The All-Consuming Ideology of Technology
Technology today pervades every aspect of our lives, not as a neutral tool but as a force loaded with its own aims and ideology. The face of one demented man seems to serve as a reminder of this predicament, a face that seems to lurk and hover around the nebulous corners of the internet, occasionally spilling over the mainstream. That face is of the one terrorist extraordinaire Ted Kaczynski, a brilliant and prodigious talent who turned into one of the most controversial figures of the 21st century, because of his violent anti-technological stance.
Regardless of his debatable methods, the fact of his recurring figure speaks to the times we are living in. It has been an internet trend in the last few years that the introduction of any kind of new dystopian technology spawns’ memes with the bleak headline along with images of the disheveled Kaczynski, its latest instance being the news that Russian company StartRocket wants to display enormous billboard-style advertisements in the night sky, a truly horrifying prospect. Kaczynski refuses to go because his warnings resonate with us, we are increasingly aware of the fact that technology is irreversible, that it makes huge invasive strides into our lives every day.
Encroaching Technology
There is something really pernicious about this encroaching nature of technology, from tech that we keep beside us every second of the day to soon making way into our bodies with the introduction of technology like Neuralink, it has already become an unstoppable force. It is strange yet not surprising to think that even a decade ago there were significant aspects of our lives which were undocumented, unseen, locked away from the prying eyes of screens, only reserved for the interiority of your mind and a few friends.
This is a very difficult scenario for us to conceptualize now, technology is everywhere now, even if it is not, you can be very assured that someone is working very hard right now to bring screens into this ‘primitive’ place. Public/Private distinctions are quickly being dissipated; and you would do well to act like you are being surveyed and studied throughout the day, because you definitely are. We are all aware of this and how unfree we are, we feel it in our hearts.
The Illusion of Freedom in a Technological World
Autonomy is a pipe dream, even thinking about it requires you to think in terms of the rules set for you by the system. Kaczynski’s incendiary polemic Industrial Society and Its Future talks about how even our ‘escape’ from the system is designed by the system. Say you want to go down an untrodden path in the city, experience ‘real danger’, you will most likely be directed to a sanitized and safe way to exercise this impulse for freedom. There will be pathways designed for you to have the perfect ‘risky’ experience without the element of any real danger. There are perfectly safe and prepackaged ways to rebel against the system, designed for your convenience, by the system. This is probably the most sinister aspect of the technological system, as highlighted by Kaczynski, to even articulate your unfreedom you need to speak in the language designed for you.
Articulating This Unfreedom
There are some who feel this unfreedom with an explicit zeal and most who cannot articulate their restlessness because technology masks your unfreedom with the illusion of choice. What kind of ice-cream do you want? There’s possibly an endless number of flavours that you can avail now, these naïve choices make us feel like we are free to choose, not understanding that we are forced to make a choice.
Try avoiding food that is processed altogether and see how many obstacles you face; it is much more convenient to buy whatever is at the store. The point is that it is becoming increasingly implausible to live ‘off the grid’, without being completely dependent on systems that the technological system has designed for us. We are absolutely at the mercy of this vast interconnected system whose nature is to only get bigger. Choice is merely an illusion, the Overton window of what you can choose from is carefully curated to minimize any real disruption.
Technology as a Catalyst for Dissatisfaction and Consumerism
Technology, thus, is not something that is ‘neutral’, it is not ‘just a tool’ like some people would have us imagine. It comes with its own fundamental presuppositions and intentions, for instance, its desire to encroach on our lives and hence control it with each developing technology. Take the example of Wi-Fi, no one needed it until it was invented and accepted by the general public.
Once we got used to it, it was then impossible for us to function without it. This is the nature of technology; it cannot help but become an indispensable part of your life because of the fact that we literally become used to its powers and come to expect it as the new normal, once the new technology gets integrated into social life it becomes necessary to obtain it to ‘keep up’ with your peers. Look at what AI is doing to people right now; people are flocking to it to not get ‘left behind’.
With each invention it seeks more of your attention, more of your personal space, more of your screen time. With the increasing complexity and power of technology, regulations and surveillance are inevitable, no government will allow unchecked unregulated power in the hands of a citizen. Being controlled is the price we have to pay for our increasing technological toolkit, it is an inevitable outcome.
