The “Natural Selection” of Technology — A Critique of Levinson’s Media Evolution Theory
Hu Yilin©
(Department of Philosophy, Peking University, Beijing 100871)
Abstract: Levinson inherits the tradition of media ecology, but only superficially. He believes that traditional critics of technology merely focus on technology’s drawbacks and do not evaluate technology from an evolutionary perspective. Levinson thinks that the drawbacks inherent in technology in its infancy will be eliminated or remedied in the course of evolution. But Levinson’s evolutionism faces three problems: Who is doing the selecting? By what criterion is selection made? How are the results of selection evaluated? Levinson’s answers to these three questions are all “nature—human nature,” but he mistakenly posits some pre-technological human nature in a “natural state,” fails to carry through the basic position of media ecology in examining media from the perspective of the ecological whole, and does not realize that value standards themselves also undergo paradigm revolutions.
Keywords: Levinson; media evolution theory; natural selection; media ecology
Introduction
Paul Levinson is a student of McLuhan and Neil Postman, and the leading figure of today’s “media ecology.” Especially thanks to Professor He Daokuan’s vigorous introduction, he has also had considerable influence in Chinese academic circles.
So, as a promoter of media ecology and as a successor to predecessors such as Mumford, Ellul, Innis, McLuhan, and Postman, where does Levinson intend to lead this academic tradition? I think the direction Levinson points toward is appropriate, but his specific criticisms and views are debatable.
By “direction,” I mean an academic path that combines media history and media philosophy. In this respect, Levinson inherits the entire tradition of media ecology from Mumford to McLuhan, and attempts to integrate philosophy and history through a kind of “media-knowledge evolution theory.”
But more concretely, Levinson is eager to criticize Ellul and others for their technological pessimism, yet he has not adequately digested the profound insights of his predecessors, and as a result his doctrines of “evolution” and technological optimism remain superficial.
Critique of the Pessimists
Levinson disagrees with the hostile attitude toward technology held by critics represented by Ellul, believing that they focus only on technology’s drawbacks. He says: “We see in media criticism a common error, which I call the ‘Ellulian error,’ because it runs through Ellul’s work: the error is like criticizing a moth’s larva before it has even hatched… Clearly, the idea that media dominate us makes one unable to see the media evolution from one technology to another, and also unable to see the different stages of a medium’s development.”[1]:94
Levinson points out that technology should be evaluated from the perspective of the entire history of evolution: new technologies always have drawbacks, but as history evolves, these drawbacks will be continuously “remedied.” He says: “All technological evolution involves gains and losses; in fact, all evolution is a trade-off with both advantages and disadvantages. … Yet reason enables us to transcend the predicament of both gains and losses… because we can assess advantages and disadvantages, and perhaps invent and apply new technologies, or remedial media, thereby improving the balance of gains and losses and making it favorable to us, even if only slightly.”[1]:5
It is worth adding that, in Levinson’s view, the role of “reason” generally lies not in the “invention” of new technologies, but in the stage of “selection.” Levinson believes that the development of knowledge and technology is similar to biological evolution, roughly divided into three stages: generation (mutation) — criticism (elimination) — dissemination (propagation)[2]:3, and the emergence of new “mutations” is often blind. Levinson quotes Arthur Koestler: “The manner in which most of the important scientific discoveries have been made reminds us of the behavior of ‘sleepwalkers’”[1]:52
What Levinson criticizes as the “Ellulian error” is precisely focusing only on the initial stage of a new technology and denouncing its drawbacks and blindness, without noticing that these drawbacks will be eliminated or remedied in the process of selection through survival of the fittest. Moreover, at this stage, the selection of technology is guided by rational human beings; he says: “For good or ill, human guidance plays a decisive role in all technologies. Thus, all technologies are in our hands various forms of knives… This proves the absurdity of the following view: that technology is autonomous, that its nature is beyond human control.”[3]:130
At first glance, Levinson seems to have betrayed the very foundation of the entire media ecology school—“media bias theory”—and to have retreated into some mediocre and superficial technological neutrality theory that sees technology as a “double-edged sword.” Especially when we see statements like his—“a hungry hunter uses a gun to hunt in order to feed himself, so the gun is put to a good use”[3]:129—we are bound to be taken aback. But to be fair, Levinson is not so shallow. We must always view his claims from the perspective of the entire history of technological evolution—for instance, a machete is obviously not neutral; it is more likely to be used to kill people than to cut vegetables. But with the evolution of knife-making technology, through long-term selection and elimination in human history, those tendencies that use knives for better purposes will be reproduced more, while bad tendencies will be suppressed or remedied. Therefore, evaluating the technology of the knife cannot depend only on its primitive form as used on the battlefield; one must also see the complete evolutionary lineage from the machete to the kitchen knife.
