I recently read this book: Kevin Kelly: 《What Technology Wants
The original title plainly says Technology, yet the Chinese translation from CITIC Press has actually turned most of the instances of Technology into “科技” (“science and technology”)—utterly baffling. As a product of this “brand” called CITIC Press, notes, indexes, and so on are of course uniformly absent; the fact that an “Acknowledgments” section was preserved is already extraordinarily rare. In itself, this book, though not especially profound academically, is still a very good popular introduction to philosophy of technology, somewhere between the academic and the general-reading worlds—at least no worse than Levinson. Unfortunately, the Chinese edition chose the wrong publisher and ended up neither fish nor fowl.
Translating Technology as “科技” was probably meant to cater to the preferences of the IT world. Strictly speaking, IT translates as “information technology,” but in China it is generally grouped under “科技,” and if you look at the “科技” section on major news websites, eight or nine times out of ten you are actually reading IT news. But what this book talks about is not IT; it is technology. If you insist on changing the title just to court attention, fine—but where the text is clearly discussing technology and has nothing to do with science, why on earth translate it all as 科技? Even if you insist on translating it that way, at the very least you should add a translator’s note, shouldn’t you…
That said, because the original prose is fairly accessible, the Chinese translation is actually smooth enough to read. Students who are interested in philosophy of technology can also take a look.
Judging from the title, this book aims to defend a concept of technological autonomy and to understand technology as an evolving organism, in many respects similar to Levinson’s perspective. But his line of thought is more paradoxical—on the one hand, he appreciates the Amish in certain respects, and he himself often lives a minimalist life; on the other hand, he also praises the proliferation of technology.
The author characterizes this contradiction as the contradiction between “maximizing satisfaction and maximizing choice” (p. 237). He says: “The Amish remodelers have helped me enormously, because through contact with their way of life, I can now see very clearly the predicament of the technological element: in order to maximize satisfaction, in life we strive to minimize technology, but in order to maximize the satisfaction of others, we must make technology in the world as diverse as possible. In fact, only when other people create enough opportunities for choice can we find the fewest tools that we ourselves need.” (p. 241)
The author points out that minimalist technicism believes that “human nature is unchanging” (p. 237), and therefore a limited technological environment, or even a most primitive technological environment, is enough to satisfy people. But the author does not think so. He believes that human nature develops, and that, like other aspects of evolutionary history, both human nature and technology evolve toward diversity. Although a modern human nature is not necessarily superior to an ancient human nature, and a modern technology is not necessarily superior to an ancient technology, taken as a whole, both human nature and technology are becoming richer and more diverse.
A certain limited natural and technological environment may leave some people completely content, yet because human nature is plural, there will always be people who demand another choice. We hope that more people can obtain a satisfying life, but the problem is that such a satisfying life ought to be the result of free choice, not a ready-made Eden prescribed in advance. No matter how comfortable the environment, there will always be people who would rather violate the taboo in the name of freedom; that too is human nature.
Most Amish are content, but what about an Amish person who is not content? Of course, as devout Anabaptists, the Amish allow one choice: one may choose, upon reaching adulthood, to remain in or leave the community. But that is all. The fact remains that within this community there is no environment rich in room for choice; the only choice is to leave, otherwise one must “be obedient.”
According to Wikipedia, the concept of “submission” is one of the two key concepts for understanding Amish religious belief; the other key concept is the “rejection of pride.” Their refusal of many efficient tools is because they wish to avoid losing dependence on their neighbors; their refusal to be photographed probably is not, as Teacher Liu says, because they “believe that photographing might take away a person’s soul,” but rather in order to avoid cultivating personal vanity.
Of course, arrogance and vanity are nothing good. But what about pride and honor in the ordinary sense? How can personal honor be accommodated in an anti-individualist community?
The Amish have carpenters, happy carpenters, contented carpenters—but do they have outstanding carpenters? Do they have woodcarving artists?
What the Amish reject is not technology, but diversity. Although, on the scale of the whole earth, the existence of the Amish adds one more element of cultural diversity, within that culture itself there is an extreme lack of diversity. Amish human nature is fixed; they can only exist as equal members of the community, where there are only a very small number of occupations available for choice. Unless you defect, you cannot rebel within this society; and even if you do rebel, you will still find no other path available for selection.
The richness that technology brings is not an intensification of individual satisfaction, but an expansion of choice; human nature and technology co-constitute one another, and through choosing technologies human beings bring themselves into being.
This personal “choice” does not mean embracing technology without restraint. Quite the opposite: choice is always also relinquishment. Once one has chosen certain technologies and chosen one’s own particular position, that very choice means that one must follow the corresponding limits, and no longer accept everything that comes along. Of course, firmly refusing certain technologies can also shape one’s personality.
In short, for the individual, in order to obtain freedom and satisfaction, one needs to choose a limited set of technologies; but on the level of the whole, technology must expand without end in order to constitute increasingly diverse ways of life.
Why is the Amish way of life so striking? In fact, in China, in India, in Africa… in many places on earth, there are also many communities like the Amish that live far from modern technology; some do so out of tradition, others simply out of poverty. What makes the Amish worth mentioning is precisely that their way of life is the result of some active choice. And the reason this choice is such a rare and valuable choice is precisely that it exists within a modernized environment where technology is proliferating. If one were to strip away the plural possibilities so that only this seemingly satisfying way of life remained, then what would distinguish the Amish from “Brave New World”?
To my mind, technological development certainly has its own autonomous logic, and humanity can scarcely stop the pace of technology any longer. But human beings still may be able to hold the reins of technology—not in order to strangle technology to death, nor can we easily make it turn its horse’s head around, but a subtle form of guidance is still possible. In particular, everyone is making choices about technology; the room people have for choice is constrained by the technological environment, but people’s choices in turn reshape that environment.
The Amish are not a utopia, nor are they a model; they are simply one case. This case shows a way of establishing a distinctive individuality in the age of technology through selectively rejecting technology (they do not completely reject new technology, but first try it, then discuss it, and decide whether to reject it). What the Amish do as a collective is, even more, what each individual ought to do—not to embrace or flee new technology, but to examine it and choose it according to one’s own faith and ideas.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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