Technology: How We Lost Control – Part One

Our culture and, indeed, our very Being has become immersed in technology. Martin Heidegger called this enframing. Neil Postman called the resulting culture “technopoly.” Yuvah Noah Harari proclaims that technology itself has become emergent, that generative AI and other virtual possibilities are developing beyond the ability of the programmers who created them to anticipate the results.

Over the past 200 years, technological progress has accelerated at an unprecedented rate, fueled by advances in science, engineering, and manufacturing. This has led to the development of ever more complex technological systems, which have become increasingly integrated with each other and with social structures. As a result, technological systems have become self-reinforcing and self-regulating in their operation and evolution.

Moreover, the development of new forms of automation and artificial intelligence has enabled technologies to operate and evolve more independently of human control. For example, machine learning algorithms can enable software programs to adapt and improve their performance over time, without explicit human intervention. This further reinforces the autonomy of technological systems and increases their control over their own development.

Think of twenty years ago.  Do you know what did not exist back then that has become essential today?  Smartphones, unlimited Wifi, social media other than forums and email, podcasts, PayPal, Wikipedia, Netflix, Bluetooth, e-readers, and YouTube.  Google was just another search engine.  Now try to predict what is coming in the next twenty years.  It is impossible just as no one saw the impact of the iPhone coming.

The co-founder of DeepMind says we are not ready for what is going to happen in the next ten years, let alone twenty. How could we seriously think we control technological development when it is so clearly coming for us of its own accord. According to IBM (remember them?), 40% of the total global workforce will need to be re-skilled in the next three years. Who is planning for this? No one. Why not? We are not in control. We may (and will) adapt but we are playing catch-up to a force outside of humanity, the very force that enframes our Being.

My hope that we will all have personalized algorithmic interfaces with which to navigate what will become known as the "default" mode of living (the way we have historically lived our lives), as well as the coming wave of digital, augmented, and virtual realities is apparently going to be realized - very soon.  Likely in the next five years.  We need them now (though most people don't know it), but the positive fact is change is accelerating in this fashion.

"Everybody is going to have an intelligent assistant.  Personal intelligence that knows you, that is super smart, that understands your personal history.  And it can actually hold state, preserve things in its working memory to reason over your day, help you prioritize your time, help you invent, be much more creative.  It will be a research assistant but it will also be a coach and companion.  It's going to feel like having intelligence as a commodity.  Cheap.  Widely available and making everybody smarter and more productive."  Mustafa Suleyman on CNBC this morning.

For me, this is the most exciting time to be alive in human history.  But the fact is few people are asking for any of this.  Yet, it is something we will desperately need and desire beyond what the vast majority of humans realize today.  And this shows us something.  It reveals how an advance in technology itself changes human experience.

How is it possible that disruptive, life-changing technology reached this point with absolutely no human being or human organization planning for or guiding it? Of course, the reason is there is no central planning. There is no overarching guidance to the development of technology. It simply emerges and evolves using human Being. At best, we are steering a paddle boat in white rapids. We are no longer, if we ever were, the only engine of technology's consequences.

We have discussed Martin Heidegger's enframing process here, here, and here. Now that we have defined the term and touched upon some of its characteristics in society it is worth spending a moment to review how enframing came about to begin with. Heidegger supplies a rudimentary analysis. But for greater detail on how human beings lost control of technology we have to turn elsewhere.

Before we do that, it is important to note that this loss of human control does not mean that technology is in control. Technology, used broadly and somewhat ambiguously, is itself blind and relatively aimless with its future development (except for convexity, see Part Two).  AI might change that in the near future but, for now, how technology develops beyond human control is not an issue of technology magically possessing a grand plan for supplanting humanity. Technology is actually indifferent toward humanity, like the cosmos itself. 

It is also important to note that this loss of control is not irretrievable.  It is not written in stone somewhere that humans won't get their act together and become masters of the coming techno wave. My bet is that humans will quickly adapt and in adapting they could regain control.  But, as most humans are today with their primitive habits (ethnocentric stage, see here, here and here) there is little chance of that happening.  But the younger generations will be more clever and savvy with AI, perhaps besting it.  

What I am discussing is more subtle than AI self-control and potentially just as sinister. Nothing controls technology.