But critics such as Ellul are not unaware of technological improvement and evolution. Ellul points out: “For a given technical problem, every solution can only reinforce the technical system as a whole.”[4]:121 Levinson would agree with this point; only, in Ellul’s view, the strengthening of the entire technical system means the ever-increasing oppression of human beings, whereas in Levinson’s view it means the ever-advancing progress of human knowledge and reason. The “evolutionary” perspective does not necessarily lead to the conclusion of “progress”; on the contrary, the evolutionary picture of natural selection originally seems cruel and blind. How can Levinson be certain that the direction of evolution is always good?
We need to examine Levinson’s “evolutionism” more carefully. Since “natural selection” is the core concept of Darwinian evolution theory, we can ask: in Levinson’s theory of technological evolution, who is doing the selecting? By what criterion is selection made? How are the results of selection evaluated? Levinson’s answers to these three questions are all “nature—human nature,” or rather, “human nature” in the natural sense.
Who Selects Technology?
I can use a gun to kill people, or I can use a gun to hunt; I can choose to buy a machete, or buy a kitchen knife. In this sense, I can obviously control and choose technology. But precisely when the issue of technology is placed in the context of overall evolution, this momentary, local control and selection loses its meaning. Ellul says: “The condition under which man becomes subject rather than object … is that he must control technological development. Everyone would probably agree with this, but in fact it is completely ineffective. More vexing than the question of ‘how’ is the question of ‘who.’ We must ask ourselves concretely and practically who exactly can select the values that justify technology, and control them?”[4]:124
Who exactly is selecting technology—officials, technicians, scholars, or scientists? None of them. All people exist under an overall social system; from the macroscopic perspective of evolutionary history, it is the entire society that is selecting technology. But the problem is that this social system itself is also ruled by technology—what Ellul calls “the technological society,” what Mumford calls the “Mega-Machine,” what Heidegger calls “Gestell” (enframing), or what Postman calls “Technopoly.” Ellul says: “Human beings themselves try to invent means to control their technology, and through choosing among these technologies, make them serve their own ends. Both selection and ends are founded on beliefs, social prerequisites, and myths, and the latter are determined by the technological society.”[4]:121
These critics of technology all, in their own way, see modern society as a gigantic machine determined by the logic of technology: people submit to the roles arranged by technology, and the countercurrent actions of individuals amount, in the aggregate, to nothing more than wear or noise. In the face of technology, human beings are nothing but passive screws.
Levinson does not emphasize the power of the individual either; for him, the “who” that selects technology is not concrete individuals, but seems to be a capitalized “Man” or “Reason.” Levinson might say: even if individual people are always constrained by the overall technological environment, that technological environment is at the same time selected by “human beings.”
But isn’t this abstract “human being” just a self-deceiving empty phrase? Not entirely. Here, Levinson’s “human being” has something of Hegel’s “absolute spirit” about it—it transcends the will of any individual, propels the wheel of history, yet is not mechanical or blind, but spiritual and rational.
