In one of my previous articles, I said that, I quote:
[...] I have realized quite a while ago that I, a simple bipedal monkey after all, do not need technology in order to live a good life; and that said technology is an impediment as much as it is a help, if not more. I don't need a computer -- hell, I don't need electricity in order to keep a blog, much like I don't need an "internet" in order to talk to other people.
only to then almost immediately contradict myself:
But more generally, I am interested in how humans and technology alter each other as a result of their inextricably intertwined evolution and what lies at the basis of both the intertwining and the evolution.
So which one is it, then? Do I need technology at all, or is technology otherwise "inextricably intertwined" with my life? The answer should be obvious to the educated reader, who surely knows that for example the discovery of fire has deeply altered the relationship between hominids and food, which in turn altered the hominids themselves over the last few hundreds of millenia. Each technological device, from fire to the spear, from gunpowder to electricity, acts as an amplifier of sorts, although what precisely is amplified by some particular piece of technology remains a point of arduous debate.
Then there's the following:
In other words, since I've been mentioning post-religion more often than I can remember: technology is an expression of man's material god, and its realization -- the best that man has achieved thus far in this realm in known history. It is perhaps a largely misguided attempt, or perhaps it will endure in some form or another; as far as history can be of help, the pendulum has always swung back "the other" way, although which way exactly, it remains to be seen -- either way, this is not the place to judge such things.
Leaving aside the fact that this statement about technology does not in fact manage to explain anything of the latter's essence, the remainder of the text does not explain why, and more importantly how exactly technology is "an expression of man's material god". And as far as I can currently see, there are two possible explanations, each shedding some light upon the relationship between technology and religion, although it's not clear to me how the two explanations relate to each other.
The first explanation comes from the realm of politics: one can only be said to wield some particular piece technology if he controls not only its product, e.g. the spear, but also the entire bootstrapping process that makes said product possible1, e.g. the materials and the skills required to build a spear. Otherwise that one person, let's call it a "user", necessarily operates downstream of the technology in question, and that user himself is, as Heidegger put it, standing reserve, or as I put it, a fanboy of that particular technology. In other words, as some given population becomes dependent on some particular technology, the two items merge and, in particular, the former will end up worshipping the latter. This is no mere idle remark: just think about your interaction with some vending machine and how it forces you to interact with it in the manner it was designed to, not in the manner you expect. It is the nature of this interaction that makes you standing reserve; and furthermore the underlying mechanism is the underpinning of the futurist's remark that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"2.
The second explanation is not that precise, but let's take a stab at it anyway: any single human endeavour sits at the intersection between two orthogonal, but not opposite3 approaches: the first rational, scientific, methodical; the second Pavlovian, inductive, associative. Ancient societies are particularly good examples of this intersection, as, say, the fact that both rain and the Sun are important to agriculture is both scientific (plants require both heat and water to grow) and metaphysical (both Ra and Tefnut are to be worshipped in the Egyptian pantheon). Thus the technological artefact of agriculture was developed under both interpretations and in general, throughout history every technological artefact contained some mix of the two. In other words, as God "created man in His own image", so does man create technology in his very own, seeking to surpass Nature itself.
More importantly, however, from a purely anthropological point of view, most early technological artefacts relate in some way or another to survival: both the spear and the agricultural crop provided food, and the former in particular provided the privilege of force and security. However, some technologies (e.g. cosmetics) were merely a byproduct of abundance, and while, traditionally, technological items that were not immediately means of survival were an exclusive privilege of those in power, more recently the masses have ubiquitous access to technology that is not an immediate means of survival. This phenomenon, I suppose4, is what shifts the equilibrium from the logical to the inductive, from reason to the Pavlovian, as it is aimed primarily at the senses. This in turn makes possible metaphors such as "smartphone", "artificial intelligence" and other objects of marketing, which don't mean much but are otherwise quite appealing to the reptile brain.
To sum this up: the first part states that "empowering users" is in fact a doublespeak; while the second part identifies supposedly ubiquitous luxury as some sort of magical amulet in itself, that is, a fetish in the truest sense of the word, that is, the so-called "material god".
I am aware that both so-called explanations are incomplete, and thus far I am satisfied with their incompleteness, so for now I will leave it at that.
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This is incidentally also how the whole derpage about the "means of production" became fashionable in the late nineteenth century. ↩
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This is also how we precisely know that the foreseeable future looks very bleak for the average bipedal monkey. But this is perhaps a discussion for another time. ↩
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Regardless of what naïve or otherwise ill-intended folks such as Dawkins would have us believe. ↩
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That is, it's not immediately clear to me how ubiquitous access to technology and religiousness are influenced by one another, although I strongly suspect they are. ↩
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