“We get the feeling of darkness, like a man-made eclipse, and we sit in the dimness,” said Dr. Ursula Franklin, who lectured this past Thursday on the impact of technology on our society.
We use many different kinds of technology in our everyday lives: how do we make the best use of it? Franklin, professor emeritus of materials engineering and a senior fellow at Massey College, provided ways to think about this question.
She discussed how technology was used during the Industrial Revolution and how it is used today. She explains that we need to “think about what was done and how it was done.”
During the Industrial Revolution, different people did different tasks; no single person needed to know how to do everything because there were divisions of labour. With specifications came management by those who were in charge. The increase in production precipitated social inventions for control and planning.
Franklin explains that the division of labour spread quickly into political and social activities. We now live in a world where there are “prescriptions for everything.” With these prescriptions came “the necessity to comply, which is how the worker earns their living, and thus conformity becomes safety,” Franklin said.
She distinguished between mechanisms and organisms with reference to eighteenth century German philosopher Emanuel Kant. “Cars are assembled and horses are made,” she explains. “Fancy mechanisms make money for some,” she said, but added that it is important not to forget about the organisms. “We don’t take into account [the presence of other organisms on our planet] and there has been excessive attention paid to prescriptive technology as the way of doing things.”
She explains that because we don’t know much about “the organism,” its dynamics are not taken into account. And so “we get the feeling of darkness and we sit in dimness” she said.
So what can we do? We need to think about and discuss how appropriate our social models are and not just think about their prescriptions. We need to “look at what prescriptions do and ask ourselves if they do what they say.”
We must think with clarity, and not blame, but look at evidence. Franklin emphasizes the fact that we know more about mechanisms than we do about organisms. It is important that we “rebalance our own intellectual pursuit,” she said. Most importantly, she said, we need non-violence, because war is the most senseless use of technology.
