Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Saturday, July 02, 2005

Technorealism and Technoprogressivism

A fellow CybDemite friend has recalled my attention to the Technorealists, who kicked up a fuss with which I broadly sympathized at the height of the irrational libertopian exuberance of the so-called dot.com era in the 1990s. From the "preamble" to a laundry list of Principles published in an effort to launch a movement that foundered soon thereafter, one finds formulations that bespeak many of the same frustrations and hopes that impelled me to propose some new terminology and topoi for technocentric technoprogressive technocriticism. (Perhaps I should have said technoterminology and technotopoi, since I seem to preface everything else with that these days to "make it new.") Anyway, here's a snippet:
In this heady age of rapid technological change, we all struggle to maintain our bearings. The developments that unfold each day in communications and computing can be thrilling and disorienting. One understandable reaction is to wonder: Are these changes good or bad? Should we welcome or fear them?

The answer is both. Technology is making life more convenient and enjoyable, and many of us healthier, wealthier, and wiser. But it is also affecting work, family, and the economy in unpredictable ways, introducing new forms of tension and distraction, and posing new threats to the cohesion of our physical communities.

Despite the complicated and often contradictory implications of technology, the conventional wisdom is woefully simplistic. Pundits, politicians, and self-appointed visionaries do us a disservice when they try to reduce these complexities to breathless tales of either high-tech doom or cyber-elation. Such polarized thinking leads to dashed hopes and unnecessary anxiety, and prevents us from understanding our own culture.

Over the past few years, even as the debate over technology has been dominated by the louder voices at the extremes, a new, more balanced consensus has quietly taken shape. This document seeks to articulate some of the shared beliefs behind that consensus, which we have come to call technorealism.

Technorealism demands that we think critically about the role that tools and interfaces play in human evolution and everyday life. Integral to this perspective is our understanding that the current tide of technological transformation, while important and powerful, is actually a continuation of waves of change that have taken place throughout history. Looking, for example, at the history of the automobile, television, or the telephone -- not just the devices but the institutions they became -- we see profound benefits as well as substantial costs. Similarly, we anticipate mixed blessings from today's emerging technologies, and expect to forever be on guard for unexpected consequences -- which must be addressed by thoughtful design and appropriate use.

As technorealists, we seek to expand the fertile middle ground between techno-utopianism and neo-Luddism. We are technology "critics" in the same way, and for the same reasons, that others are food critics, art critics, or literary critics. We can be passionately optimistic about some technologies, skeptical and disdainful of others. Still, our goal is neither to champion nor dismiss technology, but rather to understand it and apply it in a manner more consistent with basic human values.

I always did regret that "technorealism" seemed rather to fizzle like yet another digital fad -- but it is true that many of the figures who were conspicuous among the technorealists in its brief blaze are still doing quite valuable and interesting work I would describe as broadly technoprogressive: Paulina Borsook, Douglas Rushkoff, Andrew Shapiro.

Nevertheless, I'll admit that I am leery of the temptation so many technocentric commentators and advocates seem to have of organizing "movements" under the heading of "principles" published in "founding documents" that "members" are expected to sign off on.

I consider movements a somewhat embarrassingly twentieth century way of political organizing, frankly, and one that doesn't leave much to recommend it.

I prefer more inclusive conversations and more concrete campaigns rather than exclusive monolithic identity movements. I prefer more complex sensibilties rather than readily intelligible personal identities.

And quite apart from all this, I just don't think that technorealism provided anything like a dependable home for the explicitly progressive conversations and campaigns I crave, because it seemed to lodge itself in a realism defined as little more than a moderateness between whatever passes for the extremes of technological discourse in any given moment.

The difficulty of determining what kind of criteria govern the various Principles in the founding document of the technorealist non-movement symptomizes this deficiency, I would say.

Very broad and important points (such as the crucial "Principle One: Technologies are not neutral" or the attractively Lanieresque/Haylesesque "Principle Four: Information is not Knowledge") are weighted exactly the same as policy points (such as "Principle Five: Wiring the schools will not save them").

Now, I think of technoprogressive as a word to describe campaigns, arguments, ideas, values, that stand in a conversational relationship to one another, that incubate political and cultural campaigns that have a broad family resemblance, that come out of a recognizable sensibility and all... but which by no means align into any kind of customary profile, underwrite any kind of stable identity, or could, you know, fill the pews of yet another stainless-steel church for desperate dupes. There are quite enough Ayn Raelian Scientologists selling Amway products across the blighted saucer-eyed trauma-terrain of middle-class middle-America already, thank you very much, without yet another libertopian robot clone cult barking orders and wheedling for cash.

I think of "technoprogressive" as a word that really means what it appears to mean roughly the moment you encounter it, without much in the way of explanatory throat-clearing or stage setting necessary: It denotes varieties of technocentric progressivism.

Technoprogressivism really is committed to progress.

I don't mean "progress" as a parochial self-congratulatory fable, or as yet another "key to history" for elites to brandish in their skeleton hands, but progress as a great democratic work we are all of us contentiously collaborating on together.

Technoprogressives are committed to both instrumental progress and social progress at once and as a unitary (tho' probably lumpily distributed) sort of project. And they are focused, someof them fascinated even, by technological developments in particular as the fraught terrain on which this progress will be best facilitated or frustrated.

But notice, I described before a "technoprogressivism BEYOND technophilia and technophobia," not one lodged BETWEEN them. It is because it affirms progress that technoprogressivism is valuable and appealing, not because it looks for some middle ground, or whatever passes as moderation or realpolitik in any given historical moment of corporate hype or luddite panic.

Progressives do not denigrate the project to interpret the world, or to accommodate the diverse demands of actually existing people in the world, but they know, as the man said, the point is to change it.

I am as committed and pragmatic a champion of realism and reasonableness as the next guy, certainly, but it is progress that I am after first of all. Once that is established then we can talk together as peers about what progress consists of and how best to bring it about.

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