This post discusses only the question of "technological neutrality" in the Kuaibo case (Kuaibo was a Chinese video player whose executives were tried in 2016 for spreading pornography; their defense argued that "technology itself is innocent"), and the theory's standing and current state in the philosophy of science.
technological neutrality
Its core claim is that technology is pure and value-neutral, and has in itself no properties of right or wrong, good or evil; technology ends up in human use, and the results it finally produces should be borne by humans themselves.
Technological Neutrality in the Kuaibo Case
The debate in the recent Kuaibo case, as far as the value of technology goes, can be called a microcosm of the discussion technological neutrality has received in the philosophy of science: technological neutrality has persisted in the philosophy of science for a very long time, and it still has a large following today. Among the general public, technological neutrality is even the only value view of technology there is.
Within the value view of technological neutrality, there are some very common arguments:
- An example from daily life: if someone kills a person with a knife, the guilty party is the person, not the knife, and not the factory that made the knife.
- An example from science: the atomic bomb is innocent; the guilty are the people who misuse it.
- An example from the internet: trojans are innocent; the guilty are the people who use them for illegal activities.
These claims all argue for the value-neutral character of technology. I'll explain later where the holes in these arguments are.
Technological Neutrality in the Philosophy of Science
In fact, the view of technological neutrality appeared very early in the philosophy of science, and because of technology's own "self-concealing nature", the values attached to technology naturally tend toward neutrality. After the Industrial Revolution, the ills of technology gradually came to light, and reflection on the value of technology also made new progress in the philosophy of science.
The Premise for Discussing the Value of Technology: When We Discuss the Value of Technology, What Are We Discussing?
"Technology has no value bias. The consequences of any use of technology should, in the final analysis, be borne by humans, whether they are good or bad." Fundamentally, this statement is right, because without humans there would be no technology at all, and so no side effects brought by technology. In this sense, saying "all guilt ultimately falls on humans" is beyond reproach.
But in reality, we can't discuss the problem this way. Even in the philosophy of technology, discussion in the above sense is meaningless; it gives no substantive help to human understanding of technology.
The premise for discussing the value of technology is:
"Technology is created by humans and used by humans. Technology is not 'dead'; it has effects on humans."
Under this premise, when we discuss the value of technology, what we are discussing is: whether technology itself is really pure, and whether technology produces side effects on humans in certain respects. More precisely, technology is created by humans, so does this creation affect humans' construction of themselves?
The Intentional Structure of Technology
Imagine the following scenario:
There are two peoples. One gives its members knives and horses when they are very young. The other gives them poetry and books. What happens when these two peoples grow up? You can imagine that for the first people, the knife becomes their preferred way of speaking. For the second, poetry and books become their chosen way of speaking.
To take an example closer to daily life: once my boss asked me whether using a Mac felt great, and whether using a Mac, using these better tools, just makes you want to write things, makes you want to write code? Use a Mac and you want to write code; use Windows and you want to play games.
The examples above are meant to show that technology has its own intentional structure, and this intentional structure carries an attached value that unconsciously produces side effects on humans. The production of these side effects is not something humans can choose, especially in groups. Living inside their own paradigm, humans lack the ability to clearly discern the long-term effects of an intentional structure.
Note that this only says technology has its own intentional structure that in turn produces unconscious side effects on humans. It makes no value judgment about that intentional structure; that is, it does not judge whether it is good or bad. In fact, that is a very difficult task, and most of the time an impossible one.
On the other hand, saying technology has side effects on humans' construction of themselves is also unlike "determinism" in traditional philosophy, which leads to a situation where humans have no free will, and for any decision they make and any mistake they commit, they need not, and cannot, bear the consequences.
In the philosophy of technology, the thesis of technological non-neutrality holds that "technology and humans construct each other".
Back to the Technological Neutrality Argument in the Kuaibo Case
The intentional structure of technology means it will inevitably produce side effects on humans, and it also exposes a very large hole in the arguments listed earlier: they assume a premise, namely that humans can judge with complete clarity what potential side effects the use of a technology will have. In other words, that humans can clearly know, and control, the counter-effects brought by technology, including both the very obvious ones and the latent ones.
