Technology, Utopia and Culture

A Central Topic

The topic of technology has been taking a central place in the thinking of our days. Its constantly increasing development in fields as important as communications, medicine, industry or even education has brought about an ample debate about the advantages and possible risks of a society which is markedly technological. It’s clear, on the one hand, that technology is bringing about enormous benefits to humanity. But, on the other hand, we can’t deny that new problems linked to this technological development are arising. Thus, defenders of this technology, who some have called technophiles, have appeared positioning themselves opposite the detractors of this development, described as technophobes¹.

The truth is that technological development is in many ways ambiguous. It has its bright and its dark sides. This makes it difficult to form an organic idea of the subject and makes quite complicated an adequate diagnosis of the growth of the present increasingly technological society. As technology has been acquiring greater presence and importance in people’s lives, the topic has been causing greater interest and concern. In recent years, above all since the middle of the 60’s, there has been a multiplication of essays and articles on the subject. The volume of material that has appeared on the subject is so great that one could almost speak of an avalanche of books and articles.

In any case, the technological revolution has arrived. And it certainly doesn’t seem to be a possibility of going back. Today, in any case, there are very few people who really believe in the enlightened fantasies of thinkers like Rousseau and his pretension of a pre-technological paradise here on earth. Rather than that, attention is directed toward a new horizon which some call a technological utopia, in recuperation of the concept coined by Thomas More, but most of all returning to Francis Bacon and his New Atlantida. Which has a certain flavor of enlightened thought and of myth of progress, except that now it is a markedly technological progress.

But neither Rousseau’s pre-technological paradise, nor the technological utopia seem to be adequate ways to approach the present technological development and its impact on the human being. Both viewpoints are at fault from excessive technocentrism and this leads to their losing course. All of this demonstrates the importance of undertaking reflection to seriously consider the technological phenomenon and its consequences in humanity. The right questions have to be asked in order to find some answers which help to make this development really a benefit for the human being and prevent it from becoming denaturalized and turning against man himself. This would be the framework in which this development could take place in harmony with the order of nature and the human being according to the divine plan, and form thus a real part in the integral development of the person.

The 19th Century and the Faustian Fear

Reflection about technology, which began to make headway in the 19th century, has very deep roots. The subject has accompanied the human being since ancient times. Aristotle already argued in his Metaphysics that the human race lives by art and reasoning (technei kai logismois)². This concept of techne —which has been translated as art, science and procedure at the same time— constitutes the foundation upon which technique and technology will be developed. And although it doesn’t correspond exactly to what we understand today to be technique and technology, it shows man’s concern for inventing procedures and instruments, producing tools which help to improve his environment, transforming nature, protecting himself from threats and organizing his life. This is to say that, in the concept of techne, what we know today as techniques and technology was already implied³. Centuries later, also Saint Thomas Aquinas would bring up the subject which he called the mechanical arts. And thus throughout the centuries technology continued appearing integrated with other reflections.

But it wouldn’t be until the 19th century that the subject of technique itself —as the whole technological phenomenon was generally known— began to be the object of special reflection. Many thinkers have coincided with this evaluation. Oswald Spengler, author of the famous essay The Decline of the West, believed, for example, that: «The problem of technique and its relation to culture and History was not considered until the 19th century.»⁴ Before, technology did not constitute an independent subject and even less a possible problem, and as such it didn’t deserve special attention. It appeared integrated to other reflections as one more aspect of reality.

The 19th century would see a change in this situation. Little by little it became a singular phenomenon, which could be isolated from the other aspects of reality. This concern can be noted, for example, in literature. Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832) reflected on this in an essay at the beginning of the 19th century. In Faust, which he finished writing shortly before his death, he expresses his concern about technology. Goethe shows a deep fear, which has been defined as Faustian in allusion to his work. Different thinkers would adopt this Faustian apprehension.

In the second half of the 19th century a type of literature appeared which would be called of “anticipation”, because of its projection into the future. Some of the writers who adventured in this area were ahead of their times with predictions that have turned out to be close to reality. Two outstanding cases were the Frenchman Jules Verne (1828-1905) and the Englishman H.G. Wells (1866-1946). This shows, through literature, a growing interest in the role and impact of technology.

