The Technological Conscience: Survival and Dignity in an Age of Expertise by Manfred Stanley, and: Retrospective Technology Assessment—1976 ed. by Joel A. Tarr (review)

Books 251 of the present predicament for the serious general reader. It is to be noted that he shies from giving advice, as so many panicstricken authors on similar matters are apt to do, and admirably contents himself with a sometimes insightful, sometimessparsely documented theoretical approach to a vast subject. He highlights the Western situation and the doubts about it through analysis and comparison of ancient Greek, Christian and ‘technic’ culture. The obligation to know and become oneself is seen as primary, and the ‘Socratic obligation’ of advanced humans in a still advancing culture is seen as exemplary. Self-misidentification is taken as inevitable, as is a fundamental ontological defect in humans that is the source of foolishness and danger, which is compensated by higher capacities symbolized in the poetic spirit and Husserlian subjectivity, through which alone humans can gain access to powers beyond themselves. He says that a confidence in technology has replaced faith in cosmic forces or in a Supreme Being and could well find personified deification in a ‘Cyborg’; he hopes that this world-symbol will not displace the self of humans that is aware of its meditative dimension. The two final chapters on technological rationality and on the assessment of a technological culture I found more interesting and informative. Such a culture depends on exactitude of measurement, into which sundry experience is translated. This restriction cannot but ignore the uniqueness of humans, and, with reason being based exclusively on quantitative interpretation , there is the likelihood of the final value in such a culture’s becoming technology itself. Consequently, other views might appear as either barbaric, revisionary, anti-scientific, medieval or existentialist. Emotional and self-awareness qualities of the human psyche are rejected by an automated and computerised culture. He states that the peculiar property of ‘technicism’ is selfdestruction -already apparent in ecological imbalances, the population explosion, the energy crisisand war between nations. Unquestionably, a capacity of thinking distinguishes humans from other living things, but does foresight condition them in a way more totalitarian that the instruments by which they make their life easier? Pages fell out of the book as I read, due to the poor binding, convincing me that the human quest lies in perfecting technology, not in worrying about its non-existent totalitarianism. The Technological Conscience:Survival and Dignity in an Age of Expertise. Manfred Stanley. Collier McMillan, London, 1978. 281pp. E11.95.RetrospectiveTechnologyAssessment-1976. Joel A. Tarr, ed. San Francisco Press, San Francisco, 1977.326 pp.. illus. $15.00. Reviewed by J. C. Kapur* While the world has been busy enjoying the boon and suffering the havoc caused by unregulated technological change, an endless debate on whether science and technology are for or against humans has been raging amongst the so-called intellectual elites. The growing fear and apprehension that the entire human speciesis being threatened by its own ‘brain children’has added a new virulence and brought about an intensification of this debate. In the first book Stanley’s declared objective is to present a saner and less dogmatic vision of the forces that are shaping the technological milieu. He asserts that the real danger lies not in technology itself, but in ‘technicism’-the misuse of scientific language, metaphors and assumptions in social thought and practice. He explores the issue by revealing the insidious effects of ‘technicism’ on contemporary social science, philosophy and education and its broad implications for the human condition. ‘This can be because people find it easier to accept technicism than to pay the price of reversing it, or because people want its positive benefits, or because whole populations have become sufficiently illiterate as regards non-technicist sensibilities and styles of thought that effective resistance no longer exists.’ He warns social critics against ‘allowing themselves to oppose *Kapur Solar Farms, Bigwasan-Najafgah Road, P.O. Kapas Hera, New Delhi 110037,India. technology, planning and cybernetic techniques wholesalein the name of opposing technicism’. Keeping human dignity as the central concern. Sfanleyoffers some new concepts for limiting the technological manipulation of individuals under the garb of human welfare. To emphasise some of these concepts cybernetic systems come in for a special treatment. The intellectual uses and misuses of cybernetic systemsanalysisasagainst non...