Down the Primrose Path to Technotopia
I will concede at the outset that I am something of a techno-skeptic. It’s not that I don’t rely on certain products of advanced technology in my work and in the course of managing my daily affairs. And, although I would be at a complete loss to explain the science behind these miracles of the modern age, I am a reasonably competent end-point user: for the most part I can make these toys do my bidding. The question is, “where do you draw the line?”
The Kentucky farmer/writer Wendell Berry has long been one of my favorite essayists. His environmental ethos, egalitarianism, celebration of local knowledge, and cogent critiques of the Industrial (as opposed to the Great) economy have always been refreshingly clear and incisive. But then there was a piece that even some of his ardent admirers felt missed the mark. Written in the late 1980’s, it was provocatively entitled “Why I Won’t Buy A Computer.” In the space of two short pages he justified his refusal to upgrade from a pencil and typewriter to a word processor, including this important point:
I do not wish to fool myself. I disbelieve…the assertion that I or anyone else could write better or more easily with a computer than with a pencil…. When someone has used a computer to write work that is demonstratively better than Dante’s, and when this better is demonstrably attributable to the use of as computer, then I will speak of computers more respectfully…though I still will not buy one.
While I tend to agree with Berry that one’s writerly skills aren’t likely to be enhanced by the use of a computer (I use it to crank out a first draft, but do all the subsequent revisions and edits with a pencil), that hasn’t dissuaded me from acquiring several, in addition to an iPad or two. I appreciate the speed with which I can work on a word processor and make changes and corrections on the fly - although it’s also alarmingly easy to dash off an email chock full of unrecognized mistakes, not to mention ill-advised invective. But Berry’s larger concern, couched in his response to subsequent criticism, needs to be taken seriously.
I can only conclude that I have scratched the skin of a technological fundamentalism that, like other fundamentalisms, wishes to monopolize a whole society…
The challenge, I think, is one of discernment, making choices that are healthy at both the personal and the societal level. For example, how comprehensively should we embrace so-called “smart technology,” loading up on stoves, refrigerators, washing machines, lighting and security systems in which sophisticated surveillance technology is embedded? To what extent will we permit our personal habits, proclivities, preferences, and even day-to-day movements to be monitored, monetized, and shared with God knows whom? One cursory look at the current state of China, with its totalistic electronic eavesdropping on an increasingly uneasy population, ought to persuade us of the need to preserve a certain amount of privacy. Please don’t tell me it can’t happen here, because it can, assurances from Apple, Google, and Microsoft notwithstanding.
This is but one, glaring example of how putatively benign technology can be expropriated by powerful institutions grasping after profit or power. A fascinating article in the April 2022 issue of Harpers describes a device developed at MIT called a “Dormio,” which can be used to program a person’s dreams. “Dream engineering” may be the next big thing in the quest to understand how these curious phenomena materialize and what affect they have on our overall mental health. It turns out that having caught wind of Dormio, the Coors Brewing Company began exploring the possibility of using it to plant a subliminal message - “drink Coors” - in a person’s dreams.
The late Douglas Adams, author of the cult classic A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, imagined a time in which, thanks to digital technology, everyone’s life had become completely transparent. Adams described a wallet-size card called an Ident-I-Eeze encoded with every single piece of information about its bearer, and which everyone was obliged to carry with them at all times. “It therefore represented technology’s greatest triumph to date,” he explained, “over both itself and common sense.”
Think about it.
