A recent World Changing post reacts to a CRN (Center for Responsible Technology) blog entry on the potential uses of nanotechnology. The World Changing essay warns against focusing on technology as the perennial silver bullet to societal ills, and is especially critical of "technophiles" who tout future technology in lieu of taking viable action today. As an example; why focus on nanotechnology to solve malaria problems when mosquito nets that are currently available can be used to help prevent this serious disease?
The point is well taken, certainly it's nice to see people coming around to articulate this, though it seems at first glance that CRN's blog is a somewhat weak rhetorical launch pad for such an argument. So we could leave it at that, but the World Changing article and its juxtapositon to the CRN article bring up some points. The World Changing article strongly distinguishes between two types of "technophiles"; "technoprogressives", and the others;
"market libertarian technophiles who like to handwave about abstract indefinite futures in which injustice will somehow evaporate so as to help justify their own ugly indifference to injustice today".
With a flourish of typing and disdainful curl of the upper lip, the author categorically divides the sage "progressive" from the ignorant "libertarian" technophiles. It's catchy and tempting but...
Budding scientists quickly learn that attaching social significance to grant proposals piques interest and justifies pleas for scarce and competitive funding. This optimism is carried to non-scientific venues, where fairly tedious, time-consuming, trial and error prone, arcane work is abstracted for public digestibility. At cocktail parties, for instance, when asked "What do you do?"; savvy scientists know that lines like "I'm working to cure cancer via nanotechnology" generate interest and nods of approval; whereas stating the unvarnished truth such as, "I toil year after year to develop dual-FRET and peptide-linked molecular beacons and magnetic nanoparticle probes for deep tissue imaging, but wait, there's more...", will cause eyes to glaze over and people to sashay away.
So before you know it, all the scientist's friends from other disciplines, the humanities, political science, and business, are talking about the weird little gadgets that their cool science friend makes and how they will surely cure cancer. They're all excited technophiles now.
Then the business friends move to corporations where the home pages claim "we're curing cancer" and two clicks away assure bleating stockholders with; "we're raking in gobs of money". Their political friends get elected and quickly realize that they can only raise taxes for stadiums--never schools or health. They lobby for market liberalization so that "everyone has access to cancer cures" and are incidentally rewarded with campaign money from their business friends for saying so. Now they're all libertarians because according to their very realistic world view, technology funding capital comes from corporations not taxes. Of course the people in humanities stay in school forever and teach upcoming generations about technology, democracy and equal opportunity.
Libertarian politics may not look pretty but there is a coarse reality to the notion that money incents progress. But "ugly indifference"? And are progressives really less idealistic then "market libertarian technophiles"? According to "technoprogressives, who really IS going to fund the magnanimous equal opportunity propositions? Sure, I absolutely agree, but if you think that 'bombs should be banned', isn't just as pie in the sky as the "abstract indefinite futures" of libertarians, I don't know what is.
Technology manages to be a fairly neutral investment vehicle, so perhaps progressive and libertarian "technophiles" both turn a blind eye to politics. Perhaps they listen too literally to innocent 'cocktail party" optimism like CRN's post. Perhaps naivete collectively tricks us all into denial and social inertia, tricks us into throwing all our bets at technology so we don't have to face the odious task of negotiating with those we consider imperialists, facists, covetous or greedy humans, pirates and terrorists. Perhaps it's a evil evolutionary trick so that we selfishly focus on our own families and pensions.
Scientists (who generally don't refer to themselves as technophiles) aren't always in control of the societal outcome of their work. Perhaps technophiles should think about politics. But if so, then maybe all progressives who tout equality for the 80% of the worlds poorest, should all live in a populous, oppressed countries, rile up revolutions, then witness the destruction before "equal access" is wrested from autocrats. Perhaps Adam Smith reveling market optimists should labor day in and day out at the very bottom rungs of a corporation for twenty years or so to figure out just how much "freedom" flourishes there, then not be able to retire because they have no social security or their pension got wrested away in a fit of corporate bankruptcy debt restructuring.
Ultimately science is as political as anything else, but we all need to know science in a realistic way and engage in technology discussions that forward science and encourage understanding and participation. Perhaps we need to reassess our habit of encapsulating science to stand up to short, entertainment seeking attention spans. Maybe not. Regardless, we need science understanding on juries to vouch for DNA results, on school boards to vouch for evolution, and on presidential advisory panels to assess embryonic stem cell culture. I think it's unlikely that we could check first to make sure that "progress" appeals to our political sensibilities before participating.
Above all we need technophiles and scientists from all political persuasions who tolerate both the people that lean towards free market optimism and those who lean towards social welfare optimism and are willing to listen to the reasoning (as it clears the cacaphonic din) of each.
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