The philosophic reflection of the 19th century also will begin to direct its interest to technology. In its time, a branch of philosophy oriented to technology was even thought of. In this sense, the German philosopher Ernst Kapp (1808-1896) coined the term philosophy of technique. Influenced by the thinking of Hegel and Ritter, Kapp offers a series of interesting approaches to the phenomenon of technology that open up the path to this reflection. A fact, which apparently had an influence in his philosophical thinking about technology, was his forced emigration to the United States —to Texas, where Germans had an important settlement of emigrants.

The Paradoxical 20th Century

The 20th century began with serious concern about the consequences of industrial development. Above all attention was directed towards work conditions, with the growth of automation and its cold mechanical environment. Thus, the first half of the 20th century saw reflection develop with a markedly pessimistic tone. From diverse fields voices of alarm cried out against the development that technology was reaching, and which was seen as dehumanizing⁵. The literary environment echoed this, as can be seen, for example, in the dramatic image painted by Ernst Jünger in his novel Crystal Bees⁶. But perhaps the laurels were taken by the authors of the novels of the so-called negative utopia who made technology the vehicle for new and really frightening forms of slavery. In this class we can mention: Lord of the World by R.H. Benson (1900), Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1931), 1984 by George Orwell⁷ (1948), Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1951), Limbo by Bernard Wolfe (1952), The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth (1953).

Thus, the first half of the 20th century will see a growing concern for the negative consequences of technology. Thinkers of diverse origins and different tendencies will speak out on the subject. Among the most outstanding and well-known can be mentioned: Oswald Spengler⁸, Martin Heidegger⁹, José Ortega y Gasset¹⁰, the thinkers of the Frankfurt School —Max Horkheimer¹¹, Theodor W. Adorno¹² and Herbert Marcuse¹³, who would later be joined by Jürgen Habermas¹⁴—, Lewis Mumford¹⁵, Harold Innis¹⁶. Many more could be mentioned, like Karl Jaspers, Ernst Bloch, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Jean Paul Sartre and John Dewey. The Frenchman Jacques Ellul¹⁷ and above all the Canadian Marshall McLuhan¹⁸ can be mentioned almost as a link between the first and the second stages.

From a reflection more centered in faith we should point out among the pioneers of organic reflection Friedrich Dessauer¹⁹, as well as Gabriel Marcel²⁰, but perhaps above all Romano Guardini with his markedly pessimistic theological reflections on the phenomenon of technology in his famous Letters from Lake Como²¹. Already in the decade of the 20’s some, such as Guardini, called our times the «age of technology.»²²

An important shift in thinking with respect to technology begins in the decade of the 60’s. From then reflection bolts out and leaves the path of literature, philosophy and sociology in which it had been considered until then. It could be said that at this time it takes on a more popular character and at the same time that a line of analysis that is more properly technical is divulged. This is a period in which technology begins to take an increasingly important place in society. In this way, together with those who are apprehensive and critical about technology begin to appear those who see the development of technology with enthusiasm. And, between both extremes, a vast variety of positions appear, with many shades and points of view.

The list of those who are at present dedicated to the analysis of the phenomenon of technology and its impact on today’s society is currently quite long. It grows day by day as one can see in a quick look at the libraries or the universe of Internet. Many authors are meditating on what technology is and on its influence on the human being, and on the configuration of what we could call the coming culture. Magazines like Newsweek or the New York Times Magazine have dedicated hundreds of pages to the subject. This is particularly manifest in the United States where the web-sites on technology are multiplying. We could mention, in a very incomplete list, at least the following: Georges Friedmann²³, Joseph Weizenbaum²⁴, David Bolter²⁵, Howard Rheingold²⁶, Jeremy Rifkin²⁷, Andrew Feenberg²⁸, Don Ihde²⁹, Neil Postman³⁰, Paul Virilio³¹, George Gilder³², Kevin Kelly³³, Nicholas Negroponte³⁴, Bill Gates³⁵, Michael Dertouzos³⁶, Sherry Turkle³⁷, Mark Slouka³⁸, Clifford Stoll³⁹, Paul Delany and George P. Landow⁴⁰.