But this is unrealistic. The side effects of many technologies are hard to detect. It's hard for you to know clearly what effect long-term use of WeChat, as a technology, will have, or already has had, on you. Not to mention that humans live inside a great net woven from technologies.
Another aspect is that the side effects technology produces on groups are more complex than those it produces on individuals, because the behavior of a group is not a simple sum of individual behaviors, and the influence a technology has on a group runs deeper. Take programming languages: pure C programmers and Python programmers are bound to differ, and when these differences show up at the group level, they basically reflect the differences in the design philosophies of C and Python, that is, the differences in their own intentional structures.
In other words, the effect a technology produces within a group will end up closer to the technology's own intentional structure: if Kuaibo makes it easy to spread pornographic material, then under natural conditions at the current stage of civilization, it will inevitably spread pornographic material, not study material. Once you understand this, you can see clearly where the key lies: control, regulation, critique, reflection.
This is also what critical theory of technology holds:
"Even though technology has its own intentional structure, what this teaches us is to handle it more cautiously and more critically, rather than directly making a value judgment that affirms or negates it."
Philosophy of Science and Sociotechnical Decision-Making
To be continued
Appendix
I had never thought deeply about the philosophy of technology before. Only from the book Amusing Ourselves to Death did I sense that the relationship between technology and humans isn't as simple as splitting into two. Later I also thought about the problem of technological neutrality, and always felt something was wrong with it but couldn't put my finger on it, until I read Professor Wu Guosheng's Lectures on the Philosophy of Technology and got the answer I'm most satisfied with so far:
"Technology and humans construct each other."
Notes on the Key Points of Lectures on the Philosophy of Technology:
The Humanistic Essence of Technology
What is technology?
- Technology is a way of human existence; technology and humans are not split into two
What is the essence of humans?
- Humans are animals without an essence; the human essence is self-constructed
Characteristics of technology
- Technology is self-concealing, and the history of Western scholarship is a history that values only internal lines of reasoning
- The problem with technological neutrality: technology has an intentional structure and contains particular value orientations
- Technology is a link in constructing humans and the world: bodily techniques, humans are all born premature, shaping of the body, shaping of perception. The use of PPT.
Technology and Politics
Does technology have politics?
- Technology and politics are related. Politics intervenes in technology, and technology affects politics: gunpowder wiped out the knightly class and was the gravedigger of the feudal system. Hydraulic societies and centralized power.
The political critique of technology
- The hand mill gave rise to the feudal system; the steam mill gave rise to the capitalist system.
Taylorism and Fordism
- Technology leads to the retreat of human nature: seeing deaths in the news and gradually becoming indifferent
Three views of technology
- Technological optimism: technological neutralists; problems brought by technology can only be solved by technology
- Technological pessimism: technological autonomy, technology has an internal logic of development; holds that modern society has entered a one-dimensional society, the sense of difference disappears, and the tentacles of technology reach into every field. But it views technology holistically, treating it as monolithic, without working out the various possibilities of technology. Only by going into the details can one get out of pessimism.
- Critical theory of technology: go into the details of technology and examine every aspect: the theory of technological transformation. Assembly lines, computers, communications, transportation, propaganda technology. For every new technology, ask who benefits and who loses.
Technology and Philosophy
The historical absence of the philosophy of technology
- Beauty, justice, goodness, art and science are all focuses of philosophy; technology is not.
- Technology itself: its self-concealing nature, and long-standing technological neutrality
- Philosophy: philosophy emphasizes reasoning and internal logic: essentialism
The rise of the philosophy of technology
- Changes in technology itself: problems with technology have recently appeared; it is no longer transparent
- Philosophy: the collapse of essentialism and the emergence of phenomenalism. Empiricism inherits nominalism.
We meet by chance in this world.
I’m XingHua — glad to meet you.