{"id":147,"date":"2024-08-30T14:59:46","date_gmt":"2024-08-30T18:59:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/?p=147"},"modified":"2024-08-30T15:06:32","modified_gmt":"2024-08-30T19:06:32","slug":"pragmatic-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/2024\/08\/30\/pragmatic-technology\/","title":{"rendered":"Pragmatic Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pragmatic Technology<\/strong><\/p>\n

S. M. Gollmer<\/p>\n

Technology affects us whether we want it or not.\u00a0 The instrumentation of time provides a standard by which individual and societal productivity is measured.\u00a0 If the world were not so interconnected, it would be possible to dictate our own pace of life.\u00a0 However, that ideal is no longer available.\u00a0 No longer can we languish by Walden Pond.\u00a0 To do so requires one to have wealth sufficient to own land, pay taxes on the land, maintain a shelter, and provide sustenance.\u00a0 Our utopian view of the good life butts up against the pragmatic reality of living in a physical world.\u00a0 It is possible to live life without the constraint of possessions, but we often associate this lifestyle with homelessness, which is seldom chosen as an ideal by most people.\u00a0 Often this tension between the ideal and pragmatic is blamed on technology. \u00a0But this misrepresents the situation.<\/p>\n

Technological development requires people to act pragmatically.\u00a0 Leonardo da Vinci is credited as a great inventor; however, few of his imaginations achieved working success.\u00a0 His influence was in the realm of art and only centuries later appreciated for his scientific and engineering insights.\u00a0 He was a man ahead of his time.\u00a0 In his days the state of material science was rudimentary, incapable of providing the structural strength and lightness needed for his designs.\u00a0 Leonardo\u2019s idealistic visions were not achievable until the pragmatic application of physical principles made them a reality.\u00a0 Pragmatism is not an enemy but a constraint on what can be achieved.<\/p>\n

Technological pragmatism becomes a hinderance to flourishing when it constrains humanity into a utilitarian existence.\u00a0 In the early days of the industrial revolution, children were employed with low wages for 12+ hours per day.\u00a0 Seeing this a necessity of technological progress relegates humanity to the role of just another piece of machinery.\u00a0 No consideration is made apart from increasing productivity and reducing costs.\u00a0 In the intervening centuries, labor laws have protected individuals from explicit exploitation.\u00a0 However, the pragmatic drive to improve efficiency makes technological development a constant threat.<\/p>\n

What is more insidious is when we act pragmatically to get ahead in the technological world.\u00a0 We vigorously pursue the best paying jobs so we can afford to satisfy our immediate desires without a thought of who we are and what we are becoming.\u00a0 The technological world provides a large variety of choices, making it easier to be entertained without boredom.\u00a0 By focusing on immediate needs and desires, we withdraw into ourselves and see less need to express the idealistic creativity that made Leonardo famous.\u00a0 We voluntarily become lesser shells of ourselves thus reinforcing the perception that each human is reducible to a machine.<\/p>\n

The solution is not rejecting technology but changing the criteria of progress away from efficiency.\u00a0 In The Technological Society<\/em>, Ellul sees both free-market and socialistic systems driven by a greater force, that of technique<\/em>.\u00a0 Technique expands beyond machinery to the ordering of society and human interaction so that we become compatible with an expanding machination of the world.\u00a0 Ellul describes how the immaterial aspect of humanity is shaped and manipulated by propaganda and concedes that this process is inescapable.\u00a0 The trap of technique is to think of humanity as merely an advanced animal.\u00a0 If we are to have a proper view of technology and its role in our lives, we need to understand what it means to be truly human and let that change our definition of progress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pragmatic Technology S. M. Gollmer Technology affects us whether we want it or not.\u00a0 The instrumentation of time provides a standard by which individual and societal productivity is measured.\u00a0 If the world were not so interconnected, it would be possible to dictate our own pace of life.\u00a0 However, that ideal is no longer available.\u00a0 No… View Article<\/a>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":148,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions\/148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}