Between Technophiles and Technophobes?

The points of view of those who analyze the technological phenomenon are of every kind. As we have already stated, some see the future with optimism and see more benefits than problems. Others, instead, have a critical approach with different degrees of reservations, including some with a pessimistic accent, and even rejection. They are described in different ways. Some of the more common names for the extreme positions are, as we have mentioned, technophiles and technophobes. But these are not the only descriptions. Some call the former integrated and the latter apocalyptic, according to a terminology made popular by the Italian Umberto Eco in the decade of the 60’s⁴¹. In North American circles it is common to hear the subject discussed from a dichotomous perspective, not always exact or fair because of the simplified polarization, of the techies —for their adhesion to technology— and the humies —for their defense of a type of humanism⁴².

It should be pointed out, however, that the extremes are positions that are not usually assumed totally. Specific cases reveal an inclination toward one of the extremes, with the corresponding shades. In this sense the intermediate tones are abundant. But, in contrast to the first half of the century, as the years since the decade of the 60’s have passed, a growing positive valuation of technology can be perceived, which nevertheless does not mean that the voices of criticism or alarm have disappeared also.

For some analists today’s theories about technology can be divided according to the theme of neutrality and the degree of autonomy that they are given. Andrew Feenberg proposes the following division: the instrumental theory and the substantive theory. As he himself explains, the instrumental theory «treats technology as subservient to values established in other social spheres (e.g., politics or culture)». Here technology is essentially considered as neutral, which is to say as an instrument at the service of the goals that are established for it. While the substantive theory, giving it inherent moral contents, «attributes an autonomous cultural force to technology that overrides all traditional or competing values.»⁴³ Technology, from this position, is not neutral and rather constitutes a new type of cultural system that restructures the whole society.

Both positions, nevertheless, really seem to express extremes. In both there are elements which can be rescued, because to a certain extent each contains some truth. But when they are presented in their extreme formulations or their oversimplified forms they both have to be disqualified, because taken as such they turn out to be false. The instrumental, because technology cannot be reduced to a mere instrument, much less when it is a technology that extends intelligence —not only muscles— and which is revealed also in processes which carry often highly complex contents. And the substantive, because nothing related to the human being has the level of moral autonomy or the operative independence that this perspective tries to grant to it. It should be kept in mind that technology depends on the human being —and that its purpose should always be considered—, and at the same time one must keep in mind that it has a certain degree of instrumental autonomy —autonomy that should always be subordinated to human goals. In a certain sense, then, it turns out to be somewhat instrumental and somewhat autonomous.

But the main danger in abridging reality and the approaches to the technological phenomenon is found in the risk of shifting towards technocentrism. The two positions that we have mentioned, the instrumental as much as the substantive, take the risk of conferring technology too much a crucial role in the analysis of society and culture —it’s a fact that many authors fall into this error. This is a typical characteristic of those who only see benefits in technology —those whom we have called technophiles— and who even propose —directly or indirectly— a certain technological determinism. But this vice doesn’t belong only to technophiles. It can also trap those who approach the new technologies and their effects critically, which definitely seems to be happening with not so few. As with the former, the perspective of technophobes places technology in the center of everything, giving it a determining role that seems excessive in the life and culture of human being. Both look toward a technological utopia, some to reject it and others to accelerate its arrival. In both cases, the technological utopia ends up being central, from which the entire human universe is redefined.

The central problem is not to be discovered in the propositions of the instrumental theories nor the substantive, nor is it to sway between the poles of the technophobes and the technophiles. Both pairs of extremes end up in reality being expressions of the same position: technocentrism. The controversy over one or the other not only doesn’t exhaust the issue, but it doesn’t even present it adequately. Even more, it tends to close the horizon to other possibilities of evaluating technology in serious detriment to the understanding of the technological phenomenon and the society that it is building for the future. A correct approach to the issue should reject the positions inspired in this technocentric perspective in order to place technology in a broader framework, in the human world, and especially within the goals of the human being according to the divine plan. And this framework has as a main element what has been called the cultural dimension.

