This time around I’m passing along a slightly expanded version of a short talk I had the pleasure of giving at a virtual event hosted by the Future Narratives Lab based in the UK. The theme of the event was “the narratives behind Big Tech,” and in my contribution I revisited some earlier work on the rhetoric of technological determinism.
The techno-determinism you write about is something I’m keenly aware of here in Vermont. We’re a mostly rural state, but there is almost universal support for bringing high-speed internet into every home. Among the urban transplants this makes a sort of sense, since they tend to move here for the slower pace and land-based way of life, then immediately try to transform it into the place they just escaped. But there’s a surprising amount of support from those who grew up here, because they have accepted the idea that a decent future for their children has nothing to do with that land-based way of life, and everything to do with technologies few of them really understand. Needless to say, state government is fully behind this techno-fatalism, and will be using the windfall from the federal government's covid stimulus to make the state even more dependent on those technologies.
Regarding the roots of utopian or progressive determinism, this is often blamed on a variety of Christian heresies including Calvinism or species of it, at least from the medieval perspective. Voegelin and Jonas dug into that. I wonder if it is any escape from the problem to imagine there is a correct tradition in intellectual history for thinking properly about history. Maybe it is only good or bad to be pessimistic or optimistic to the extent it helps us cope with actual circumstances.
I wonder if you’ve considered Barth as a relevant critic on this topic. He has strong words in Church Dogmatics against providentialism that might be better classified as a type if Hegelian historicism. If secularized protestant progressivism led to Hegel, Hegel also fed the right or centre-right alt modernism of Kuyper and European Christian Democrats, who might be understood as wanting to have the blessings and promises of technocapitalist modernity and consecrate them too. More reactionary antimodernist or integralist political theologies look comparatively less naive. But would I rather be a young Arendt growing up in Lisbon or Amsterdam? Whose optimism or pessimism we are caught up in may be most decisive.
Very good essay Michael. I was just reading the 30th anniversary edition of Ong's book (Orality and Literacy), and this essay supplemented that reading very well.
Glass was a good idea and wearables’ time will come, but releasing them as a rare, elite commodity fed the lashback against “glassholes.” Something similar is happening in the ire against masks — a lot of people have visceral reactions to differentiated face/headgear. The old “four-eyes” bullying feels related — a terrible response but probably coming from a very old sense of friends as those with whom we have unmediated eye contact.
The techno-determinism you write about is something I’m keenly aware of here in Vermont. We’re a mostly rural state, but there is almost universal support for bringing high-speed internet into every home. Among the urban transplants this makes a sort of sense, since they tend to move here for the slower pace and land-based way of life, then immediately try to transform it into the place they just escaped. But there’s a surprising amount of support from those who grew up here, because they have accepted the idea that a decent future for their children has nothing to do with that land-based way of life, and everything to do with technologies few of them really understand. Needless to say, state government is fully behind this techno-fatalism, and will be using the windfall from the federal government's covid stimulus to make the state even more dependent on those technologies.
Regarding the roots of utopian or progressive determinism, this is often blamed on a variety of Christian heresies including Calvinism or species of it, at least from the medieval perspective. Voegelin and Jonas dug into that. I wonder if it is any escape from the problem to imagine there is a correct tradition in intellectual history for thinking properly about history. Maybe it is only good or bad to be pessimistic or optimistic to the extent it helps us cope with actual circumstances.
I wonder if you’ve considered Barth as a relevant critic on this topic. He has strong words in Church Dogmatics against providentialism that might be better classified as a type if Hegelian historicism. If secularized protestant progressivism led to Hegel, Hegel also fed the right or centre-right alt modernism of Kuyper and European Christian Democrats, who might be understood as wanting to have the blessings and promises of technocapitalist modernity and consecrate them too. More reactionary antimodernist or integralist political theologies look comparatively less naive. But would I rather be a young Arendt growing up in Lisbon or Amsterdam? Whose optimism or pessimism we are caught up in may be most decisive.
Very good essay Michael. I was just reading the 30th anniversary edition of Ong's book (Orality and Literacy), and this essay supplemented that reading very well.
How is that edition? Any good extras?
Just curious: whatever happened to the Illich piece for TNA?
Glass was a good idea and wearables’ time will come, but releasing them as a rare, elite commodity fed the lashback against “glassholes.” Something similar is happening in the ire against masks — a lot of people have visceral reactions to differentiated face/headgear. The old “four-eyes” bullying feels related — a terrible response but probably coming from a very old sense of friends as those with whom we have unmediated eye contact.