2. Technology Is Contextual

This article is the second in a series of articles based on The Metacrisis - Analysis and The Wisdom Initiative.

In the previous article, we attempted to paint a holistic picture of the metacrisis: the state we find ourselves in where our systems, values, and worldviews have become entangled in a process of self-reinforcing collapse. We saw how the lack of wisdom and wholeness characterises everything from economics and politics to culture and spirituality, and how our understanding of the world itself has become part of the problem. In this article, we will turn our attention to one of the most pervasive forces in this picture: technology. More than a tool, technology is a medium that shapes how we see, act, and understand. To grasp the deeper dynamics of the metacrisis, we must therefore understand how this works, and how the context of technology is crucial to the effect it has on society and reality.

Important for any holistic analysis of the effects of technology on society is the recognition that nothing can be considered in isolation. The context of the technology in question must be considered in its full breadth, and the context includes how it is used and for what purposes.¹ This immediately undermines any notion that technology is value-neutral, for how and for what are value-laden enterprises. Any innovation or technology, any creative process, is part of a larger context of culture, socio-economics and politics, and will be shaped by the conflicts or imbalances inherent in these.

One could argue that the creation of the atomic bomb was a universally negative event, that such a technology can never have a good or legitimate purpose, but this is to consider the technology detached from its context. A nuclear bomb could in principle be used to blow up an asteroid on a collision course with the Earth, and many would in such a case consider it a good and necessary use if the alternative was the destruction of the planet. Similarly, if people could trust each other on a large scale and be united in the preciousness of life and the earth, a world with nuclear weapons would probably never have emerged, first, and second, not bear the pressure of mutual destruction. The examples are hypothetical, but the point is real: technology cannot be considered outside the context in which it arises and is used, a context shaped by utility, pragmatics, culture, history, and conflict. Considering technology as isolated objects therefore only makes sense in the most limited cases.

Social media could be good and useful for humanity, but not when it arises within a growth-driven economy. In a growth paradigm, we cast aside the aspects and driving forces that could make technology good or useful. In the service of profit (and technofeudalism), aspects aimed at human welfare are sacrificed in favour of attention-grabbing, addiction, disinformation, and behavioural manipulation.² Technologies that are supposed to aid the green energy transition could have been good and useful, but woven into the economic growth trap, they have largely contributed to an energy supplement to fossil fuels, not a replacement. Agricultural innovations could have led to food sovereignty for all people and humane animal husbandry, but within a context of growth, they have led to biodiversity loss, soil erosion, and inhumane factory farms. Innovations in production could have been used to reduce our resource needs, but are instead used to increase them.³ Marketing and advertising innovations could have been used to promote mutual respect, beauty, and art, an understanding of our interdependence on each other and the earth, but these values ​​are discarded in favor of promoting consumption, unhealthy ideals, and distractions from what makes life worth living. Economic innovations could have led us out of the growth trap, but have largely been mobilised to dig the hole deeper. AI is seen by many as the answer to all our problems, but AI will also dig the hole deeper unless the socio-economic landscape it is woven into is transformed. Underlying all of this is our inability to refrain from doing something when it would benefit us in the long term, a lack of design that extends beyond the immediate. This is not surprising when we are caught in a dynamic that disincentivizes wisdom.

The Consilience Project summarises its understanding of technology’s value-neutrality in five propositions for value-driven, value-driven, design:

1. Technology is created in the pursuit of values, and creates and reshapes values.

2. Technology demands more and new technology: multiple technologies develop together as functionally bound sets, as ecologies of evolving technologies.

3. Technology shapes our bodies and movements as a human-made habitat, and is therefore deeply addictive, both for individuals and societies.

4. Technology alters power dynamics in unpredictable ways, creates environments that give some people advantages, and sets up selection pressures that force personal adaptation and adoption of new technology.

5. Technology influences what ideas we value, the quality of our attention, and our conceptions of ourselves and the world.⁴

Technology, the things we create, are extensions of our abilities, whether physical or intellectual. These work together with the values ​​we manifest to shape the world around us. It is important to note that this shaping is both direct and indirect, for technologies shape not only the physical world but also our view of it, and with it our values. We see the past through the lens of our current worldview, a lens shaped by the context that brought us here. Thus, we cannot see the path we have taken crystal clear, because the starting point from which we came is distorted by the lens through which we look back. Since technology is part of this context, and since technology in many ways serves growth-driven incentives that sacrifice wisdom, another type of trap arises in which we lock ourselves into patterns of action and thought that, by normalisation, reinforce unwise processes, the same processes that are incentivised to reproduce themselves for reasons that are not rooted in human welfare. In other words, we are led to worldviews that blind us to negative externalities, through processes that also obscure the fact that this is happening at all.

The technological process is incentivised more by profit than by human welfare. Therefore, we cannot hope that technology itself will solve the meta-crisis. It can only become part of the solution if its context changes. This requires us to ask: What values ​​underlie the development of technology? What human images, which worldviews, and which goals build the context in which technology is developed and used? And here we must not lose sight of the fact that good intentions in the original development of a technology can quickly become insignificant when it is taken over by market forces.

The way forward

What is it about market forces and incentive landscapes that lead to perverse developments, and that make people constantly sacrifice the long-term for the short-term? We will look at this in the next article on multipolar and cognitive traps.

Footnotes

1. See, for example, Borgmann, A. (1984). Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry. University of Chicago Press. See also Don Ihde's work, summarized by Peter-Paul Verbeek: https://www.utwente.nl/en/psts/documents/ihde.pdf
   
   

2. The Consilience Project (2024). Development in Progress: The concept of progress is at the heart of humanity’s story. https://consilienceproject.org/development-in-progress/
   
   

3. Jevons’ paradox also comes into play here. See e.g.
   
   

4. The Consilience Project (2022). Technology is Not Values ​​Neutral: Ending the Reign of Nihilistic Design. https://consilienceproject.org/technology-is-not-values-neutral-ending-the-reign-of-nihilistic-design-2/

Meet the author

Severin Sjømark

Head of AI Strategy & Co-Founder at Deepinsight

Severin Sjømark is Head of AI Strategy at Deepinsight, where he works at the intersection of technology, ethics and healthcare. He is passionate about creating understandings of philosophy, culture, science, technology and society that can lead to more balanced relationships in and with the world. This work can be read on the substack The Magical Flower of Winter [link: https://tmfow.substack.com]