Does Technology Liberate?
Two brothers chanced upon each other on the slope of a magical mountain. One is being pulled upward by a legendary bird with a golden thread, while the other is being dragged downward with an iron chain by a snarling dog. At the point where they align, they share their experiences of the journey and realize that the cliffs, steep rocks, wild animals, beautiful landscapes, and delicate flowers they encountered along the way are strikingly similar. As soon as the brothers decide to continue journey together they find themselves as captives in a deep chasm. In this Celtic legend, it is said that the dog represents the mundane side of human nature, while the bird represents the divine. A person whose every needs are met and who has access to everything they desire may think they are free. On the other hand, between the emergence and fulfillment of a need, one can find an endless dialectic—especially considering how the vast scale of needs is in a technical society. Each need met opens the door to a new need through requirement of byproducts or upper version of what meets the need. Refueling the car that has been bought to meet more comfortable transportation need and changing tires with the change of seasons become inevitable needs for someone who owns a car. Similarly, upgrading to a upper or newer model when the car’s mileage increases becomes yet another need. In this dialectical movement, needs are always met; always increases. Along this descending path, many obstacles and opportunities are encountered, pleasures and pains, victories and defeats are experienced; effort is made, and progress is achieved. The person being pulled upward by the legendary bird also encounters obstacles and opportunities, experiences pleasures and pains, victories and defeats. Just like the descent, the ascent also contains its own dialectic. The path that leads to captivity closely resembles the path that leads to freedom, yet they are distinct. In fact, they are so different that it is impossible to walk both paths simultaneously. For this reason, the two brothers who decided to journey together have failed to achieve, becoming transformed into malevolent spirits, and have entered a deep chasm where they remain permanently.
Meeting one’s needs may not necessarily lead to freedom, but why should it imprison? Can a person fulfill their established requirements on one hand while also through a any way for instance through spiritual practices liberating themselves on the other? Or were the needs not created and offered to be met? We can find the answers to these questions in the following statements made by Socrates before his execution and quoted by Plato:
“If I had not thought it would be more appropriate to suffer the punishment inflicted on me by the state, and if I had fled like a slave, then these bones and flesh should properly be in Megara or Boeotia.”
Spoken between death and life by Socrates, these words reveal the two brothers described in the Celtic legend. One, unjustly sentenced to death, might consider fleeing to survive. This is one path; its direction is determined by ‘necessity.’ It is essential for a person to remain alive, with their bones and flesh intact. Socrates continues his words by saying, ‘It is said that I cannot achieve what I intend without possessing my bones and muscles or anything that belongs to me,’ thus pointing to a second path. The second way pointed out by Socrates, who explains that when a person moves, the things that make movement possible are not muscles and bones (and thereby highlights the ignorance surrounding the Ionian School’s inquiry into hypostasis) is the way of the brother pulled upwards by a golden thread told by the Celtic legend, and its direction is determined by the “purpose”.
We can also agree with all these judgments today, asserting that freedom is not about fulfilling the desires of bones and flesh (the body and self), but rather opposing their wishes. However, we face a different scale of necessities compared to that of the pre-Christian Scots or of the era in which Socrates lived. The argument that freedom is a victory over requirements is certainly clear in light of Socrates’ statements. A person will choose either the path of muscles and bones or the path of thought. Socrates chooses the latter. But what if Socrates had found a third path that congruent with thought rather than with muscles and bones? It is easy to choose between eating and not eating, or sleeping and not sleeping. However, a person who reads a book a day may not easily decide whether to purchase a digital device that promises to enable them to read two books a day. Similarly, determining whether smartphones help us to organize our time and minds better or not is not an easy task. When we use washing machines and dishwashers, we gain time that we would have spent washing clothes and dishes by hand, yet whether this constitutes a gain in terms of thought remains debatable. The difficulty in making decisions regarding technological needs arises precisely from technology’s promise to help us to surpass our natural requirements. It is not easy to understand this promise correctly and say no to the technological opportunities.
We can exemplify that the phenomenon of technology represents the most deceptive form of determinism with a historical example. When workers revolted in Europe in 1848, they demanded the dismantling of large industrial machines. Their living standards had not yet improved, and while people struggled with adaptation difficulties, they had not yet encountered the intoxicating effects of technology. In the middle of the nineteenth century, Marx articulated the statement that would exonerate technology in the eyes of the workers: ‘Technique liberates.’ While he was not the first to say this, he was the first intellectual capable of convincing the masses about the necessity of technology. The struggle against technology will not liberate the workers; however, the very process of technological advancement is envisioned to bring about the end of the bourgeoisie and capitalism within a dialectical framework. This is the desired outcome. Humanists like Bergson and Catholics like Mounier believed that full control over technology could be achieved by strengthening spiritual faculties.