Dissatisfaction as a Hook
Technology isn’t neutral. It comes hand in hand with an ideology that legitimizes it, which is the sickness that is consumerism: the belief that societal and personal progress can only come through the accumulation of material goods and technology. We have the whole media complex telling us why buying this certain product is absolutely essential to compete and fit in with a society that already uses this product. Consume otherwise you will be left behind. The job of technology is making us feel like we are ‘progressing’ and the job of consumerism is making us see that this progress has no end, to keep us perpetually dissatisfied.
It is in the interest of this rapidly encroaching system to keep us shallow and braindead, and to create a sense of identity with what we consume, so that we keep coming back for more. The dissatisfaction, hence, is an essential feature of technological society, not a bug.
They make for a sinister duo because Technology legitimizes consumerism with its tangible magnificent powers. Look at how much more comfortable your life will be, how much easier, how much more pleasurable — the absolute strength of technology is that the way they lure us is true. It does make life more pleasurable and comfortable and what have you, but what we must remember is that man is not meant for pleasure and comfort, and if we are not given something that is higher than our base instincts, we become Dostoevsky’s Underground man, a resentful and bored and nihilistic creature.
A False Neutrality
Herbert Marcuse proposes in his book One Dimensional Man that traditional notions of technology being ‘neutral’ have to be dispelled. The evidence for this thesis, he states, are the totalitarian features of contemporary society. To him, technology cannot be isolated from the use to which it is put, since the uses to which it is are already integrated in the concepts and the techniques used to build that technology. For example, CCTV technology cannot be isolated from the use to which it is put, which is surveillance, since surveillance was a core component in conceptualizing such a technology.
Herbert Marcuse, widely renowned for being part of the ‘Frankfurt School’For Marcuse, technological apparatus cannot be seen simply as a tool, since it fundamentally alters human life. This apparatus comes with a priori assumptions that pre-determine how society will be structured. In other words, even before a product or technology has been unleashed onto the masses, the very choice to build the technology comes with a certain logic, to be imposed on the public.
Hidden Ideologies
This technological apparatus obliterates the opposition between private and public existence and between individual and social needs. We see how technology rapidly encroaches into human existence, instituting new, effective and more pleasant forms of social control. The very specific ideologies that technology imposes on us can thus be called – ideas of technological rationality, productivity and efficiency. These ideas start governing the public and the system. This, Marcuse argues, leads to the reduction of alternative modes of thinking and completely erases contemplation and critical modes of thinking. We start accepting ‘rationality’ and ‘productivity’ as the only possible assumptions in contemporary society. He writes –
“We live and die rationally and productively. We know that destruction is the price of progress as death is the price of life, that renunciation and toil are prerequisites for gratification and joy, that business must go on, and that the alternatives are utopian. This ideology belongs to the established societal apparatus; it is a requisite for its continuous functioning and part of its rationality”
Is Technology Inherently Bad
Heidegger is not against technology itself. He describes the Greek process of techne as a form of unfolding or revealing, through which raw materials are brought forth into something else. For him, technology is fundamental to human civilization. The problem arises specifically with modern industrial technology, which is fundamentally different from earlier forms of technology. It uses physics and exact science as its basis, and its mode is a challenging-forth towards all resources. It reveals not a kind of truth, but a form of enforcement according to its axioms of pure productivity and efficiency. All resources have to be cut off from their original context and extracted, without thought given to the environmental and human costs. It is precisely here that its destructive potential lies.
Martin Heidegger, wrote the essay ‘On the Question Concerning Technology’ where he highlights the essence of modern technology. True Freedom Beyond Technological Boundaries
What is needed is a complete reimagining of what authentic freedom entails, freedom is not when an individual gets to choose to indulge in his primal instincts. Kant asks us to imagine a person who has an impulse of thirst and is thus prompted into drinking water, is that a free act? Or is this person simply following the commands of his body? Likewise, a truly free act can only be free if the person, despite not really wanting to commit to an act, does it anyway because of his commitment to higher principles, an act of defiance against his base instincts. Only then can we see through the faux choices that technology provides us with, and see that it is asking us to choose the kind of prison we would like to be trapped in.