In Levinson’s view, “technology is the material embodiment of human thought, … the perceptible interaction between spirit and matter”[2]:102. All technology is the materialized form of “knowledge”; even a toothpick contains within it a whole series of knowledge from logging to dining, and the entire technological environment is in fact the externalization of human knowledge. Thus technological progress is at the same time the progress of knowledge, and knowledge advances continuously through its back-and-forth movement between the human mind and the technological environment—although Levinson more often cites Kant and Popper, and only very occasionally mentions Hegel’s effort to endow apparently irrational history with a logic of reason[2]:282, he is obviously more like a follower of Hegel. Hegel’s “thesis—antithesis—synthesis” corresponds to Levinson’s “spirit—matter—technology,” and the “absolute spirit” corresponds to nature or the cosmos: human beings come from the cosmos and are to return to the cosmos. In a certain sense, the “cosmos” carries out self-knowledge and self-transformation through the evolutionary history of human beings and technology. Levinson says: “Technology has such significance: through these materialized adventures, the cosmos reaches a new level, a new era; in this new era, reason, desire, will, dreams, and many, many adventures of the spirit will all appear with ever greater momentum.”[2]:281
The reason I say that the selector Levinson identifies is not entirely an “empty self-deception” is because I too suspect that Hegel’s absolute spirit is somewhat self-deceiving. But here we need not delve further into the history of philosophy. Let us provisionally grant that Levinson’s strategy of identifying this capitalized “human being” or “reason,” or rather “the cosmos,” as the selector of technology is legitimate. The next question is: by what right can we say that “its” selection is rational and human, rather than irrational and anti-human?
By What Means Is Technology Selected?
Simply saying that technology is an embodiment of “knowledge” is not enough to show that the evolution of technology is cause for optimism. On the contrary, if the evolution of technology tends toward mechanism and rigidity, wouldn’t that mean human knowledge is tending toward stereotyped monotony? Yet Levinson also emphasizes that the tendency of technological evolution is not at odds with human nature; he proposes the “anthropotropic” tendency of media evolution—where tropic implies directionality or return—or, in other words, the theory of “return to human nature”[1]:69—“The performance of all media will eventually become ever more humanized. … increasingly like the way human beings ‘naturally’ process information, that is, like the way human beings processed information before media appeared.”[1]:V
Here, Levinson mistakenly posits some pre-technological human nature in a “natural state,” and technology’s development has always been a “return” to this “natural state” — “Modern technology collects and processes information not by replacing natural abilities, but by replicating and extending natural abilities, enabling human beings to reach domains that natural abilities were previously unable to operate in, such as galaxies. Therefore, the victory of technology is fundamentally not the victory of defeating nature, but the victory of nature itself. … The humanization of technology is the naturalization of technology.”[2]:121
It seems Levinson has forgotten or distorted McLuhan’s insight—media “are not a bridge between man and nature; they are nature.”[5]:310 The key is that McLuhan’s “man” and “nature” are not some fixed, unchanging “archetypes,” but are constantly reshaped by technology—“We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us.”[6]:17 “We,” or “human beings,” are constantly being reshaped along with the evolution of technology, but Levinson has forgotten the actuality of human beings as revealed by philosophy of technology and media ecology, and has retreated into Rousseauian theories of the primitive human being.
Levinson says, “The core principle of the survival of media can be stated as follows: relative to its competitors, the survival probability of an information technology lies in its superiority in satisfying human needs.”[1]:153 But Ford or Jobs would object: it is technology that creates demand, not the other way around. Ellul also points out: “The means are established before the ends.”[4]:120 There is no archetypal “human need” that precedes all technology; there are only human needs that are constantly being reshaped by new technologies in actual history.
When explaining why certain technologies prevail or are eliminated in the “competition for survival” among technologies, Levinson tries to invoke this archetypal “natural human being.” For example, regarding “why silent films were hunted down by sound film, while radio flourished after television,” Levinson explains that this is because of “the inherent characteristic of human natural life that one often hears without seeing, but seldom sees without hearing.”[1]:85 Because “primitive people” often hear without seeing, but seldom see without hearing, modern people abandoned silent film but retained radio?
