Does Technology Help Us To Live More Rewarding And Meaningful Lives?

Does Technology Help Us To Live More Rewarding And Meaningful Lives?

“Technology might be described as a further step in applied science by means of the improvement of instruments”{4}. Technology was developed initially to conquer/subdue the environment (non-human nature) as a means of allowing man to live a more comfortable life. Technological development was driven by the Protestant liberal ethic of the eighteenth century Europeans who utilized their new scientific knowledge to develop instruments to subdue non-human nature. Liberalism at that time meant the freedom and right of man to determine his own future without any predetermined limitations on man’s nature and capacity rooted in the traditional conception of values and the notion of a higher purpose of man.

In the modern period when liberalism became the focus, man’s essence became his freedom thereby removing these higher and external purposes to man’s life. Thus Protestant liberalism became identified with progressivism and the tool through which nature was conquered was technology. However as man progressed, technology was developed more and more to conquer human nature thereby transforming the concept of progress while establishing a new concept of morality based on the productive efficiency of technology rather than the traditional concept rooted in man’s innate disposition to the law of nature.

Undoubtedly technology has allowed man to live an easier life but it also has negative effects. Among the negative effects are the erosion of the traditional notion of theological good order in society, the depletion of natural resources by the pillage of the earth, and the transformation of man himself in relation to technology. In other words, as technology improves, man has become more enslaved. George Grant notes for instance that technology “has become an end in itself and as such is enslaving us” {7}.

Humans have become enslaved by technology as they become captivated with their own mechanical expertise, their performances and actions, their technical devices and processes. The artifacts of technology serve not only as productive tools but also as toys. Technology becomes the direct means by which humans entertain themselves. As a result they tend to control us, for our unconscious identification with them invest these objects with our person. This identification becomes a f...

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... Morton E. Winston and Ralph D. Edelbach, Society, Ethics and Technology (Canada, Wadsworth/Thomson learning, 2nd edition), P149- 159.

{3} Larry A. Hickman, Technology as Human Affair (McGraw-Hill Publishing Company)

{4} Carl Mitcham and Robert Mackey, “Philosophy and Technology”, Readings in philosophical problems of technology, (New York: The Free Press, 1972: 1 – 30), p10

{5} Mark Sag off, Genetic and the Concept of the Natural: quoted in Morton E. Winston and Ralph D. Edelbach, Society, Ethics and Technology (Canada, Wadsworth/Thomson learning, 2nd edition), P287- 296

{6} George Grant, “ The Mind of Men in the Atomic Age”, in Canadian Political Thought, H. D. Forbes, ed. (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1985: 284-289), p. 286.

{7} Kevin L. Kliesen and Frank A. Schmid The church and economic growth,

www.stlouisfed.org/publications/re/2004/c/pages/fear_of_hell.html

Kevin L. Kliesen is an economist and Frank A. Schmid is a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Thomas A. Pollmann provided research assistance.

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McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada

Lament for a Nation, George Grant

Technology and Empire, George grant