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MAKING CONTACT Transcript: #07-99 The Politics of Technology Phillip Babich: Welcome to Making Contact, an international radio program seeking to create connections between people, vital ideas and important information. This week on Making Contact: Paul Goldstene: Technology is not trying to understand anything, it’s not trying to discover anything, it’s not trying to uncover secrets. It is trying to control the world. Phillip Babich: Undoubtedly, technology is a dominant force throughout much of the world. It's often at the forefront of major policy decisions -- such as President Clinton's promise to increase military spending by $112 billion dollars over the next six years. Billions of dollars are also earmarked for the Space Missile Defense Initiative, successor to President Reagan's "Star Wars" program. But, what are the implications for the current system of governance in the United States as we move headlong into the new millennium -- spending enormous resources on the production of more technology, while at the same time leaving many of the decisions about what technology we produce in the hands of private interests? On this program, we take a look at technology and democracy. I’m Phillip Babich, your host this week on Making Contact. In January 1999, the Clinton administration announced that it wanted to boost expenditures on information technology research by almost 30 percent in the year-2000 budget. That's for a total of $366 million dollars. Promoting the trickle-down theory, the administration's initiative, known as IT2 Information Technology for the Twenty-First Century, promises to usher in a "golden age of science and engineering." Certainly, technology is an integral part of our lives to one degree or another. But, what are the implications for society as the desire for technological progress propels public policy and affects power relations? To explore these and other questions, we spoke with Paul Goldstene. He's a professor of political theory at California State University, Sacramento, and is the author of many books, including "The Bittersweet Century: Speculations on Modern Science and American Democracy." He discussed how the process of science has influenced the way we perceive our material reality and, consequently, our politics and value systems. Discovering that the earth is not the center of the universe, as one example, has had profound effects on humankind and ultimately challenged the existing power relations between organized religion and society. Today, says Goldstene, the methodology of science -- to question, theorize, hypothesize, experiment, and conclude -- translates into a so-called rational view of the world that is the basis for modern Liberal thinking. Science is also an egalitarian process, open to challenge and inclusive of a variety of viewpoints, says Goldstene. Paul Goldstene: The scientific method is a statement of values. The openness of science is a statement of values. The impossibility, by definition, in science, of ever knowing "anything" is a statement of values. These also creep into the culture. It’s not just the finding of science, but the method of science that creeps into the culture. What that leads to is a much greater pluralism and a much greater egalitarianism, because everybody’s perceptions of reality, of the scientific method, by definition, are equal. There’s no one that’s more qualified than anyone else to perceive an event. And you may claim someone’s more qualified to theorize about it, but not to perceive it. Phillip Babich: I wonder if you could relate, then, science and discovery to technology, per se. Paul Goldstene: Yes. Technology, to put it simply, is "applied science." But it’s not science. So, I think that term is used all the time, "applied science." But, in no way is it science. Technology is not trying to understand anything, it’s not trying to discover anything, it’s not trying to uncover secrets. It is trying to control the world in some way. Technology is always an attempt by human beings to try to get some control over nature. And you can start wherever you want, start with the stone ax. The stone ax was technology. But, probably before there was a stone ax, some guy thought of it and theorized (whether he called it theory or not): if you did this or did that you might get this. But, the act of technology, in itself, is certainly not science. Now, when you get into modern technology, which is very complicated, I think, or the best thing to think about technology, is: technology is not done by scientists...technology is done by engineers. And the mind-set of engineers is not trying to upset what we know - which is the mind-set of science - but to use what we know to build something. And that means you have to organize it; it means that people have to do what they’re supposed to do at the right time; it means you increasingly have to coordinate this whole operation as you get into big technology today; you have to have a very definite system of authority; people have to follow orders; people don’t ask questions - you just do it. This, in terms of values, is absolutely counter to science. So, I would look at science as a historical force and would look at technology as a historical force; I think that they are not only in conflict with each other, as value systems one also can’t do without the other. So, I think you have, what Marx would call a contradiction here. Phillip Babich: With regards to the production of technology, is the systematizing of that production by virtue of anything innately connected to the technology itself? Or the transfer of the knowledge from science to the production of technology? Or is it just the way that it’s always been done? I mean, some examples of this century are Werner Von Braun, starting with the production of the United States’ space program and other technologies, weapons of mass technology, etc. Has it always been that way or is there something about technology per se, that makes it part of an authoritarian production system? Paul Goldstene: I think it’s inherent... Phillip Babich: Why is that? Paul Goldstene: ...because I don’t think you’d get the job done without the authority structure. Von Braun’s an interesting example because he ran the German V-2 program with slave labor and had to be highly organized, highly structured. Your word "authoritarian" is one I should have used before. I think technology, if just let loose, leads to authoritarian habits of mind and finally, to authoritarian values. The most dramatic example of that, is Germany, which clearly had the scientific lead in the world, in the ‘20s,. Anyone who was going to get a Ph.D. in physics went to Germany to get it, including people like Oppenheimer and so on. Then, with the Nazis, right from the beginning and straight through, there was an absolute attempt to destroy German science while maintaining German technology. The lead ran out about the middle of the 1930s, ‘37 or so there’s a lot of books on this. German technology immediately started to lag. But, it’s interesting that you could have people, a lot of people, who love technology, grandiose technology, large-scale technology, who cannot tolerate the attitudes, values, and power implications of science. Well, your technology is going to dry up, you have that choice. Phillip Babich: I wonder if I could ask you, at this point, whether you are personally anti-science? Paul Goldstene: No, because I think there’s a whole other side to this. Democracy literally means self-government among equals. Science is, literally, self-government among equals. There’s always been an absolute correlation between scientific advance and advance, if not toward a literal democracy, with majority rule, toward a more egalitarian world and a more progressive outlook. By progressive, I would mean a greater equality of power. Science, as an operation, has very definite stipulations about power, and power relationships. Nobody has any kind of special claims, because the whole history of thought, political thought, from Plato, Aristotle, Hobbs, Locke, Machiavelli you pick it, they are all arguing that some people have a special claim to rule. A ‘special claim to rule’ is always based on a prior argument that a few people have special access to the knowledge necessary to rule. The question of power and of the claim that some are elite, and most are not, is always based on a claim to special knowledge. I can’t think of any exception to that. Science says nobody has a special claim. That is very subversive of any elitism; it’s subversive of any authoritarian system. It equalizes power automatically. It equalizes authority automatically. In other words, science is a value system in itself and, as such, it carries it’s own political system. Phillip Babich: What are the implications, then, for U.S. society as technology and attendant technocratic institutions consume more and more of our political and social space? Paul Goldstene: Well, first of all, in terms of controlling modern technology, now, we get into corporations. I don’t think there is such a thing as a free market. I think corporations and government are very interlocked. I think public policy, large public policy, not only recent years, has certainly been favorable to corporate interests. There’s an absolute kind of musical chairs game that goes on, high government officials moving over into vice-presidencies of corporations. That gets very interlocked with the military, because the military is the easiest way to sell the spending of enormous amounts of money, in terms of technological developments. So what you’re getting there is an enormous concentration of power. I call that combination of technology and corporations a ‘technocracy.’ Phillip Babich: Paul Goldstene, professor of political theory at California State University, Sacramento. We'll have more of our discussion later in this program. