The Techno-Human Condition (review)

This book is rather unusual in that it clearly challenges the very foundation of the way we currently attempt to solve major world problems. It explains why climate change fixes are not working, why the war in Afghanistan is not being won as originally expected and why many other similarly perplexing problems remain unsolved. "We need to substitute 'explore with humility' for 'attack with rigidity'" (p. 105). The book has a specific emphasis on technology and our human relationship to all aspects of this technology.

The Techno-Human Condition will infuriate some, and be dismissed out of hand by a few, but will unsettle almost all readers. The reason is that while Allenby and Sarewitz's analysis of current problem solving is a bitter pill to swallow, there is an underlying understanding that their approach is not only correct but also essential to embrace.

[T]he world we are making through our own choices and inventions is a world that neutralizes and even mocks our existing commitments to rationality, comprehension, and a meaningful link between action and consequence. Either we accept that we are brutes living way beyond our means . . . or we search for a different set of links to connect our highest ideals to the reality we keep constructing

(p. 65).

The book is suited to all levels of readership and is a fast-paced easy read. I couldn't put it down. It is the result of a grant from the Templeton Foundation, an organization that makes possible research of the kind undertaken by these two authors. Without this foundation, and its charter to fund research into answering the big questions, much important scholarship simply would not happen.

There are extensive chapter notes (for reference and further research), a bibliography and an index. Eight chapters and a fascinating epilogue precede these.

Allenby and Sarewitz use the phenomenon (or movement) known as Transhumanism as a kind of datum to refer to in their widespread discussion of technology and the human condition. Transhumanism advocates the augmentation, enhancement and push towards immortality of all humans. The authors approach what they see as the ignorance, naivety and in some ways arrogance of the transhumanists by separating technology/human interaction into three levels.

I found this classification system most edifying. Level 1 is the base technology (a jet aircraft for example). Level II is the infrastructure that attempts to run the Level I technology (flight schedules, air traffic controllers and so on). Level III is how the two previous levels can react at a global level (the rapid spread of disease, carried quickly to many distant countries almost instantaneously). Allenby and Sarewitz argue, in fact it is their main thesis, that most problems arise when we confuse the different levels of technology, especially when we try to solve a Level III problem at Level 1 (which, they insist, we do all the time).

I have one minor, though not trivial, criticism of Allenby and Sarewitz's approach. Even though they vigorously analyze and attack the Enlightenment way of understanding the world, the same Enlightenment reasoning methodology underpins their approach. To be sure, they discuss religions here and there, but they do not acknowledge the "way of knowing" we could term spiritual. Many Eastern religions, Australian Aboriginal cosmology and various other tribal systems have totally different ways of knowing the world than the Western way and, consequently, different ways of solving the global conditions we children of the Enlightenment have created. These deserve serious consideration in any approach that suggests ways to deal with major Earth problems. I sense the authors perhaps have an empathy with such spiritual approaches, but it is neither articulated nor acknowledged. After all, John Templeton's vision was "the possibility of acquiring 'new spiritual information' from his commitment to rigorous scientific research and related scholarship."

This is an important book (criticism aside), if for no other reason than that it confronts the reader in a way that demonstrates neutrality is not...