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In our
discussion of participatory economics, computer systems have been described
as important tools for furthering democracy. We know, however, that many
reasonable people fear computers as weapons of "big brother." On
what grounds do we trust these machines that many libertarians loathe? Are
there pitfalls we have overlooked? Can we really use computers developed for
double-entry accounting and missile tracking to facilitate liberatory social
relations in a participatory society? Is our vision of a desirable
"information society" really an alienated hell where emotions are
reduced to statistics stored in a jumble of wires and chips?
Technology and
Economic Relations
Some believe
that all tools are neutral, neither intrinsically good nor evil but only made
good or evil by the ways we employ them. We use gunpowder to kill one another
or to clear fields for planting. The way we use tools determines their worth.
Indeed,
objects have utility only in a particular setting as used by particular
people. One can even use an electric shock machine to dim lights or as a
paperweight rather than to mutilate people. Out of context, the lump of metal
and wires has no positive or negative features. It just is.
But once we
notice how much more it costs to produce a shock machine than a light dimmer
or paper weight and the social relations of the society in which it is
produced, we know a shock machine is not a neutral tool. A shock machine
carries the stamp of a social malignancy. It is an irrational tool for
dimming lights, for holding down paper, or even for cardiovascular treatment
to sustain life. It is a good tool for torture. In the real world this
machine is not functionally neutral.
Capitalist
societies have created complicated technical means for performing countless
tasks. How many of these technologies cannot sensibly serve humane purposes
in an alternative society? How many embody capitalist norms antithetical to
liberatory goals and should be abandoned?
Take energy
production. Many technologies operate in ways that are no more capitalist
than participatory-light bulbs built to last, radios, jigsaws, and elevators.
Other technologies have built in anti-participatory implications for social
relationships or the environment. For example, we will not have nuclear
fission reactors in an established participatory society because these
reactors require a degree of administrative and decision-making
centralization antithetical to democracy as well as ecological risks
antithetical to concern for human life.
Moreover,
many machine tools and assembly-line technologies will also disappear under
participatory economics because their "effective" use would
preclude participatory organization by requiring
hierarchical divisions of command, inflexible social relations,
ecological decay, or other social ills.
But before
treating the mom complicated case of computers, we should review just how
technologies come into being in different societies.
"Darwinian"
Technological Evolution
The idea that
a technology bears the stamp of the society that spawned it has a Darwinian
flavor. In biology, new qualities produced accidentally by a genetic mutation
either survive and multiply or die off and have no lasting effect. If a
genetic alteration survives, it will be because the mutated host has survival
advantages over brethren that don't have the new quality. The lucky organism's
progeny pass along the new traits, and their progeny do the same. The altered
offspring survive at a higher rate than organisms with old traits. In due
course only descendants of the first organism that enjoyed the mutation
survive. Two features of Darwinian logic from biology are relevant to
"technological history."
First,
genetic innovation spreads if it enhances the host's probability of survival
in the host's environment. If a new trait increases the likelihood of the
host passing on its genes to descendants, it will likely spread-though the mutated host could get eaten before ever
having any offspring. But luck or not, if the new trait hampers the host's
chances of surviving, it will not spread.
Second, a
genetic accident that creates new qualities xx and yy, which enhance the
probability of survival may also create qualities aa and bb that have few implications for survival in the current
environment but could become important in another environment. Many human
mental capacities were not selected because they would allow humans to master
math, physics, or engineering as these were irrelevant capacities in the
environment in which these traits were selected. However important they
eventually became, these were only byproduct capabilities that became
relevant to survival (or extinction) much later, in greatly changed
environments.
Now consider
technologies. Someone invents a new way of doing something. If the new
technology is useful enough to people who have the means to implement it, it
will become commonplace. If it is practically useless or if it is useful only
to people who have no means to implement it, it will likely disappear.
Our society
is full of technologies that were useful to people who were in a position to
give those technologies an "evolutionary advantage": assembly
lines, cars, power plants, radios, telephones, disposable razors, atomic
bombs, guided missiles, personal computers -ad infinitum. But we can also
think of a host of efficient technologies that were unsupported- effective
public transport systems, efficient large-scale solar energy systems, cars
that get superior gas mileage, quality inexpensive housing, and production
techniques that empower workers. All these unsupported technologies have been
invented and some prototyped, but they haven't succeeded in our economic
environment because they were not advantageous to those who decided their
fate. They didn't fit in the environment of capitalism or in the environment
of centrally planned systems, for that matter.
No technology
evolves and spreads unless there are people who benefit from it and have
sufficient means to disseminate it. In a capitalist society, technologies
useful to the rich and powerful spread. But this doesn't imply that every
technology developed in capitalism is useful only to capitalists or other
elites.
Consider
television. It has been useful to capitalists, men, and members of majority
communities because television has been used to disseminate vast quantities
of disinformation promoting capitalist, patriarchal, and racist interests,
distorted our view of social good and bad, fostered rampant consumerism, and
generally fostered a passive lifestyle. Yet even in capitalism television
sometimes provides good entertainment, educational information, and
occasionally important news, all of which benefit everyone. Moreover, in a
different social setting that supports democratic two-way communication,
television could serve many useful purposes. Unlike shock machines, nuclear
reactors, and some assembly-lines, TVs needn't be dumped in the ashcan of
history along with authoritarian, patriarchal, racist, and classist
institutions and relations. Instead, TVs could be put to good use in a
participatory future.
We could even
imagine circumstances in which attributes of "participatory
television" might begin to be elaborated within a capitalist setting
because they might also serve certain capitalists' ends. For example, two-way
TV might profit some capitalists (for example, by use of shop-at-home schemes)
at the same time as they begin to serve citizens in ways contradicting
broader capitalist interests. Powerful pressures would then arise to try to
curtail the "anti-capitalist" side of these developments, but these
efforts might in turn be opposed by citizens seeking to enlarge the
liberating effect of new techniques. Are computers like televisions or like
shock machines?
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