The Whale and the Reactor

PREFACE THE MAP OF the world shows no country called Technopolis, yet in many ways we are already its citizens. Ifone observes how thoroughly our lives are shaped by interconnected systems of modern technology, how strongly we feel their influence, respect their authority and participate in their workings, one begins to understand that, like it or not, we have become members of a new order in human history. To an ever-increasing extent, this order of things transcends national boundaries to create roles and relationships grounded in vast, complex instrumen-talities of industrial production, electronic communications, transportation, agribusiness, medicine, and warfare. Observing the structures and processes of these vast systems, one begins to comprehend a distinctively modern form of power, the foundations of a technopolitan culture. The significance of this state of affairs is by no means confined to its material success. When we use terms like "output," "feedback," "interface," and "networking" to express the transactions of everyday life, we reveal how thoroughly artificial things now shape our sense of human being. As we compare our own minds to the operations of a computer, we acknowledge that an understanding of technical devices has somehow merged with the most intimate levels of self-understanding. Seldom, however, are such matters the subject of critical reflection. For most people it is enough to know how technical systems are produced, how they are run, how they are best used, and how they contribute to that vast aggregate of blessings: economic growth. My aim here is to go further, exploring the meaning of tech-IX Preface nology for the way we live. What appear to be nothing more than useful instruments are, from another point of view, enduring frameworks of social and political action. How can one look beyond the obvious facts of instrumentality to study the politics of technical objects? Which theoretical perspectives are most helpful in that attempt? In the three chapters of Part I, questions of that kind are examined and some initial steps taken toward developing a political philosophy of technology. A number of modern social movements have chosen one technology or another as a focus of their hopes or fears. In Part II some of these movements are explored, noting the special opportunities and pitfalls that appear when technology is placed center stage. Appropriate technology, a form of radicalism characteristic of the 1970s, tried to reform society by suggesting we change our tools and …