Neither.
Technology is not either some suppressive and destructive phenomena which
enslaves and demolishes individuals, or a vehicle of emancipation and freedom
which directs humanity to democracy. It has nothing to do with social,
political, and economic structures. Technology surpasses sociality. It is the
extension of intelligence of human organs.
Capitalism
is always preoccupied with capturing the individual in the cage called society,
whereas slavery and feudalism were using spiritual cage for obedience of
multitudes of people.
In
the middle of capitalism, Hegel claimed that our behavior, language, and
morality depend on the relationships within a society and economic, and
political awareness come out of this web of worldly interaction. His was a
revolutionary idea, but turned out to be the worst understanding of social
formations. Many followed him. His theory was the theory of humanity at the age
of steam engines.
In
the late capitalism, Marcuse and Habermas worked on Hegel’s revolutionary but
partly false idea and turned it into criticism of rationality through accepting
that the technology as ideology. Theirs is the theory of society at the age of
electromagnetic transmission.
It was good that they (Hegel—he couldn’t, Marcuse and Habermas) did not mingle Marx into their highly ornamented but shallow idea. Because Marx never thought about technology as ideology. Although Habermas had read the passages, Marx wrote on technology upside down (please see above Habermas' "Science and Technology as Ideology" article's vignette). Let's see what Marx had said:
“Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production, in changing the way or earning their living, they change their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist.”
Marcuse contended, most probably he had not fully read Marx, relying
upon Weber’s rationality concept, that technology itself is a form of dominance
that advances particular interests and objectives and that the idea of
technical reason itself may be an ideology. He did not ask the question: Do hand-mill and steam-mill look like an
ideology in dominance? In the midst of the Vietnam War, he did not see that weapons
technology could not even dominate Vietnam.
He observed that dominance tends to become reasonable in sophisticated
capitalist societies by upholding a system that can defend itself by pointing
to the rise in productivity associated with advancements in science and
technology.
Here is his second falsehood: Science has nothing to do with technology.
Productivity is only the matter for capitalist, not the bread eating serfs.
Based on the essential difference between work (or rational activity
equated to science) and interaction (or language equated to society), Habermas
claimed that work is defined as instrumental or logical conduct that is directed
by technical specifications and knowledge (technology and science) or strategic
considerations. While interaction (society) is founded on analytical knowledge
(philosophy and religion) and develops value systems and general principles,
work is grounded in empirical knowledge and generates conditional predictions
about events. (Parentheses are mine).
Habermas
is voluminously simple minded and pragmatically social democrat, who once told
me, at the breakfast table in Dubrovnik in 1982, that in the European Union
Democracy, technology will be slaves and all people (in Europe, of course) will
be citizens just as in the Athenian Democracy. He was proven by technology to
be wrong just like his critical counterpart: Marcuse.
Had
Marcuse seen Trump and AI, he would not had written what he had wrote; where is
the rationality, where is the instrumental purpose in the USA today? At the age
of 95, Habermas have seen both, so that he is speechless.
They are both wrong. Firstly, science and technology are two very distinct activities of homo faber. Technology is the life survival kit destined in death. Science tries to go beyond death, claiming that it is the only truth. Secondly, science follows technology, so do society, politics, and economics. Read Marx!…
Long before science, there was technology and human intellect! Read Digitalism vs. Capitalism!
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