On “The Problem of Education,” Earth in Mind, David Orr
“When pressed, however, true believers describe progress to mean not human, political, or cultural improvement but a mindless, uncontrollable technological juggernaut, erasing ecologies and cultures as it moves through history. Technological fundamentalism, like all fundamentalisms, deserves to be challenged.” (33)
Technological fundamentalism is definitely a pervasive, real thing. It’s probably most visible in the pages of a magazine like Popular Science, which calls itself a “science” magazine but actually is really about technology. The magazine’s pages are filled with gadgets and gizmos that impress or are interesting just for the gee-whiz factor, but rarely do articles discuss topics like problems with our current technologies (other than the fact that they’re not as cool as the new stuff is going to be), how to make intelligent or responsible use of our current technologies and science, what social and environmental impacts possible uses of new and current technologies we need to be aware of, or just generally acknowledge that some technologies (and the industries that produce or use them) can have negative environmental or social effects.
Popular Science magazine is an excellent distillation of the common features of technological fetishism, which looks exclusively to technology to solve problems, and which is constantly preoccupied with the dream of the eminent technological future rather than encountering real problems with technology, science, their applications right here and right now.
I haven’t read Popular Science for many years owing to some of these reasons. I am a current subscriber of Wired Magazine to which I can direct some of the same criticisms, just not as harshly. Wired has published many intelligent, thoughtful articles, but I am sometimes frustrated by their glossy magazine perspective which nearly always paints technological pioneers as big heros and technology as a cool ideal solution to problems. Blind fascination with technology is juvenile, offering escape into a not-yet-existent technological fantasy world but nothing of substance.
aaron :: Oct.08.2005 :: Inscape / Landscape class ::