317. Fairy tales of technological utopia
In the media one finds impressive tales of
technological prowess. Those are promising especially for medical care, with
genetic modification, artificial cells and viruses, for fighting diseases. Mobilizing
brain signals to steer machines, such as wheelchairs, or external skeletons
strapped on lame legs. Use of quantummechanics for new computers. Imitating
nature with new materials. One sees sparkles of ingenuity, creativity, and
originality, visionary passion.
However, all this is sometimes glazed with a soothing,
intoxicating sauce of technological utopianism. Technology as our saviour,
resolution of all problems.
But technology also yields unexpected, unintended and
sometimes undesirable outcomes. Look at nuclear energy, which we now want to
get rid of. Genetic modification, artificial cells and viruses bring risks of
misuse, criminal usurpation, and possibly calamitous accidents. That is no
reason to stop, but it does call for prudence and sober evaluation.
Similar utopianism is radiated by bobo’s of the
digital revolution, such as Mark Zuckerberg en Bill Gates. The more information
and communication the better. But now
use of the Internet is leading to the construction and sale of detailed user
profiles that can beneficially be used to tailor services and innovations, but are
also used to manipulate, guide choice, and affect privacy and ownership of
personal data. Young people get terrorized by ridicule on social media, become
depressive from pressures from Facebook and Instagram to compete on looks and
pimped accounts of achievements. Twitter sounds nicely birdlike but derails in
the barking of blood hounds. And how about hacking and computer viruses?
In connecting brains to machinery and to each other we
seem to be on our way to a collective brain and identity, a hyperidentity, in
which individuals are small parts in the machinery, like neurons in the brain,
with no knowledge or even awareness of the whole. Will that constitute
progress, yield happiness?
I heard one of the utopians quote the 16th century
British philosopher Francis Bacon in saying that ‘nature is to be put on the
rack’ to ‘own up to its secrets’. We seem to be doing well at that, in
environmental damage.
And do the most pressing problems of humanity lie in
areas where technological intervention will help? Or do they lie more in human
conduct and thought, in political, social and philosophical issues, in partly
legitimate grievances of populism, emerging authoritarian regimes, suppression,
corruption, wars, terrorism, refugees, banking crises, re-emergeme of
nationalism, and threats to liberal democracy?