But, having said this, it must be added that it is not easy to avoid technocentrism. The idea that in a global society, technology —in whatever expressions or products— becomes indispensable in order for the institutions, the companies, the markets, the schools and, even the homes, to continue existing, converts technology into a source for new and bewitching myths, and, in some cases, into new idolatries. The science fiction writer Arthur Clarke proposed that the more sophisticated a complex technological development is, the more difficult it is to distinguish it from magic. Nevertheless, technology should not be seen as a new myth, certainly not as a “new god”, and of course not as any type of magic. Technology is a product of human intelligence and as such should be valued realistically and broadly in order that it be put to the service of the human being and his integral development according to God’s Plan. And in this neither of the two extremes fit —neither that of technophiles nor that of technophobes—, because both end up putting the whole subject seriously out of focus. Fitting is the reality of truth from which the distinction between good and bad can be established according to a moral horizon much broader than that of the mere panorama of the possibilities and efficiency of technology.

Technological Utopia and the Technologist Mentality

This problem of technocentrism is not something new. Actually it began to develop hand in hand with a certain mentality which had its origins in the Renaissance and reached a clear profile in the Enlightenment. We had said that technology is as old as mankind itself, which is a way of saying that man has always produced and applied technology —from the times when he made rudimentary clothes to cover himself and used stone as a means to increase his strength—. Technology had its place and was far from constituting a central reference in the life of human being. Aristotle’s concept of techne is a general illustration of this.

Starting with techne things would continue evolving to what is today known as technique and technology. This evolution has had stages. Around the 17th century a division was produced in the concept of technique. While on the one hand it continued developing in direct relationship to the human being, on the other hand it began to generate a mentality which would put technique —and in a certain sense all the experimental sciences— as central, considering the method in which it developed as the only sure means to a knowledge of reality and in the end as the solution to all the problems of human being. This is to say, it was the beginning of what we have called technocentrism.

The phenomenon, nevertheless, would continue growing slowly. Its first manifestations appeared, as we have said, around the 17th century. Of enormous interest is the attention which it awoke in some of the Renaissance thinkers who were searching for the perfect society or what has been called utopia since the work of Thomas More —published in 1516—. But it would actually be a century after More, with the works of two late Renaissance thinkers that the reflection about the role of technique was actually introduced. These were the Englishman Roger Bacon (1561-1626) with his unfinished story New Atlantida —published in 1627—, and the Italian Tomaso Campanella (1568-1639) with his work The City of the Sun —published in 1623.

It is very interesting to see the role that some of these thinkers who have been called utopians give to technology. Many different authors have dealt with the subject. We can mention, for example, Ernst Bloch —who goes deeply into what he calls the technnical utopias. Lewis Mumford, for example, states: «The leading utopias of the time, Christianopolis, the City of the Sun, to say nothing of Bacon’s fragment or Cyrano de Bergerac’s minor works, all brood upon the possibility of utilizing the machine to make the world more perfect: the machine was the substitute for Plato’s justice, temperance, and courage, even as it was likewise for the Christian ideals of grace and redemption. The machine came forth as the new demiurge that was to create a new heaven and a new earth: at the least, as a new Moses that was to lead a barbarous humanity into the promised land.»⁴⁴

A special place should be given in the evolution of this technocentrist mentality to Francis Bacon. For many he is the first thinker who focused his attention on technology and its relation with what could be called the economic-social world. His work New Atlantida clearly stands out. It constitutes an odd proclamation of faith in technique as an instrument as much of knowledge of reality as of the transformation of nature to build an ideal society. It could even be said that for him technique is the supreme wisdom. And although it responds in a certain way to a moral and perhaps also theological-spiritual order, —the island had been miraculously evangelized through the writings of Saint Bartolome—, in practice it occupies a central place in the paradisiacal and unknown island of New Atlantida. Nothing deserves more attention than the care and development of the techniques, in which the secret of happiness is found.

Bacon imagines an island where a system of encouragement and protection of technology has been developed. According to his story, a famous and wise king had created in the past an «order or society» called the House of Salomon, dedicated to the «study of the works and creatures of God.»⁴⁵ Bacon makes an interesting description of the purpose of this House that could easily pass as an attempt to define technique: «The object of our foundation is knowledge of the causes and secret notions of things and to increase the limits of the human mind for the realization of all possible things.»⁴⁶ Order occupied a preeminent place in the life of New Atlantida’s society, with an internal hierarchy —formed apparently by christian priests.

