Quotes from Ch. 8: The Critical Theory of Technology

Such moral reformism has the advantage of assuming the self-evidences of the age. The formal mediations introduced by capitalism are not challenged, but their effects are compensated. (166)

[Marx and Weber's] theories emphasize the self-expanding character of formal mediation and expose the conflict between the dynamic of rationalization inherent in the system and substantive correctives. Since these correctives are by nature formally irrational, they create social tensions likely to be resolved at a later stage through the sacrifice of "ideals" for practical efficiency. (166)

We do not normally think of formal systems as essentially implicated in their own applications. Rather, the repressive employment of such systems appears to proceed from the subject who makes a bad use of them just as one might pick up a rock and throw it at a passerby. (169)

• How do we get around the subject's seemingly inherent desire for domination?

Formal universals decontextualize their objects in both time and space, evacuating their "content" and abstracting from their developmental dynamics. Instead of transcending the given toward its essential potentialities, this type of universality classifies or quantifies objects in terms of the function they can be made to serve in an instrumental system imposed on them from without. (169)

The decontextualizing practice of formal abstraction transforms its objects into mere means, an operation that prejudices their status as much as any valuative choice. (170)

This is why formal systems are intrinsically available as a power base. In cutting the essential connections between objects and their contexts, formal abstraction ignores an important dimension of reality, the inner tensions that open possibilities of progressive development. Instead, objects are conceptualized as fixed and frozen, unchanging in themselves but available for manipulation from above. (170)

Not political power but scientists' own evolving categories inspire new types of questions and new theories, generated spontaneously in the course of research by scientists themselves. (173)

The point is not that science is purer than technology, but that the holistic criteria of change relevant to the critique of technology may not apply to science, or not in the same way. (175)

Marcuse does not propose a conversation with nature but argues for a technology developed and applied with understanding of the inherent potentialities of its medium, the raw materials and context it presupposes. Such an approach would bear a certain resemblance to aesthetic practice, and would promise a new type of technology that does not conquer nature, but reconciles human beings with the natural environment in which they live. (177)

However, there is another less commonplace sense in which bias can be attributed to technology. This more subtle form of bias consists in applying the same standard to individuals who cannot be compared or under conditions that favor some at the expense of others. This type of bias is often difficult to identify because the application of a single standard gives the appearance of fairness. In this case neutrality is not the opposite of bias but its essential precondition. (180)

• But in technological terms, this bias is not that of the technology but of the designers of said technology.

When applied to the organization of labor, these four attributes of technology yield an alienated system. The hegemony of capital does not rest on a particular technique of social control, but more fundamentally on the technical reconstruction of the entire field of social relations within which it operates. (188)

The decontextualized individuals and institutions that emerge from this fragmented practice can only be organized by agents who dominate them from above. Thus the decontextualization of labor opens the space of operational autonomy occupied by modern hegemonics. (188)

A socialist technical code would be oriented toward the reintegration of the secondary qualities and contexts of both the subjects and objects of capitalistic technique. [. . .] This can be accomplished by multiplying the technical systems that are brought to bear on design to take into account more and more of the essential features of the object of technology, the needs of the operators, and the requirements of the environment. (191)

The point is not that capitalism (or its communist imitators) are incapable of gradually solving many of their current problems through reactive crisis avoidance. But the need for a general overhaul of technology is ever more apparent, and that overhaul is incompatible with the continued existence of a system of control from above based on social fragmentation. (191)

Because they do not participate in the original networks of design choice, workers' interests can only be incorporated later through a posteriori regulations that sometimes appear to conflict with the direction of technical progress. But workers are not so much opposed to the advance of technology as they are to a system in which they are the objects rather than the subjects of progress. (191)

Some environmentalists argue that the problems caused by modern technology can only be solved by returning to more primitive conditions. This position belongs to a long tradition of antitechnological critique that denounces the alienation of modern society from nature. (195)

The critical concept of totality aids in identifying the contingency of the existing technological system, the points at which it can be invested with new values and bent to new purposes. Those points are to be found where the fragmentation of the established system maintains an alienated power. (196)

We take the reification of technology for granted today, but the present system is completely artificial. Never before have human beings organized their practice in fragments and left the integration of the bits and pieces to chance. (196)

What is required, rather, is a return on the rational basis to the recognition of the natural and human constraints on technical development. (197)

We need only gain insight into the form of the process of mediation. As the structure of a new social practice, this mediating activity opens infinite possibilities, as opposed to foreclosing the future in some preconceived utopia. Freedom lies in this lack of determinancy. (198)