In fact, this phenomenon is better explained by the concept of the “niche” in biological evolution theory. Only when two species occupy the same ecological niche do they engage in a struggle for survival in which one must die and the other live; otherwise, they may compromise with each other and redivide their respective spaces for survival. Silent film and sound film in the social environment of the time may have occupied almost completely overlapping positions—places where silent films could be shown could also show sound films, and vice versa. Radio and television’s spaces for survival do not fully overlap; although television seized much of the space previously occupied by radio, there were still some situations (such as in cars) that radio monopolized, and so radio did not go extinct. And this relationship of “ecological niche” depends on actual environmental conditions, not on an idealized primitive state. For example, with some of the new conditions that have recently appeared—such as light liquid-crystal screens placed in noisy bus and subway carriages—we have already noticed that some near-silent animated films appear more often in such environments. On the other hand, with the maturation of technologies such as autonomous driving systems and smartphones, to the point that one no longer needs to stare at the road ahead while driving, the small habitats that radio still has left will also be stripped away; at that point, people may well prefer to “see without hearing” by scrolling through webpages and playing games on their smartphones, and no longer need to listen to the radio.
McLuhan also believed that in primitive tribes hearing and touch were more dominant, and that “the phonetic alphabet is an intensification and extension of visual function, and it weakens the role of hearing, touch, taste, and smell,”[5]:280 and in McLuhan’s view the electronic media age is indeed some kind of return to the primitive auditory-tactile world. But if Levinson rigidly takes this return to be a given trend, how then does he explain the deviations before the return?
In fact, critics of technology often believe that the reproduction of technology is “autonomous,” that is to say, technology follows its own logic—specifically, a one-dimensional standard of efficiency—in determining survival and elimination; thus technological evolution does not bring about a return to human nature, but instead increasingly subjects human nature to a monotonous logic of efficiency. Levinson also acknowledges that “efficiency” is indeed the direct criterion by which technology is selected. He says: “Generally speaking, technological development itself has little to do with human narcissism. On the contrary, its purpose is to make task completion as efficient as possible and the results as good as possible, and it has little relation to whether its performance resembles human beings. However, the natural way we carry out our functions must be highly efficient—otherwise these ways, or human beings themselves, could not have survived. Therefore, our pursuit of technological efficiency is in fact equivalent to our pursuit of nature.”[2]:234
The key issue is that if people’s “needs” are constantly being reconstructed by technology, then those “needs” may increasingly drift away from what Levenson regards as the natural state, until they are finally filled up by what Marcuse called “false needs.” So how do we determine whether a given need is natural rather than false? Does the mere fact that such a need has “survived” in evolution prove that it is real? This is obviously circular reasoning, since the premise is that Levenson has already taken for granted that the direction of evolution is good. And if I take the direction of evolution to be bad, then what survives in evolution ought to be increasingly terrible things.
So the next question is: beyond repeatedly saying “what wins out is natural, and what is natural is what will survive,” what other way is there to evaluate whether a selected technology is good or bad?
By what standard should technology be evaluated?
It is obvious that Levenson is a fan of Popper and is overly influenced by him, placing particular emphasis on the idea that knowledge and technology continually advance through criticism and elimination. But his shallowness also follows in Popper’s track, namely, the neglect of the overall “paradigm shift.”
Kuhn used paradigm revolution to counter Popper’s theory of the evolution of knowledge, and the meaning of paradigm revolution was drawn from political revolution. Kuhn pointed out: “The aim of political revolution is to change existing political institutions in ways that the existing political institutions themselves do not permit,” and different political systems imply “incompatible social ways of life.”[7]:86
This incompatibility, or “incommensurability,” is especially manifested in the inability to find a common standard of measurement between different paradigms in order to evaluate the good or bad of things.
Postman stressed: “Technological change is not a matter of gains and losses in quantity, but a change in the ecology as a whole.”[8]:9 “The medium is the environment”: to examine media from the standpoint of the ecology as a whole is precisely the foundation of media ecology. As a media ecologist, Levenson should have known this well, but when he thought about the progress of knowledge and technology, he seems to have thrown this principle aside.
Levenson also mentioned: “In the course of progressing, acting, and living, organisms inevitably influence and alter their environment—and must influence and alter the evolutionary forces that select them.”[2]:70 But when he said this, he was mainly trying to emphasize the initiative with which human beings transform the technological environment. Yet conversely, when technology is taken as the subject of evolution, human culture as environment will likewise inevitably be changed by technology; and within this “cultural environment” there also exist the theoretical vocabulary and value concepts by which good and bad are evaluated.