Those who sustain that New Atlantida was ahead of its time with relation to technique are not without reason. Bacon imagines a society in which people have very advanced technical and scientific knowledge in almost all areas of human life. Some are even surprising. Thus, for example, he says: «We imitate the flight of the birds, we can sustain ourselves some degrees in the air. Boats and ships to go below the water and endure the violence of the seas, swimming belts and supports»⁴⁷ —that is they have airplanes and submarines—. They also have invented the telescope and the microscope and some gadgets which placed in the ear increase its reach, as well as some «special instruments to transfer sounds by conducts and tubes in the most singular directions and distances»⁴⁸ —perhaps a type of telephone?

But this curious anticipation of the future is not the most important aspect of Bacon’s work with relation to technique. In his New Atlantida he expounds some of the ideas for which he is considered to be a “prophet” of technological and scientific progress in the time of the Enlightenment. Bacon gives a central role to technique as the useful instrument that puts nature to the service of humanity. He presents a kind of “glorification” of technology. For this a key role was played by the House of Salomon, dedicated to the nurturing and development of technology. There is nothing more important in New Atlantida than technology, which displaces other aspects of life. For Bacon technology was above everything. The premises of the House of Salomon are presented as a synthesis of knowledge and at the same time a type of museum and cathedral of technology. There, a kind of cult of technology was practiced, with «certain hymns and services of praise and thanksgiving to God for his marvelous works.»⁴⁹ «To celebrate our ceremonies and rites —Bacon has the inhabitants of New Atlantida say— we have two very long and beautiful galleries: in one of them we place the models and samples of the most rare and excellent types of inventions; in the other we install statues of the famous inventors.»⁵⁰ The technicians have replaced all the others —humanists, educators, philosophers, theologians, saints, etc.—. The island of New Atlantida seems like a kingdom ruled by technocrats, and although references to God appear they are really divorced from their true sense and from the life of the citizens of the utopian world.

Among other things, Bacon’s thinking seems to have at its roots a reaction against the perspective of Aristotelian philosophy. The author of New Atlantida considered that this philosophy didn’t give the deserved importance to usefulness. He, as a consequence, tries to propose a type of knowledge that permits the domination of nature. From this perspective traditional science is disqualified because he thinks that science should be oriented toward domination, toward the practical and toward usefulness. For Bacon the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle should be replaced. He also judged the thinking of Saint Thomas and the other scholastics to be inadequate. In their place, for him, a universal experimental science should appear with a new type of logic.

Outstanding among Bacon’s writings is the one entitled Novum Organon Scientarum seu indicia vera de interpretatione naturae et regno hominis (1620)⁵¹. In this work, known simply as Novum Organon, he makes an attempt to present a new logic that will lead to useful knowledge and the domination of nature. The criteria of truth and good are replaced by the criterion of “usefulness”. The criterion of a transformation of everything possible remains central and whatever is not in this dynamic, or is an obstacle to it, is left behind. The logic that he proposes to support his point of view would be taken up in a new method called the scientific method. His purpose is no other than to develop a collection of rules that permit scientific knowledge to be organized for the modification of reality, through experiments which should be methodical, organized, reflexive and directed by reason. Of course the method, as it was understood and applied, excluded any other area of reality and as such it was eminently limiting. The truth is that his proposition besides being limiting at the ontological level was so complicated, and unscientific, that it was totally useless; against his own stipulations it turned out to be of no use.

