Christian Moral Theology in the Emerging Technoculture

From Posthuman Back to Human

Brent Waters

• Verlag: Routledge
• Jahr: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317166719
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Teologia e religione
• Thema: Cristianesimo

We are living in an emerging technoculture. Machines and gadgets not only weave the fabric of daily life, but more importantly embody philosophical and religious values which shape the contemporary moral vision-a vision that is often at odds with Christian convictions. This book critically examines those values, and offers a framework for how Christian moral theology should be formed and lived-out within the emerging technoculture. Brent Waters argues that technology represents the principal cultural background against which contemporary Christian moral life is formed. Addressing contemporary ethical and religious issues, this book will be of particular interest to students and scholars exploring the ideas of Heidegger, Nietzsche, Grant, Arendt, and Borgmann.

PART I
Philosophical Description and Critique

Chapter 1
The Philosophical Background of the Emerging Technoculture

To say that we live in an emerging technoculture is to state the obvious. The late modern world is dominated and shaped by ubiquitous gadgets and artifacts of human design and ingenuity. It is a world of sprawling cities, elaborate transportation infrastructures, instantaneous communication and information networks, and global markets. Many of the earth’s inhabitants now live, and move, and have their being within artifices that have become their “natural” habitat. Late moderns are most at home in environments of their own making. Consequently, they construct, deconstruct, and reconstruct themselves in order to take full advantage of a world they are creating in an image of what they will it and themselves to be and to become. This is to refer not merely to the constant fabrication of so-called unique lifestyles, but to advances in medicine, biotechnology, and bionics that have extended longevity and enhanced physical and cognitive capabilities. Late moderns literally embody the project of collapsing the natural and artificial into a singular act of will enacted pre-eminently through technological development and mastery. Moreover, this emerging technoculture is inescapable. Even those who do not benefit directly from the mobility, material goods, and healthcare it offers are nonetheless affected by global markets; the livelihood of nomadic herders in Mongolia, for instance, depends on consumers of cashmere in Paris and Los Angeles.¹

To speak meaningfully of an emerging technoculture, however, requires critical inquiry into what is being designated by the neologism. What is being referred to in a word joining technology (techne) and culture (ethos)? To say that we are living in a global culture that is being shaped by technology is true, but it is a partial, and thereby misleading, truth. The truism implies that technological development is somehow prior to, and independent of, the culture that forms the interests of the developers and consumers. New technologies magically appear, reflecting the popular notion that their development is a novel creation preceding and precipitating cultural change; people must adapt their daily lives in response to the newest product. The personal computer, for example, has forced people to adjust their work and leisure in order to create, store, and access information.

Asserting technological priority is misleading, for it grants an unwarranted autonomy to a so-called technological system. Various technologies are developed within a self-contained structure that is somehow outside or unaffected by the culture in which they are introduced and used. Technological development is incessant, inevitable, and irresistible, and is not subject to any moral controls, for it is driven by its own inherent rationality. Technology creates the values of late moderns and not vice versa. Social and political ordering is thereby reduced to an organizational task of simultaneously promoting technological development and fashioning receptive consumers who come to expect continuous innovation. The masses did not need the personal computer; it was a novelty foisted upon them, and they have been forced to adopt appropriate values regarding this new necessity to manage information.

Yet the prominence of technology as a formative force betrays the veracity of the preceding portrayal. If a particular technology was ever genuinely novel, it would never be widely adopted. It is not so much the case that technology creates new values as that it satisfies prior desires in often unanticipated ways. The development of a new technology is emblematic of a reformulation of values that have already occurred. Once the introduction of a technology is widely accepted, a new round of value reformulation is initiated in response to unanticipated applications that are opened with its use. The computer fulfilled a desire for a more efficient means of creating, storing, and accessing information, and the subsequent development of personal computers and the Internet, especially in conjunction with mobile telephony, embodied the values of the speed and ubiquity of transmitting information. Had there not been an initial need or desire for readily available data, it is doubtful whether the information technologies that are now taken for granted would have gained widespread acceptance.

This does not imply, however, that technology is a dutiful servant. The perception of technology as a collection of neutral instruments subject to absolute human control is equally misleading. Proponents of this view reassure consumers that various technologies are simply tools that individuals may use in whatever ways they choose. Any problems associated with a particular technology, or any lifestyle changes resulting from its use, is the consequence of the independent values and choices of the users. To paraphrase George Grant, technology does not impose on its users the ways in which it should be used.² The fact that a computer can be used by a doctor to make a more accurate diagnosis or that it can be used by a thief to steal identities does not make it an inherently good or evil instrument.

Yet technology does impose the ways it should be used on its users; otherwise, it could not be used at all. Using a technology requires users to adjust their actions and lives accordingly. This is especially the case in respect to time and place. To use the Internet, for instance, one must be in a particular place where it can be accessed at a particular time. Moreover, the use of a technology prompts changes in what the user values. An individual may prefer to peruse bloggers rather than read a newspaper. Moreover, using a computer requires that information must be created, stored, and accessed in prescribed ways. Although an email resembles a letter, the two are not identical. Admittedly, most technologies are subject to the control of their users, which in turn enables those users to exert greater command over how they live their lives or, more accurately, how they allocate their time in particular places. This control, however, is not as extensive as it first appears. To devote time to an activity provided by a technology means that time cannot be devoted to some other pursuit. The greater control gained by the use of a technology comes with the price of also having one’s time and attention controlled by its use; the time spent networking on Facebook® is time that cannot be devoted to face-to-face conversing.