Marx’s rehabilitation of technique and Bergson’s and Mounier’s struggles regarding the possibility of controlling technique means that they have accepted the necessity of technique. However, what must first be done is to feel the pressure of what imposes itself on us as a necessity, to define and analyze it, and to confront it. George Basalla’s, The Evolution of Technology, while conducting such an abovementioned study, reaches the conclusion that necessity is a primarily relative concept. What is a need for an individual, a generation, or for a social class may be a luxury or even useless for another. From here, we can conclude that we can differentiate extravagancy from established needs and even can create globally valid and accepted list of needs. It is possible to understand a culture, and even technology, based on this list. According to the structuralist approach, every product that emerges (including cultural and artistic ones) is the result of an effort to meet a need and serves a function. As for representatives of biological theory, the connection (if any) of religious, artistic, and scientific activities to human survival instinct is tenuous at best. Even agricultural activities and the construction of shelters are only distantly related to biological needs.
The structuralist approach, which is the first of the approaches that Basalla gives more detailed list than presented here, follows the same path as Marx, Bergson, and Mounier by initiating production process with the identification of need: ‘Something is produced because it is necessary.’ According to the second approach, ‘It has been produced, but it is not necessary.’ In the aforementioned work, Basalla attempts to explain the relationship between need and invention by changing the sequence between them. It is not human nature that initially decides what is necessary or unnecessary for us, but rather language or culture, and our judgments regarding to the subject following these decisions. Biology, on the other hand, does not determine what is possible, but only what is impossible in this succession. When the relationship between need and invention is reversed in this way, it leads to the conclusion that technology does not meet any real need. José Ortega y Gasset confirms this outcome: ‘Technology is superfluous. It was as superfluous in the Stone Age as it is today.’ On the other hand, technology, despite all its unnecessaryness, continues to advance rapidly. Because the list of needs is ever-expanding.
If technology follows a list not of actual needs but of perceived needs, one might ask what criteria shape the formation of this second list. For instance, why were pyramids essential for the Egyptians, statues for the Greeks, sledges for the Mesopotamians, and taxis for New Yorkers? Are the differences merely language and culture? Jacques Ellul explains the relationship between needs and inventions in The Technological Society by following a path similar to that of Basalla: while simple tools arise as a result of natural needs, there is no group of needs that technology met. Therefore, the reason for the progress made by technology is not an ever-expanding list of needs. Technology has been born and developed because it is possible. Needs and usage come after this possibility. A striking example to support this claim could be the invention of the atomic bomb. Renowned French political scientist Jacques Soustelle famously stated about this invention, which does not meet any human needs: “It was deemed necessary because it was possible.” This can be read as a key sentence explaining all stages of the technical universe. Therefore, technology is a closed loop system that bypasses human needs and decisions. If technology is the basis and outcome of what is possible, then the relationship between technology and freedom can be reconsidered.
Firstly, the assertion that technology does not emerge from need but rather that needs arise from technology contradicts the assumption that technology liberates, as considered in the context of Marx. If our demands are shaped by the presentation rather than the presentation catering to our demands, we may be referring to an increasingly constricted space of freedom. L. J. Terlizzese formulates this contraction: ‘When everything is possible, nothing is possible.’ When technology creates needs from possibilities, the human capacity to discern what is necessary and what is not, diminishes. Furthermore, when something is preemptively accepted as necessary, moral judgments regarding it can easily be suspended. Once something accepted as a need, the ways in which it is used and obtained rarely become the subject of moral inquiry. At this point, where the question of ‘why’ is silenced and replaced by ‘how’, it is no longer possible to speak of freedom. Secondly, a judgment about the necessity of something drives the person making the judgment to strive to obtain that thing. In other words, necessity turns into a false purpose. Purpose (telos) in its true sense does not refer to such a cause-effect chain, but rather transcends it. While necessity draws limits, purpose seeks to transcend these limits. One becomes truly free not when they independently decide what they need for themselves, but when they possess the will to deprive themselves of it, despite having made that decision. The need, mentioned above, includes established needs as well as adopted needs that mostly offered by technological improvements. And entry into the freedom zone takes place when one resists their ego instead of submitting to it and climbs to the peak of mountain by holding on to the golden rope.