Together with Bacon’s work New Atlantida, we should also mention the book by Tomaso Campanella The City of the Sun. This is another work of utopian character in which technology is placed as the supreme source of knowledge of reality and of solutions to the problems of human being, although its role is not as central or preeminent as in Bacon’s work. Technology for Campanella was, in a certain sense, the determining factor in the configuration of culture. For example, in his work the importance of the inventions of the printing press, gunpowder and the compass are stressed. In a passage in which is shown what the inhabitants of the city of the sun say, he states: «They speak also of the marvelous invention of the printing press, of gunpowder, and of the compass, things which constitute other important signals and instruments of the meeting of all of the world’s inhabitants in only one flock.»⁵² And in another fragment he says: «the discovery of the printing press and of the arquebus, and it cannot be doubted that they gave men the motive, or more exactly the occasion, to make profound changes in the laws...»⁵³ So, technology —through specific manufactured objects— would play a capital role in the configuration of human society. As in the case of Bacon, in Campanella’s work the world’s dynamics appear clearly. Technology and the manipulation of things constitute the source of the human being’s superiority. Technology is at the center of everything and conditions everything else. Something like what Karl Marx would argue centuries later with relation to what he calls structure and means of production with relation to the superstructure. Along these lines, today, and after Harold Innis, and above all Marshall McLuhan —with his homo typographicus and the global village—, Campanella would turn out to be really ahead of his times.

As Bacon and Campanella anticipated the future, so they also introduced some serious biases into the approach to technology that later would be assumed and developed by the Enlightement —with their deification of reason and science—. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) and René Descartes (1596-1650), for example, developed their thinking in obvious harmony with the ideas of these utopian representatives of the Renaissance. For this reason, it doesn’t seem so wild to consider Francis Bacon and, to a certain extent Tomaso Campanella, as the forerunners of what would later become the technological and technocentrist mentality; that is to say, the mentality which makes the role of technology so absolute that it ends up displacing other areas of knowledge and of reality, with serious detriment to the final goal of human being. This approach constitutes a methodological reductionism⁵⁴ —with as much relation to values as to practice— whose supreme rule is efficiency for efficiency’s sake without any interest in truth or good and much less for beauty. It’s a mentality which expresses itself in scientificism and which in the end is nothing more than a complete confusion of the means with the ends or, better still, the perversion of means. This mentality evolved and spread through all the work of the Enlightenment. From Enlightenment it went on to positivism and from there to the liberalisms and to the antitethical derivation which is Marxism. Today it can be found spread everywhere, as can be deduced from what we have mentioned in relation to technophobes and technophiles.

This is this mentality which is found in those who propagate the technocentrist perspectives and the promoters of what we could call today the technological utopia. Just as Bacon proposed a utopia where technology was the supreme knowledge and the center of all social life, the 20th century has seen how this old technocentrist dream has been revived. But in contrast to the times of Bacon and Campanella, this new technological utopia doesn’t have only defenders, but also serious critics who far from longing for the realization of this utopia look for a way to avoid it.

The Englishman Aldous Huxley, for example, placed at the opening of his novel in which he strongly criticized an excessively technological future, Brave New World⁵⁵, a text of Nicolás Berdiaeff’s: «The utopias appear as more attainable than it was believed in other times. And we actually find ourselves faced with a very anguishing question of a different kind: How to avoid their complete fulfillment? Utopias are attainable. Life marches toward utopias. And perhaps a new century begins; a century in which the intellectuals and the educated class will dream of the means to avoid the utopias and return to a non-utopian society, less “perfect”, freer». As has been said, Huxley is part of a group of writers of science fiction that has been called negative utopia, anti-utopia or dystopia. What worries these authors is that soon utopia —which had always been an imaginary figure, without time but above all without place— is beginning to seem possible. But not now as an ideal society, but as a threat to human being. Then utopia, which had been something “desirable”, becomes something “frightful”, “terrible”. Far from being something to be reached this utopia becomes something whose approach should be avoided.

The main problem with the new technological utopias is in the technocentrist perspective which lays at their foundations and leads then to a denaturalization of what technology is and as a consequence towards a development which ends up orienting itself towards the de-humanization of human being. These new utopias reenact in their way what Bacon proposed some centuries back.

The Cultural Dimension of Technology

All that has been said leads us to propose that all approaches to the subject of the new technologies and their influence on the human being and his culture should have as their framework the fact that technology is not the only factor in the life of people or of society. Technology appears and develops surrounded by many other factors of different kinds that don’t necessarily have a direct relation to it. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the culture of the human being must be kept in mind, the environment in which he appears and develops. Technological development is a part of culture, and as such is strongly influenced by the cultural environment in which it appears. As a part of the whole —which is culture— technology is in permanent interaction with this whole —generating an influence in both directions—.

