Kelly Parker, PhD – Solution

Video Transcript:

I want to throw out a couple of, hopefully, helpful vocabulary words or terminological distinctions that come out of the philosophy of technology.  Because when we’re talking about sustainability, when we’re talking about energy use, we’re talking about technology and our use of it.  There are a couple of ways that technology typically enters into a discussion.  One is as a kind of determinism—technological determinism.  And this is a view that says, look, we now are able, through our various scientific discoveries and manufacturing innovations, we’re able to do something new, therefore, we should do it.  We are to genetically modify organisms that have been a part of human culture for centuries, and even millennia.  Therefore, we should do it.  It must be beneficial.  This is obviously not necessarily true, but there tends to be a bias towards thinking that that should is binding on us.  That’s technological determinism.

Another version of technological determinism is, oh boy, now that we have the ability to do something, we can’t avoid doing it.  If we don’t do it, someone else will.  So people who have reservations about some particular technology, they say, well, I guess that’s just inevitable.  It’s bound to happen.  That’s maybe the pessimistic version of technological determinism.

There’s another attitude toward technology that comes up very often in discussions of this sort, and that’s technological optimism that almost borders on religious faith.  Very often when a problem is raised, what will we do with the spent nuclear fuel if we go with a very intensive nuclear energy program?  What will we do with that?  The answer comes back, well, we’ll store it safely until we have an answer to that problem.  Technology hasn’t yet been developed, but it will be.  Or, suppose we’re facing, you know, real concerns about human caused climate change.  How will we avert this in time?  Well, some would say, let’s not worry about it.  We’ve always come up with solutions to problems just in time.  Human creativity is inexhaustible and we will come up with a solution.  That’s technological optimism.  It’s no more well founded in any given case than is the opposite attitude of technological pessimism.  Right?  We’ve got to take this on a case by case basis and ask realistically, is there evidence?  Is there reason to believe that we’ll come up with these miraculous solutions in the future?  If there’s not, it’s blind faith.  If there is, then we can plan and allocate resources so as to bring that about.