On Progress and Technolgy

Or why I don't believe in either of them

I do not believe in progress and haven't for years - not in the way most people mean it. Progress can be defined in many ways, and by many of those measures, especially in terms of income, life expectancy, and education, we may be said to be making progress. All of that is wonderful. We should congratulate ourselves on it. I know about it, I can celebrate it, but I have no faith in it. Much of the progress we have made comes at very high environmental and ecological costs; I do not believe in progress because I do not believe in taking things out of context, and too often, that is exactly what is done when people talk about progress. 

We also need to be aware of how fragile progress is. Many of us are now aware of that on the political level in the United States and many other countries. Looking again at contexts, we should be aware of how fragile progress in standards of living, education, and health is because of climate, pollution, environmental degradation, and the threat of pandemics. There are also economic threats to it stemming from growing inequality and the economic doctrines that support it. We are threatened by more and more technologies as well. In other words, while I appreciate the progress that has been made, I have no faith that it will not halt or be reversed. It may be that it already has in many ways. 

Progress has a strong moral or ethical component, too. When people proclaim themselves as Progressives, that has a specific set of moral and ethical connotations. When someone states they are opposed to Progressivism, they are reflecting a different morality and ethics. At least in everyday use, I find it difficult to separate progress from these connotations. It does not matter that I largely agree with them, but I am in the process of trying to rethink morality and ethics from the standpoint of the more-than-human life world, and there is too much I do not understand or have been unable to make peace within that effort. 

I do believe in change. Do you believe in change because change is constant, is obvious and hidden at the same time, and lacks the moral or ethical component that progress has? There are ways to measure change in things, but I do not think Change itself can be measured. For me, change is much more like the Tao (or Dao, if you prefer): always present, quicksilver, elusive, unknowable, and unquantifiable. I realize you may not think about it that way, but that is how I do. 

I also do not believe in technology and begin to suspect that it is some sort of category error. There is something of the Platonic ideal to technology today as we use the term. You can study something called technology and extract general principles about it, but it only makes sense to me to study technologies—individual technologies or closely connected ones. I can be optimistic, pessimistic, or ambivalent about a specific technology, but not about technology as an abstract category. 

Perhaps I am becoming more opposed to philosophizing as I get older; perhaps I am becoming too concrete in my thinking. These are things on which I need to reflect.

The disbelief in progress and technology go hand-in-hand. People, technologies, and other factors create change when they interact. The details of those interactions are of interest, they are important. This is about much more than whether a technology works, but also about how people use it, react to it, the ways it changes them and their environment, and the way people and the environment affect the technology. It is only when we can look at it in action, in context, in breadth and depth, that we can truly appreciate a technology. That is why things like Generative AI, which are so broad, connected to vast amounts of data, and so capable of simulating many aspects of human activity, are so hard for us to grasp and control. I can tell you a lot about the behavior of individual AI tools, but I can tell you only a little about Generative AI as something in itself. The larger the category, the less meaningful and more ideological it may become, and the easier it is for some to manipulate it to achieve their own ends. 

In other words, I believe in details – small details – in individual interactions taken in context. A lot of my posts have already focused on small details and will continue to do so. God, or the Devil, depending on which version of the saying you prefer, is in the details. I am not sure which is in broad abstractions. As for progress, maybe we are making some real, lasting progress and maybe not. I do not think we can ever be certain. Future generations are the ones to ask about that. Real progress is too big a thing to be seen in the midst of events.

---