Thinking Beyond Science

The intellectual ethic of a technology is rarely recognized by its inventors. They are usually so intent on solving a particular problem or untangling some thorny scientific or engineering dilemma that they don’t see the broader implications of their work. The users of the technology are also usually oblivious to its ethics. They, too, are concerned with the practical benefits they gain from employing the tool.

Our ancestors didn’t develop or use maps in order to enhance their capacity for conceptual thinking or to bring the world’s hidden structures to light. Nor did they manufacture mechanical clocks to spur the adoption of a more scientific mode of thinking. Those were by-products of the technologies. But what by-products! Ultimately, it’s an invention’s intellectual ethic that has the most profound effect on us. The intellectual ethic is the message that a medium or other tool transmits into the minds and culture of its users.

The debate between determinists and instrumentalists is an illuminating one. Both sides command strong arguments. If you look at a particular technology at a particular point in time, it certainly appears that, as the instrumentalists claim, our tools are firmly under our control. Every day, each of us makes conscious decisions about which tools we use and how we use them. Societies, too, make deliberate choices about how they deploy different technologies.

The Japanese, looking to preserve the traditional samurai culture, effectively banned the use of firearms in their country for two centuries. Some religious communities, such as the Old Order Amish fellowships in North America, shun motor cars and other modern technologies. All countries put legal or other restrictions on the use of certain tools.

But if you take a broader historical or social view, the claims of the determinists gain credibility. Although individuals and communities may make very different decisions about which tools they use, that doesn’t mean that as a species we’ve had much control over the path or pace of technological progress. It strains belief to argue that we “chose” to use maps and clocks (as if we might have chosen not to). It’s even harder to accept that we “chose” the myriad side effects of those technologies, many of which, as we’ve seen, were entirely unanticipated when the technologies came into use.

“If the experience of modern society shows us anything,” observes the political scientist Langdon Winner, “it is that technologies are not merely aids to human activity, but also powerful forces acting to reshape that activity and its meaning.” Though we’re rarely conscious of the fact, many of the routines of our lives follow paths laid down by technologies that came into use long before we were born. It’s an overstatement to say that technology progresses autonomously-our adoption and use of tools are heavily influenced by economic, political, and demographic considerations— but it isn’t an overstatement to say that progress has its own logic, which is not always consistent with the intentions or wishes of the toolmakers and tool users.

Today, at last, the mists that have obscured the interplay between technology and the mind are beginning to lift. The recent discoveries about neuroplasticity make the essence of the intellect more visible, its steps and boundaries easier to mark. They tell us that the tools man has used to support or extend his nervous system—all those technologies that through history have influenced how we find, store, and interpret information, how we direct our attention and engage our senses, how we remember and how we forget—have shaped the physical structure and workings of the human mind. Their use has strengthened some neural circuits and weakened others, reinforced certain mental traits while leaving others to fade away. Neuroplasticity provides the missing link to our understanding of how informational media and other intellectual technologies have exerted their influence over the development of civilization and helped to guide, at a biological level, the history of human consciousness.

Source – The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr

Goodreads – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9778945-the-shallows