By talking about the cultural dimension of technology we are proposing a perspective that breaks the narrow circle of unilateral views. Technology is not understood without the cultural environment in which it appears and which not only makes it possible, but also gives it a determined place —which in the present case is certainly very important. Different thinkers, like Heidegger, Spengler and Ortega y Gasset, to name the most outstanding, have dealt with this subject. In Latin America we can mention Pedro Morandé⁵⁶. Lewis Mumford, for example, in his own terms stated the following: «To understand the dominating role played by technics in modern civilization, one must explore in detail the preliminary period of ideological and social preparation. Not merely must one explain the existence of the new mechanical instruments: one must explain the culture that was ready to use them and profit by them so extensively.»⁵⁷ We must add to what Mumford states about use, the design of the technology. The cultural environment is not only important in relation to the use which is given to technology, but it also influences the way it is conceived and the purposes for which it is designed.

From this perspective we can understand better why the explanation that gives autonomy to technology as well as that which reduces it to a mere instrument which can be used like a hammer is used should both be considered incomplete. In this the extremes used to explain reality turn out to be reductive and incomplete. Technology has something of autonomous, as well as something of instrumental. But this autonomy is relative and limited by other factors that are beyond mere technology. Technology as a human creation should always be at the service of human goals.

Pope John Paul II, in a lecture where he encouraged the use of the new technologies —especially in the field of computers and communications— indicated that today «one no longer thinks or speaks of social communications as mere instruments or technologies. Rather they are now seen as part of a still unfolding culture whose full implications are as yet imperfectly understood and whose potentialities remain for the moment only partially exploited.»⁵⁸ From what the Pope says we can follow a very suggestive path: thus, discarding absolute autonomy as well as a mere instrumental perspective, we must ask ourselves about the human culture which makes technology possible and in which it is developed and used.

The problem in relation to the technological phenomenon in our time has to be sought not so much in technology per se but in the diffusion of the technologist mentality which makes technology lose its character of means in order to become the end of cultural aspirations. This is what we have called technocentrism and finally it has its origin in a perversion of the means which are transformed deceitfully into the ends. This is when culture ends up becoming subordinate to technological rationality. For this reason perhaps Ortega y Gasset is right when he proposes that one of the challenges of our time could be to «reinvent» a way to relate to technology —perhaps we should say to technological rationality—, free from the hindrances of Enlightenment and of the vices which were introduced by thinkers such as Francis Bacon —with his technological utopia and his deification of technology.

The question about technology and its influence should not, then, remain within technology itself, but should go further and deeper, and can’t be anything but an anthropological and cultural question. This is the path which must be followed to find a balanced evaluation of the technological phenomenon and its benefits and problems. Questions asked to understand the technological phenomenon and its impact on today’s society must be oriented toward the character of modern culture. As a consequence, we must keep in mind the evolution of ideas starting in the Renaissance, but above all of the Enlightenment and the mentality which was formed and finally ended up as the technologist mentality. This mentality, which has a methodological reductionism as its fundamental approach to reality, is at its base agnostic and functional. Questions asked should, finally, consider the diffusion of what has been called, in an expression that is being used commonly to describe this many shaded phenomenon, post-modernist thinking.

To make a balanced diagnosis that allows us to adequately evaluate the contribution of technology to humanity and, at the same time, call attention to the problems related to technological development that arise, we must consider the anthropological and cultural dimension of technology. From this perspective we can better understand that technology by itself «cannot disclose the meaning of existence and of human progress»⁵⁹, and also that «guiding principles cannot be inferred from simple technical efficiency, or from the usefulness accruing to some at the expense of others or, even worse, from prevailing ideologies.»⁶⁰ As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, science and technology are precious resources when they are put to the service of man and promote his integral development in benefit of all, responding to the light of faith which lights the way of the human pilgrimage. This is what it is all about, avoiding technocentrist reductionisms that fluctuate between rejection and the cult of the technological utopia and by this impede the development of technology according to the nature of human being and divine design.

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