To answer how this came about and what it actually means I turn to several sources. The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul was written in 1954 and offers a simple but still highly insightful analysis into the birth of Heidegger's enframing as a cultural force (though Ellul never entertained the idea of enframing, that is my connection). Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology by Neil Postman came along in 1992 and described the most immediate results of that cultural force, technology consumes culture. Human beings find themselves immersed in a techno-world, being impacted by it without even noticing it. Nolen Gertz wrote Technology and Nihilism in 2018 about what living inside the technopoly is actually like (though he does not discuss technopoly itself). He bemoans technical influences upon our humanity and he sees them as a extension of nihilism. I don't agree with the inherent nihilism (I am always as skeptical of nihilism as I am of God) but I find his basic vibe and understanding is worthy and accurate. Gertz clearly sees the engulfing and largely unnoticed atmosphere of technology where we exist as persons.

Ellul's work is the most naive of the three. In 1954 no one had a clue about the world-changing power of personal computers and the internet. It was as unthinkable then as what is unfolding now with artificial intelligence, biotechnology and virtual reality is unthinkable to us today. This is perhaps the most valuable lesson in reading Ellul's, at times, rather simplistic text. His ideas are nurtured by the technology of his time, simple industrial mechanics and machines.

Nevertheless, Ellul contends that technology has become an autonomous force that shapes human life and behavior, rather than being controlled by humans. This specific insight is prescient and still relevant today, which is why he is still widely read and respected though some of his text and especially his predictions of the future are actually rather laughable. There's nothing laughable about the following insight, however, it could be written with authority today.

“The reality is that man no longer has any means with which to subjugate technique, which is not an intellectual, or even, as some would have it, a spiritual phenomenon. It is above all a sociological phenomenon; and in order to cure or change it, one would have to oppose to it checks and barriers of a sociological character. By such means alone humanity might possibly bring action to bear upon it. But everything of a sociological character has had its character changed by technique. There is, therefore, nothing of a sociological character available to restrain technique, because everything in society is its servant. Technique is essentially independent of the human being, who finds himself naked and disarmed before it. Modern man divines that there is only one reasonable way out: to submit and take what profit he can from what technique otherwise so richly bestows upon him.” (p. 306)

Ellul writes of how technology evolves through “self-augmentation” that is created inherently by “the combination of techniques.” According to him there are two “laws” of self-augmentation. First, technological progress is “irreversible.” Second, technology does not progress mathematically but, rather, “geometrically.” In a nutshell, technology proceeds exponentially without the ability to put the genie back in the bottle, which is precisely our present situation. This is the essence of the ever-changing nature of techniques (social systems, markets, media, etc.). And it also proclaims why human beings have lost control of what happens next with technology. We are no longer able to technically steer into the future.

Ellul argues that technology has become an autonomous force that shapes human society and culture, and that this has led to the emergence of a "technological civilization" that is antithetical to human flourishing (he is wrong about that). He sees technology as a powerful tool of domination and control that has enabled the rise of totalitarian regimes and the erosion of individual freedom and autonomy (he is right about that, so far).

The result of this environment was not accurately predicted by Ellul, who could never get past the “machine” or “industrial” mentality of technology. Neil Postman correctly understood that these circumstances would work upon human culture itself and become something without precedent. He transcended the mere industrial understanding of technology to its next evolutionary step – computerized and digitized mentality (“use cases” in Big Tech lingo). He had his own term for such mentality, bridging the individual with the social impact of this force.

“Technopoly is a state of culture. It is also a state of mind. It consists in the deification of technology, which means that the culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology. This requires the development of a new kind of social order, and of necessity leads to the rapid dissolution of much that is associated with traditional beliefs. Those who feel most comfortable in Technopoly are those who are convinced that technical progress is humanity’s supreme achievement and the instrument by which our most profound dilemmas may be solved.” (page 77) This is precisely what emerged throughout the 1990's.