Postman pointed out: “New things require new vocabulary, but new things may also alter the meanings of old vocabulary… The telegraph and the cheap penny press changed what we mean by ‘information’… writing altered the original meanings of ‘truth’ and ‘law’… technology redefined the meanings of words such as ‘freedom,’ ‘truth,’ ‘fact,’ ‘wisdom,’ ‘memory,’ ‘history,’ and so on…”[8]:4 In particular, “digital technology changes the way we look at the world…. For those holding a report card, everything looks like a number.”[8]:7 With respect to the good and bad of everything, modern people increasingly tend to evaluate things with a one-dimensional, quantitative attitude. The word “value” itself is entirely a modern product that emerged only after the maturity of the monetary system and market economy; ancient people simply would not evaluate the good and bad of things the way modern people do. This one-dimensional value outlook formed under the modern technological environment is precisely what critics of technology are trying hardest to warn us about.
Postman cited a case: “Matches introduced change in a certain African tribe.” After every sexual act, they had to light a fire again. Originally, they needed to borrow fire from their neighbors, so sex was a public event. Thus, did the introduction of matches “change people’s value judgments about sex”?[8]:15 Postman then mentioned a more drastic case described in Farley Mowat’s The People of the Deer: “the extinction of a culture caused by the replacement of bows and arrows with rifles.”
But what Levenson is arguing is completely the opposite. He says: “Postman and most others who criticize electronic media are wrong. Their mistake is not in criticizing the relation of electronic media to rationality and cultural literacy, but in holding the view that electrical power and media borrowing electrical power are mortal enemies of books, magazines, and newspapers—indeed, the enemies of cultural literacy. The facts are just the opposite: at the dawn of electronic communication, the telegraph conveyed written words faster and farther than any earlier medium, and it greatly aided newspapers and news reporting.”[1]:57
The crucial point is that what Postman and the others care about is not at all whether print media and electronic media gain or lose ground relative to one another, but the opposition between print culture and electronic culture as wholes. Just as, after a match is introduced into a tribe, its significance does not lie in whether matches increased or decreased the number of times fires are lit, but in the fact that they fundamentally changed the meaning of making fire and of sexual activity. Indeed, printing transmitted the Bible with “speed and distance” superior to those of earlier media, but what the pioneers of media ecology cared about was not this issue at all; more important, printing changed the meaning of the Bible.
Conclusion
At this point, we may say that Levenson has abandoned or evaded some of the core insights of the media ecology school, and in his eagerness to defend technology, his criticism of the pessimistic predecessors is basically off the mark. But does that mean Levenson’s theory is of no interest? Certainly not. We note that Levenson insists on a historical perspective on technological evolution, strives to introduce a complete philosophical foundation for this perspective, and emphasizes the responsibility of human choice. All of these are commendable. Unfortunately, in philosophy Levenson stops at the depth of Popper, and he also fails to fully carry through the standpoint and approach of media ecology.
References:
【1】Levenson. Soft Weapon [M]. Translated by He Daokuan. Shanghai: Fudan University Press, 2011.
【2】Levenson. Mind Unbound [M]. Translated by He Daokuan. Nanjing: Nanjing University Press, 2003.
【3】Levenson. Selected Works of Levenson [M]. Translated by He Daokuan. Beijing: China Renmin University Press, 2007.
【4】Ellul. Technological Order [A]. In Wu Guosheng, ed., Classic Readings in Philosophy of Technology [M]. Shanghai: Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press, 2008.
【5】Eric McLuhan, ed. by Qin Gelong. The McLuhan Presence [M]. Translated by He Daokuan. Nanjing: Nanjing University Press, 2000.
【6】Marshall McLuhan. Understanding Media [M]. Translated by He Daokuan. Beijing: The Commercial Press, 2000.
【7】Kuhn. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [M]. Translated by Jin Wulun and Hu Xinhe. Beijing: Peking University Press, 2003.
【8】Postman. Technopoly [M]. Translated by He Daokuan. Beijing: Peking University Press, 2007.
© Hu Yilin (1985– ), male, from Shanghai. PhD from the Department of Philosophy, Peking University. Research interests: philosophy of technology, history of scientific thought.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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