Labor and Technology

The most striking aspect of labor today is its relationship to technology. Technology is generally understood as the application or utilization of knowledge for practical ends. In a sense, technology is to labor what the liberal arts are to leisure. Because labor requires intelligence, it is near impossible even to think of a task of labor today which does not involve some technology, be it primitive or cutting-edge. But here I contend that technology can only be called good in the same sense that labor is called good. That is, it must be humane and ordered to its proper ends. As labor must be consciously performed for the sake of preserving man's physical nature (and by extension, the rest of creation) and disposing him for leisure-work, so technology must be consciously applied for the sake of aiding this good work. Thus, when technology hinders man's leisure (such as the worship of God), corrupts his physical nature, or distorts the order of creation in some way, it is not good and useful, but evil and destructive.

Martin Heidegger argued that there is a problem with modern technology, specifically in the relation between its application and the knowledge required to apply it. That is, the application of technology does not in itself have anything to do with the knowledge that made it possible. This can be easily observed in modern society: Always and everywhere, people make use of things whose inner workings are beyond their comprehension. And the more they make use of these things and become attached to them, the more estranged they become from reality. This is because, as Heidegger explained, technology's application determines how people understand reality. What a thing is, through its continued exploitation, becomes obscured by fixating on how it can be exploited. In this way, a thing's “usefulness” eclipses one's understanding and appreciation of the thing itself. This creates a peculiar moral predicament. As Heidegger puts it, “so long as we represent technology as a [mere] instrument, we remain held fast in the will to master it.” (17)

This insight into technology is related to a concept proposed by Marshal McLuhan. He argued that, as humanity progresses in technology, the modes of communication (i.e. media) change with it. Because our knowledge of the world is vastly dependent on communication, a change of media creates a change in how we approach and understand the world. Simply put, we perceive the world through media; so as media change, so changes the world (or so it seems). We can extrapolate from this idea another moral insight: As we use technology, we are forced to compete with it, in a sense. Our exploitation of creation is, in a word, reflexive: As we impose our own purposes on the world, we become increasingly confined by those same purposes, even in the manner in which we think about the world. For example, in a society where automobile travel is prevalent, distance is measured in minutes and everything between one's location and his destination is irrelevant. The auto-driver does not have a clear concept of space or direction; he is only concerned with duration and obstacles.

Considering this drastic effect technology has on our minds, it is easy to see what Baudrillard meant by “hyper-reality.” Modern man is generally not concerned with reality as such, but only the reality that is available to him; the sphere of action and information in which he lives. Whether the sun has risen is completely irrelevant to him; He rises at six o'clock am, Eastern Standard Time. He knows it is six o'clock because his computer screen has told him so. To him, the day has begun, solar and sidereal events be damned.

We now see the link between modernity's technological marvels and its moral distortions. Man has become so skilled at manipulating creation that he no longer comprehends creation, and without this comprehension, he no longer has a reason to manipulate it. Man's continued manipulation of creation is apparently driven by his unabashed desire alone, but this desire is not by any means “free”: It is informed by the world as he experiences it and this world is none other than the one shaped by his very manipulation. Of course this is not the result of inescapable material causes, but of imprudence and greed. We should have been asking ourselves at every avenue whether we are accomplishing the Thomistic ideal of art-perfecting-nature. Instead we have rather the inverse, the violent imposition of nature-becoming-art, or so it seems. Absurd!

Indeed every misapplication of technology both reveals a misunderstanding of nature and further obscures it. For instance, Heidegger asserts that a fixation on the use of something strengthens the will to master it; and we see the worst of this in making use of other human beings. One of the perennial criticisms of Capitalism is the exploitation of workers and, even in a society that condemns chattel slavery, we see a prevailing conflict of interests between disparate classes of people; most notably between those who use people and exert dominance over them, and those who are used and dominated. But on both sides of the class-conflict, whether they are aware of it or not, the working class looks to the owning class as conduits for “job-creation” or a “tax-base” and the owning class look to the working class as employees, consumers, and voters. Another example can be seen in the corruption of medicine: Doctors willingly kill and mame according to the whims of their patients. The integrity of the body is often seen not as a sign of good health, but as an obstacle to its exploitation, in an overt form of hedonism prevalent among those who objectify even themselves. One's body is seen as a tool to accompish some degree of pleasure or as a vehicle, rather than as a part of oneself, to be perfected and preserved. Even in the use of contraceptives, one is in conflict with her own body, demanding service in the form of pleasure but denying the outcome which her body is striving for.

The remedy to this state of affairs is not necessarily Ludditic. We must simply strive to be aware of the purpose of our labor. We must ensure that the technology we employ assists labor in its goal of serving us, rather than allow ourselves to become the tools that serve labor. This entails breaking out of the “hyper-reality” which we have created and imposed on ourselves. And when we are once again conscious of our nature and our purpose, we must be willing to do what is necessary to prevent the very work of our hands from becoming our masters.