It is an assumption in some
quarters that one must either be fully supportive or completely condemnatory of
technology, with very little room left for the middle ground. One either hears
the incessant songs of individuals and corporations lauding technology in a
quasi-messianic form, or one hears the equally incessant songs of those who
condemn technology as demonic. Why must we only deal with absolutes and
extremes? Is there room for a critique that falls between condemnation and
celebration?
My motivation for writing this piece
comes from the video Look Up, and thus will focus on social media.
Now this is, ultimately, a
harmless triviality (we shan’t dwell on the obvious irony of a video that
condemns social media out-of-hand becoming widely watched due to that very
technology), but it is emblematic of a deeper and far more worrying trend: it
often seems that the only people willing to engage in critiques of technology
and modernity are fools or, perhaps worse, outright reactionaries.
*
‘All distances in time and space
are shrinking. Places that a person previously reached after weeks and months
on the road are now reached by airplane overnight. What a person previously
received news of only after years, if at all, is now experienced hourly over
the radio in no time. The germination and flourishing of plants that remained
concealed through the seasons, film now exhibits in a single minute. Film shows
the distant cities of the most ancient civilisations as if they stood as this
very moment amidst today’s street traffic.’ –Martin Heidegger
We might
add to this: ‘And now information technology allows for people with whom we
would never speak ready access to our lives, to retain connections that would
be otherwise sundered, and to engage with and experience cultures on the far
side of the world.’
At a first
glance, the above might seem to be an unambiguous praise of the miracles of
technology, but we must not let ourselves be deceived: Heidegger’s relationship
with technology is most certainly not
one of ready praise, it is one of suspicion…but not outright hostility either.
In his own words: ‘Technology is not
demonic, but its essence is mysterious.’ [own emphasis] The spirit of this
expression may, perhaps, be expounded as follows: we are as mistaken in
assuming that technology is out-right evil as we are that it will save the
world. There are, of course, subtleties to this statement that are lost by my
literalising paraphrase (to borrow an expression from Graham Harman), and I
advise the reader to find a copy of Heidegger’s essay The Question Concerning Technology to appreciate what is meant by
both ‘technology’ and ‘essence,’ but for our immediate purposes, we can read
the above loosely.
*
Before we
continue with the more abstract points, let us first discuss the video itself.
Questions of its quality aside (personally, I found it laughably trite and
obvious), what are the main points to extract here? That social media
technology has forced us apart under the guise of bringing us together, that we
have lost the simple relationship of the face-to-face and the spontaneity of
meeting new people. Now, as is often the case, there is partial truth to all
these points (there’s partial truth to most points).
We should
not disguise the problems that social media (or any form of technology)
creates, this much is obvious. But, neither must we try and hide from the benefits
it provides. I will here direct the reader to this excellent article for a
similar discussion of ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ of modernity.
Of course,
social media now means that instead of going out and speaking with one’s
friends it is now an option to simply send them a Facebook message. It is also
an option to use Facebook to arrange to meet them face-to-face. Both of these
options are always available to us.
Facebook hasn’t killed personal relationships, though I would not say that it
has necessarily enhanced them either. Rather, it has given us access to new forms of relationships which were
previously impossible. I can, do, and hope to continue to maintain
relationships with people I care about using social media. I have had
friendships begin thanks to this new form of technology. You might respond:
‘Well, you could always write letters to your friends, or phone them, if you
want to continue these relationships afar!’
It is, of course, not a case of saying that all the
‘net has done is allow for a more efficient form of communication than the post,
as no form of technology is ‘neutral’ in that way. But the fact of the matter is,
as put very well in the article mentioned above, thanks to social media
relationships that would have been impossible
beforehand are now readily available to be explored. No, having a friend you’ve
never met in person, who you know from a forum or a Facebook group, is not the same
thing as having a pen-pal you’ve never met, but
that is not to say that it is therefore of less worth. It is of different worth, of different value.
The real
problem, and this is what the video is touching on but fails to properly engage
with (drowning its point in sentiment and bad poetry), is that we might lose
forms of relationship that we had previously, forms of relationship that we
ought to protect. The danger that technology poses for Heidegger, and I am
inclined to agree with him here, is that the mind-set that technology (here
understood to include also science- again, I recommend you read his essay on
the subject) conceals from us other potential ways of revealing the world and
other people. It shuts off old forms of relationship even as it opens the way
to new ones.
We must,
however, remember that Heidegger tells us that the essence of technology is not
demonic but mysterious. The last
words on what technology means for us
are still yet to be uttered.
And a viral
video on YouTube most certainly won’t help us venture closer to them.
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