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2015 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel

3. What is “Technology”?

verfasst von : Andrzej P. Wierzbicki

Erschienen in: Technen: Elements of Recent History of Information Technologies with Epistemological Conclusions

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

A technician, reading works on philosophy of technology, usually has the impression that the authors do not have any idea what technology is and write about an imaginary entity. There are many examples, starting with an evidently anti-technical book (Postman 1992) about technopoly, where the author does not explain in which sense he uses the word “technology” and actually writes about a socio-economic system of applications of contemporary technology, without clearly making this distinction. Another example might be a recent, excellent book of Darin Barney, Network Society (2002), correct in the conclusion that the thesis about a domination of network society might be premature. However, in these parts of Network Society where the author writes about his understanding of the essence of technology and the opinions of philosophy of technology about this essence, an absolute lack of understanding of the object of discussion is evident: whether he writes about technology as such, or about technological artefacts, or about a socio-economic system of production and utilization of technology products, or about fascination of people with the possibilities of technology. To express all these possible meanings, and there are more, a key-word “technology” is used.

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Vorheriges Kapitel Preface: New Epoch, It’s Conceptual Platform and Episteme

Nächstes Kapitel Delays in Technology Development: Their Impact on the Issues of Determinism, Autonomy and Controllability of Technology

And gives an answer that is partly correct (and fully correct in Polish language, where the word “technology” should be clearly distinguished from the word “technique”): technology is a recipe for producing artefacts.

For this reason, technicians perceive the description “technocratic” as an offensive and imprecise epithet: in historical evidence, technocrats were brokers of technology, not proper technologists.

I used earlier, in Wierzbicki (1988, 2000), the term cultural platform to describe a set of new concepts and ideas preceding a change of civilization epoch, but now I use a better fitting term, conceptual platform, instead.

It could be said that people living in former epochs did not know their episteme consciously and Michel Foucault used this concept only in a historical sense, as a human mind construct describing past situations. On the other hand, since the publication of Foucault this type of interpretation of the term episteme has been a part of intellectual heritage of humanity, so we have right—or even duty—to use it also to forecast future developments.

Synergy implies complementarity: two parts are complementary if they fit each other and create together more than a simple sum; in more general, descriptive terms, synergy is related to the concept of holism; but even this concept in systems theory did not imply emergence, although it should.

The rational and theoretical as well as pragmatic justification of the emergence principle was presented for the first time in Wierzbicki and Nakamori(2006, 2007), although a parallel formulation of the emergence principle (without stressing the irreducibility of emerging properties and thus equating emergence with synergy) was given independently in Skyttner (2001), Cempel (2006).

As mentioned above, technocratic is an imprecise and abusive epithet, since the concept of technocracy originated from Henry Ford, a broker of technology, not a technologist proper, who tried to transfer a technological organization of production into broader society; technologists proper or creators of technology by no means believe in technocracy. Many social scientists and humanists use, however, the term technocratic as an epithet, ostensibly characterizing the behaviour of all technologists. Such usage of this word is an expression of cultural imperialism—a judgment of other culture without actually knowing it (see e.g. Levi-Strauss 1958).

Technical sciences adhere to the postulate of falsification of Karl Popper (see e.g., Popper 1962, 1972) most closely. This fact is somewhat paradoxical, because Karl Popper, who did not know much about technology, maintained that technology does not use falsification (see Popper 1956), because allegedly does not reject unsuccessful constructions and does not use critical experiments (sic!). Possibly Karl Popper did not even hear about specific methods of developing critical destructive experiments in technology.

The necessity of (only a relative) integration of the epistemai of the coming epoch appears obvious to me, because the existing divergence of the epistemai of three cultural spheres often leads to great interdisciplinary misunderstandings.

This is because most philosophers are addicted to classic logics (either a causes b or b causes a) and the relation between technology and society is actually a feedback relation, see Fig. 3.1; see also Chap. 6 on the lack of understanding of feedback by philosophers.

My own explanation in the straight parentheses, resulting from the context of this statement by Heidegger.

For example, it is symptomatic that the anthology (Scharff i Dusek 2003) ignores the works of Rachel Laudan.

Almost, because Karl Popper limited the concept of world 3 to rationally justified, explicit knowledge, while equally or even more important in the development of knowledge are its tacit parts, intuitive part and emotional pert of the intellectual heritage of humanity, which is discussed in more detail in Chap. 12.

More about a rational theory of intuition that is powerful but does not result in a priori truth and might be erroneous see in next chapters.

See Creative Space (Wierzbicki and Nakamori 2006).

It is clearly a metaphor, much valued by the Japanese: eight million Shinto gods indicate their omnipresence.

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Titel: What is “Technology”?
verfasst von: Andrzej P. Wierzbicki
Verlag: Springer International Publishing
Buch: Technen: Elements of Recent History of Information Technologies with Epistemological Conclusions
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-09032-0

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-09033-7

Copyright-Jahr: 2015
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09033-7_3

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