WINNER, Langdon. The whale and the reactor : a search for limits in an age of high technology. Second edition. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2020
THE MAP OF the world shows no country called Technopolis, yet in many ways we are already its citizens. If one observes how thoroughly our lives are shaped by interconnected systems of modern technology, how strongly we feel their influence, respect their authority and participate in their workings, one begins to understand that, like it or not, we have become members of a new order in human history. To an ever-increasing extent, this order of things transcends national boundaries to create roles and relationships grounded in vast, complex instrumentalities of industrial production, electronic communications, transportation, agribusiness, medicine, and warfare. Observing the structures and processes of these vast systems, one begins to comprehend a distinctively modern form of power, the foundations of a technopolitan culture.
The significance of this state of affairs is by no means confined to its material success. When we use terms like “output,” “feedback,” “interface,” and “networking” to express the transactions of everyday life, we reveal how thoroughly artificial things now shape our sense of human being. As we compare our own minds to the operations of a computer, we acknowledge that an understanding of technical devices has somehow merged with the most intimate levels of self-understanding. Seldom, however, are such matters the subject of critical reflection. For most people it is enough to know how technical systems are produced, how they are run, how they are best used, and how they contribute to that vast aggregate of blessings: economic growth.
My aim here is to go further, exploring the meaning of technology for the way we live. What appear to be nothing more than useful instruments are, from another point of view, enduring frameworks of social and political action. How can one look beyond the obvious facts of instrumentality to study the politics of technical objects? Which theoretical perspectives are most helpful in that attempt? In the three chapters of Part I, questions of that kind are examined and some initial steps taken toward developing a political philosophy of technology.
A number of modern social movements have chosen one technology or another as a focus of their hopes or fears. In Part II some of these movements are explored, noting the special opportunities and pitfalls that appear when technology is placed center stage. Appropriate technology, a form of radicalism characteristic of the 1970s, tried to reform society by suggesting we change our tools and our ways of thinking about them. What did the appropriate technologists accomplish? Where did they fall short? For more than a century utopian and anarchist critiques of industrial society have featured political and technical decentralization. While it has wonderful appeal, decentralization turns out to be a very slippery concept. How can it have any importance in a society thoroughly enmeshed in centralized patterns? Many of the passions that have inspired appropriate technology and decentralism have been reborn in the excitement surrounding the so-called computer revolution. Some computer enthusiasts believe that the coming of an information age will inevitably produce a more democratic, egalitarian society and that it will achieve this wonderful condition without the least bit of struggle. I will examine this romantic dream in detail.
A central theme throughout the book concerns the politics of language, a topic that Part III tackles explicitly. Choosing our terms, we express a vision of the world and name our deepest commitments. The quest for political consensus, however, sometimes leads to atrophy of the imagination. In debates about technology, society, and the environment, an extremely narrow range of concepts typically defines the realm of acceptable discussion. For most purposes, issues of efficiency and risk (or some variant of those) are the only ones to receive a thorough hearing. Any broader, deeper, or more perplexing questions are quickly pushed into the shadows and left to wither. How is it that we have gotten stuck packaging some of the important issues that face humanity in such conceptually impoverished terms? What would it take to open up the conversation about technology to include a richer set of cares, categories, and criteria? In the final section we look at three concepts—“nature,” “risk,” and “values”—to see what light they shed on important choices before us.
In its approach to these matters, this is a work of criticism. If it were literary criticism, everyone would immediately understand that the underlying purpose is positive. A critic of literature examines a work, analyzing its features, evaluating its qualities, seeking a deeper appreciation that might be useful to other readers of the same text. In a similar way, critics of music, theater, and the arts have a valuable, well-established role, serving as a helpful bridge between artists and audiences. Criticism of technology, however, is not yet afforded the same glad welcome. Writers who venture beyond the most pedestrian, dreary conceptions of tools and uses to investigate ways in which technical forms are implicated in the basic patterns and problems of our culture are often greeted with the charge that they are merely “antitechnology” or “blaming technology.” All who have recently stepped forward as critics in this realm have been tarred with the same idiot brush, an expression of the desire to stop a much needed dialogue rather than enlarge it. If any readers want to see the present work as “antitechnology,” make the most of it. That is their topic, not mine.
What does interest me, however, is identified in the book’s subtitle: A Search for Limits. In an age in which the inexhaustible power of scientific technology makes all things possible, it remains to be seen where we will draw the line, where we will be able to say, here are possibilities that wisdom suggests we avoid. I am convinced that any philosophy of technology worth its salt must eventually ask, How can we limit modern technology to match our best sense of who we are and the kind of world we would like to build? In several contexts and variations, that is my question throughout.
All of these are issues in public philosophy, and I have done my best to address them in an open, reasonable, public manner. But they are also extremely personal themes, a fact I do not try to conceal. When the whale surfaces in the final chapter, giving salute to a neighboring reactor, the reader will understand how I came to think about these matters in the first place.