Technophobia

In “Technophobia” the role of technology as viewed by conservative thinkers is dissected and analyzed. The text says that conservatives use technology in film to portray the negative effects of what would happen if technology was allowed to run rampant in society, and that they do this in order to portray the idea of nature and natural forms of society in a positive light. When in fact those very forms of society are in themselves artificial, for instance the text states that in the film Logan’s run patriarchy and the natural deferment of females to males is portrayed to be a natural effect inherent in the human condition that is unfettered by technology, and that a society of equality is an artificial institution imposed by technology. In fact the opposite is true. In a state unfettered by technology of any kind survival becomes the predominant concern. Without the labor saving device and more efficient methods of production developed through technology supplies can only produced on a one to one basis. Each person essentially produces enough food to feed themselves. What excess there is has to be stored against emergencies and to feed children who are too young to help at all. Because of this each individual is extremely important to the society and equality is the norm even between the genders, since every member has an important role to play in the survival of the whole. It is only with the technological developments of agriculture and manufacturing processes that the surpluses needed for more advanced forms of society can be produced. When one person can produce enough food to feed ten then the dependence on that one person is greatly reduced. Even if they rebel they can be replaced. So a ruling class can form and members of society can be treated differently. This however escapes the view of conservatives or is glossed over by them in part because society hasn’t been on the level of where no technology is present and everyone is vital to society’s survival for a very long time, but also because the goal of conservatives is not to promote the destruction of technology. Technology is in fact key to the conservative economic practices, as it states in the article. The threat of technology is an artificial threat generated by conservatives. The reason is that to make one object which is inherently neutral or even has negative connotations appear good, another threat has to appear that is much worse and makes the first option appear good in comparison. The best method is when there is a natural threat, but in the absence of a real one, humans are relatively easily led into believing that a fake one is real. In fact the very values that are portrayed as be evil and heartless about technology, the way no one has individual freedom or thinks for themselves, are the values in today’s society which allow people to manipulate the media in order to lead the public into believing whatever they want. Although the stark uniformity and collective conformity of humanity is portrayed as the main evil of technology, if anything is the natural way of humans it is. In the absence of a prompt that makes them think for themselves, most humans are more than willing to blindly follow the majority. Even people who rebel against the mainstream usually end up forming their own groups and blindly following that. A society of true individuality where everyone thinks for themselves at all times and is completely unique is probably the most aberrant and artificial society there is which isn’t to say it is bad. In fact a society like that would probably be highly beneficial. The problem is that the continued use of natural to label good concepts, and artificial to label bad concepts has had major effects on the way people view those terms. In reality the terms natural and artificial are themselves neutral terms. Just as technology is neutral and can be bad or good depending on the context, so too does the effect of those terms depend on the context. Most of the best poisons in the world are completely natural, but that doesn’t make them good, and prosthetic hearts are artificial, but they have saved lives.