I recently attended a presentation by Dr. Ruha Benjamin about technology and the future. She discussed how almost all of our depictions of technology over the past decades present it as either a thing that will destroy us or a thing that will save us. She calls these visions “techno-dystopia” and “techno-utopia”.
Both are wrong. Both suggest that technology is something that develops independently of human choice, that it’s a thing that happens to us and out of our control.
That’s definitely wrong! People build technology. People’s choices guide technology. However it turns out, it will be because it serves the desires of the people who built it.
This discussion really helped me clarify what bothers me most about how we depict and try to understand technology in our world:
Both visions deny human agency.
Both visions are built on the same belief: That technology is needed because human beings lack the necessary capabilities to do for ourselves. A belief that we can’t build a better world, or solve our problems, or save ourselves. A belief that we need tech to do it for us.
This is belief is both wrong and deeply contemptuous. Both visions underestimate, undervalue, and undermine human capability in equal measure. I refuse to accept that. I don’t believe it.
We don’t need technology to rule us or uplift us. It’s a tool. That’s all. We are fully capable of building the world and the future we want for ourselves.
The bigger question is this: The people building our technology are building it to serve their own ends. These people are desperate for the rest of us to believe that we need technology to solve our problems and save the world.
Why do you think that is?
