This week we dug deep into Arnold Pacey’s “Technology: Patience and Culture.” One of the main arguments is that technology is “amoral.” By that, the author meant that technology is neither good forbad. I myself believe that technology is initially designed for a specific purpose and those designs vary depending on the designer. I believe that some designers do design pieces of technology for good and some for bad but technology in its purest stage and by purest stage I mean before the designer or engineer makes plans or lays hands on the materials.
I will defend my argument by first using Facebook. Social media in general serves as a platform for people to “update their status,” connect with others, and selectively share moments of your life. That is facebook in its purest state. Initially, it was designed for what seemed to be a positive purpose but today we know for certain that social media has just as many positive impacts as negative consequences, maybe even more. From “catfishing,” lurking to stalking Facebook’s initial good intent is instantly turned bad.
So if all of this we true, my argument to Pacey would be is technology truly amoral if the technology can be easily manipulated to be “bad.” Who is to blame for technology’s oh so bad morals? Does the fault lie with the designer or the user? How can technology truly be amoral if there are bad parts of technology? So does my computer really do have bad morals or do I? That statement in and of itself poses a critical question because technology is not a human. It does only what I tell it to do. So if I am controlling the computer is it bad because of me or is it bad because it has bad capabilities. Help!
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ReplyDeleteI absolutely think that technology is only good, evil, or some other moral status only when a human uses it. Even the designer, regardless of their intentions, is not the the agent performing whatever action the technology enables one to perform. As morality only exists in the human realm, morality within the technological world can only exist through the medium of a human. So in my opinion, technology by itself is amoral and technology being used by a human is not. I suppose that means yes and no, but a complex question deserves a complex answer sometimes.
ReplyDelete"I myself believe that technology is initially designed for a specific purpose and those designs vary depending on the designer."
ReplyDelete^^ I like this.
But I also understand the complexity of your question: I think some things like computers may be arguably amoral. There are bad capabilities that were created by bad humans; dark websites i.e. child pornography, ability to hire hit men...I don't think that makes the computer immoral because the original intent was to research, store data, etc - a fairly neutral, or even beneficial capability. Like we mentioned earlier in the semester - machine guns comes to mind - some technology is immoral. If it is specifically designed to kill humans, I cannot convince myself that it is amoral.
I like your post. I agree with you, per usual ;]