Which evolved and gave us our present technology which customizes our “use case” while robbing us of our privacy and making us more reliant (engaged, enframed) upon it all. Nolen Gertz writes about what it is like to live inside the technopoly, though he doesn't call it that. “...the role of technologies is to liberate us from the chores that prevent us from having the leisure time we need to be human. [...] it is clear that technologies are advancing at an incredible rate, that technologies are becoming more and more capable of performing tasks previously assigned to humans, it is not as clear that humans are necessarily advancing, that humans are becoming more capable rather than merely more dependent on the capabilities of technologies. Yet as technologies become more capable, they also become more entrenched in our everyday lives, for which reason it is increasingly difficult to even determine where technologies end and we begin.” (page 14)

Gertz superbly understands the “application” mentality of technology, where we are immersed within the various programs and services that thrive in technopoly. The mechanical techniques of Ellul combine into Postman's computerized systems of technopoly to the point we find ourselves today sailing upon a vast and uncharted ocean of user applications that Gertz understands so well. In this way, through their three books, Ellul, Postman and Gertz open our eyes to how contemporary technology was born and has evolved over many decades – without our direct control or event consent. The public was not asking for the iPhone. It changed us.

“...we now have techno-hypnosis, data-driven activity, pleasure economics, herd networking, and orgies of clicking—but the result of such “priestly medications” has not changed. Our nihilism is still being strengthened rather than weakened. Thanks to tech companies, we can zone out, we are more efficient, we can help strangers, we can make friends, and we can attack enemies. And while we may indeed find these activities meaningful, and may even find they make us happy, that does not mean that these activities are not nihilistic. For nihilism does not mean that life is meaningless but rather that our search for a transcendent source of meaning, for a source of meaning external to us, external to our lives, results in our lives not being lived.” (pp. 217-218)

Gertz explores the role of nihilism in modern technological culture, arguing that the increasing dominance of technology has led to a widespread sense of meaninglessness and disorientation. He argues that the rise of a technological nihilism has led to a further loss of purpose and direction in human life, and has contributed to a growing sense of social and cultural dislocation. I don't agree with much of his perspective, but I do agree that “pleasure economics” and “zoning out” are huge drivers of technopoly today, all made possible by an ocean of apps. As I have written many times, consumption and convenience are the most powerful forces on earth.

Ellul, Postman, and Gertz are all critical of the increasing control and domination of technology over human society and the natural world. They argue that the development of modern technology has led to a range of negative social and cultural effects, including the erosion of human values, the loss of autonomy and individuality, and the creation of a technologically-driven society that is indifferent to the needs and well-being of human beings.

Gertz's take on nihilism is interesting but is not so accurate. There is no reason why the prevalence of technology is any more nihilistic than the prevalence of any other or previous cultural force. Every human runs the risk of living their entire life without actually living any of it authentically. Few actually live that way. Technology offers just another flavor of that. But, aside from that, Gertz plunges us into a perspective where the forces of technology have become so taken for granted, so routine, effortless and unnoticed as to become invisible. We become literally lost in our applications, like fish who do not see water. This is severe enframing.

William Barrett expressed this same concern in 1974 with his excellent and foresightful book The Illusion of Technique. “We rail at technology when it gets too noisy, pollutes our air, or is about to drive a new superhighway through our living room. For the rest, we are content to consume its products unquestioningly. So long as we can negotiate the triumph of technology successfully, we are unconcerned to ask what the presuppositions of this technical world are and how they bind us to its framework. Already these presuppositions are so much the invisible medium of our actual life that we have become so enclosed in them that we cannot even imagine any other way of thought but technical thinking. That is the point at which we shall have turned all our questions over to think thanks as problems of human engineering. We seem already on the way there.” (page 223) A prophetic quote from 50 years ago.

Indeed, if you switched the words “think tanks” to “artificial intelligence” you get a bull's eye to our present situation within technopoly. The techno forces that make us what we are have become invisible to us. Most of western civilization only seeks consumption and convenience. The mechanical, computerized, application infrastructure that delivers the consumption and convenience is so ubiquitous as to be unnoticed, unconsidered by the vast herd of humanity. Most people take no consideration of how their convenience and consumption happens nor how involved they are with its happening. They don't care about any of that, which is the ultimate existential result of Ellul's classic concerns. That is why, for example, we no longer have what used to be called “privacy.” Thanks to smartphones and massive networking, governments and corporations know more about you and your behavior than ever in human history. People surrender their privacy every day because that which took it is invisible to them. They have no genuine choice in the matter nor even awareness of it.

You cannot claim you are “in control” of anything that you cannot see.