These seemingly contradictory tendencies of technological determinism and neutrality do not pose an either/or dilemma. Rather, both are operative and mutually reinforcing. A particular technology is developed to satisfy certain desires. As the technology becomes more widely used, its own inherent potential unfolds, leading to further refinements and improvements. If the users are to take full advantage of the proffered benefits they must adjust their lives accordingly. These adjustments prompt another round of new desires and values in response to this unfolding potential, spurring another spate of technological innovation. Within this cyclical pattern the users encounter technology as both a determinative force over and against them and as neutral instruments under their control. In effect they are subjected to simultaneous and paradoxical episodes of greater and diminished control, increased dependency and greater autonomy, enriched sociality and greater isolation.

To return to the example of the computer—a machine that was designed initially to process data more efficiently—has become the foundation for a globally integrated network of information and communication technologies that is altering the patterns of daily activities, particularly in respect to work and commerce. More and more time, for instance, must be devoted to managing the burgeoning volume of information that is instantaneously available and exchanged. As this network becomes more enmeshed in the fabric of daily life there are also accompanying changes in what is valued and desired. A higher premium is placed on the reliability, malleability, and confidentiality of information that is needed to accomplish various tasks and transactions, prompting a corresponding desire for speedier, easier, and more secure access to information. Yet there is also the need not only to protect data, but also to protect users from becoming overwhelmed by irrelevant and unwanted information, prompting further refinements that simultaneously enlarge and restrict the scope of available information. With each round of refinements, the tension between these determinative and neutral tendencies becomes more pronounced. Information technology has improved productivity, but it also dictates the structure of work and the design of the workplace.

The paradoxical effect of this tension is amplified in that there is greater control over how information is created, disseminated, and accessed but less control over regulation and use. A computer connected to the Internet grants me more efficiency in regard to my work and financial transactions, but I cannot control how other individuals might access and use information that is compiled about me. The dispersed structure and accompanying safeguards of information networks enhance individual autonomy. With each advance in information technology I am freer and better able to construct my lifestyle. The ubiquity of information technology allows me to create and access information that cannot be easily subjected to centralized control and monitoring, and an array of safety devices protect my privacy. My enhanced autonomy, however, depends on networks that are entirely beyond my control in terms not only of maintaining the various technical components, but also of trusting strangers who are in a position to override the safeguards employed to protect my privacy. The proliferation of information technology also expands my range of social interactions. Through the Internet I can communicate instantly with individuals across the globe. Yet, ironically as remote communication becomes easier, individuals grow increasingly isolated. The more time I spend emailing the less attentive I can be to those in close physical proximity.

It is due to this tension between these determinative and instrumental tendencies that we may speak of a technoculture. It is through various cultural channels that the respective centripetal and centrifugal forces are mediated. Within this tension the individuals and associations comprising a culture evaluate, reform, and align their values, affirming some while discarding, reconstructing, and inventing others. On the basis of these changing valuations, new patterns of social and political ordering emerge while others fade or are redirected. These patterns in turn promote the construction, renovation, reform, and dismantling of the economic, social, and political institutions comprising the civil community. Mediating this tension is fraught with conflict. Which values should be embraced and which should be shunned? What patterns of social and political ordering are best suited for actualizing the values that are embraced, and what are the patterns that should be avoided? What kinds of economic, social, and political institutions are best suited to promoting the welfare of civil community, and what kinds are inimical? The contentious nature of trying to answer these questions reflects both the vitality and uncertainty of what the emerging technoculture is and what it might and should endeavor to become. The operative word is “emerging,” for it is far from clear whether a technoculture will be primarily the product of a determinative force beyond human control or an artifact of human inventiveness afforded by technology’s instrumental neutrality.

The contentious issues accompanying the emerging technoculture often stem from these conflicting determinative and instrumental presuppositions, and they are most often disputed and resolved in political terms. Should telecommunication, for example, be subjected to more or less regulation? It could be argued that the telecommunication industry should be deregulated because such a policy is better aligned to take advantage of inevitable technological development—a progressive trajectory that should not be restrained. Or, conversely, it could be argued that the telecommunication industry should be tightly regulated to protect the public interest—caution is warranted to protect consumers. But what is not at issue in this dispute is technology per se. There is virtual unanimity that improved telecommunication is a good goal to pursue, but where the disputants differ is over the means of achieving it.

In this respect, it is not the machines and devices that should capture attention, but the underlying values and rationality of the emerging technoculture that they signify. Following Oliver O’Donovan, the issue at stake is not the “technical achievements of the age, but the mutation of practical reasoning into ‘technique’.”³ The effects of this mutated practical reasoning is disclosed in the values and language that are permitted, forbidden, and privileged in the political and p...

Inhaltsverzeichnis

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I Philosophical Description and Critique
• Part II Theological Construction
• Part III Moral Engagement
• Bibliography
• Index