The Disadvantages of Using Technologies

Characteristics of Technology

• The famous Christian anarchist historian Jacques Ellul wrote that the basic characteristics of a technical regime are the primary clue to the problems of its use. Technology is artificial, being imposed upon nature rather than working with it. It is totally autonomous both in the sense of the values that it promotes as well as the fact that it is self-determining. Technology forms a grid of interlocking parts that turns the user into an appendage of that machine. It is totalitarian in that there is no aspect of life not touched by it.

Economic Uses of Technology

• In his book "Basic Manufacturing," Roger Timings lists many of the problems inherent in using technology for economic gain. As technology took over western economics, many older jobs were destroyed, and along with it, its necessary skills. The technological "knowledge economy" has not made up for these jobs, and the jobs it has created are not as highly paid as the older manufacturing jobs prior to automation. What economic technology has created is the need for a few highly trained specialists that have been able to replace millions of workers. This technology has forced technicians into sedentary lifestyles that have led to health problems, obesity and the world of the "cubicle." Even worse, technology has made it easier for firms to relocate overseas, leaving many of these technicians without work.

Using Technology

• Jacques Ellul sees the problems of technology almost exclusively in terms of the actual using of it. The machine creates patterns of thinking. The patterns of thinking come to mirror that of the machine--employees are seen as interchangeable parts of an economic "machine," while the employee, while she is employed, becomes an object--a function not merely of the technology she must utilize, but of the firm, the economy, and today, the globe as one giant economic mechanism. Humanity and personality are nowhere to be found. Moreover, as technology grows in speed and comprehensiveness, it becomes a massive mechanism for control and surveillance. Governments, police forces, armies, media elites, bureaucracies and mega-corporations can control movements and ideas in ways that the kings of old could never imagine.

Technology as Cause and Effect

• No technology comes without a price. The advent of the automobile was advertised as synonymous with freedom and autonomy. But it has also cost billions in accidents, roads, petroleum dependence, suburban sprawl, pollution and traffic jams. There is no technology, in other words, that does not have negative effects, often deadly ones, that come inherent with the technology itself. For every progress, there is a regress. "Labor saving" devices have led to tasks being done quicker, but this is not the same as saying people work less. Production demands are just increased as the new devices become available.