This pervasive invisibility is not limited to technology. For example, it is also why we are now staring at a global warming phenomena that humans (largely) created without even realizing it. Those worried that technology (particularly AI) might run amok will do well to remember we were supposedly in the driver's seat of the industrial revolutions and we industrialized the earth into our present environmental circumstances. Through convenience and consumption, we are creating the extreme extent which global warming will reach in the coming decades and the vast majority of humans do not realize it. Or even care. It is invisible to our daily lives, record-setting heat in Texas be damned. Humans in the supposed driver's seat of AI will only continue this historical process.  As a species, we massively screw things up before we try to fix them.  Fortunately, we have also the historical tendency to be innovative as hell.

Today we express concern about generative AI, virtual reality, augmented reality and other possibilities of technology. With the exception of Gertz who wrote much more recently, our present situation was unfathomable to any of the other thinkers. Heidegger, Ellul, Postman, and Barrett never conceived of the possibilities that a “second reality” would emerge virtually or that we would have meaningful interactions with artificial entities, chatbots, virtual sex, personalized algorithms. The technological society, technopoly, and technique have engulfed our Being, the finest specimen of enframing.

Heidegger developed this concept of Gestell in German to describe the way in which modern technology shapes our relationship to the world. For Heidegger, Gestell is the way in which technology reduces the world to a collection of resources to be used for human purposes (a primitive form of use case). It is the way in which technology frames the world as a "standing-reserve", or a storehouse of resources available for human use. Ultimately, human Being itself becomes standing-reserve for technological processes. Heidegger famously termed this “the essence of technology.”

Heidegger argues that the way in which technology enframes the world represents a fundamental shift in human Being. Instead of seeing the world as a dynamic, living, and interconnected whole, as even special or divine, we now see it as a collection of objects and resources to be used for our own purposes. This way of understanding the world, according to Heidegger, results in a loss of connection with the natural world and a sense of alienation from our own Being.

Though none of them mention it, the concept of enframing anticipates the other three authors in that it shares a concern with the way in which technology is becoming increasingly embedded within human society and shaping our relationship with the natural world. Like Jacques Ellul, Heidegger emphasizes the role of technology in shaping human behavior and argues that technology has become an autonomous force that dominates human life and erodes human autonomy. Heidegger's concept of enframing describes the way in which technology reduces the world to a collection of resources to be used for human purposes, and he suggests that this way of understanding the world leads to a loss of connection with the natural world and a sense of alienation from our own being.

Like Neil Postman, Heidegger stresses the cultural impact of technology and argues that technology is becoming a dominant cultural force that subordinates traditional humanistic values to technological efficiency and progress. Heidegger suggests that the way in which technology enframes the world represents a fundamental shift in human understanding of being, one that results in a loss of connection with the natural world and a sense of alienation from our own Being.

Like Nolen Gertz, Heidegger also highlights the psychological impact of technology and suggests that our obsession with technological progress and innovation is driven by a desire to escape the existential crisis of nihilism. He argues that by reflecting on the way in which technology enframes the world, we can gain a deeper understanding of our relationship to Being and our place in the world, and begin to reclaim our connection with the natural world and recover a more authentic sense of Being.

According to Heidegger, modern technology is characterized by its emphasis on efficiency, control, and standardization. It views the world as a collection of resources to be exploited for human purposes, and it seeks to maximize productivity and profit through the most efficient means possible. This mode of technology is deeply embedded within contemporary societies and has had a profound impact on our culture, our economy, and our environment.

Technology enframed the world and human Being and, in doing so, technique, as technology's main self-expression.  It thereby snatched full control of future development away from humanity. Hence, we live in a world where nothing controls technological development or, more accurately, it is controlled by the chaotic interplay of techniques.

This represents a profound shift in human understanding of Being and our relationship to the natural world. It reduces the world (and humanity itself) to a standing-reserve (a collection of resources available for human use), and it sees nature as a mere object to be controlled and manipulated for human (or techno) purposes. This way of understanding the world, according to Heidegger, leads to a loss of connection with the natural world and a sense of alienation from our own Being. I think he is right, which is why Gertz sees so much nihilism within technology today.

But enframing is simply the existential experience of technopoly. It is the human side of the equation. To appreciate the full implications of technological development we have to go beyond enframing and understand actually how technology develops outside of human control. Again, this is not a case of technology controlling itself. It is rather, the situation of a new environment where humans and computers meet.

(to be continued)