternative energy won’t get you very far. We have a justly deserved bad reputation with the working world, witness such expressions as “armchair philosopher” or “he’s just a philosopher”. Part of the problem stems from our inherent arrogance. We, we announce, are interested in matters of the mind. We don’t get our hands dirty; it is beneath us. I have sometimes jokingly said that philosophers should not be let out by themselves after dark, for there is a strong likelihood they will get lost.

If we are to affect technological change, we need to become part of the conversation. To do that we need to be taken seriously. To do that we need to demonstrate to those we wish to interact with that we take them seriously. There is no better way to do that than to get your hands dirty. Once we are brought into the discussion there are many ways in which we can contribute and affect technological change. For one thing, we are pretty good at looking for the consequences of proposing a certain course of action. We are also good at figuring out the implications of taking a certain perspective. In short, once we are allowed in, we can do what we do best. But, I suspect that our own thinking about these matters will be affected by understanding the details of the technologies and the real world obstacles facing people who actually deal with real world problems. Faced with reality, we are challenged to take the high road and think grandly – we will be affected by getting our hands dirty and that is a good thing. Philosophy should be part of what is going on in the world. We have something to offer. It means getting out of our current academic comfort zone. But as one who has done that and bears the bruises, I can attest to the result: it makes you a better philosopher.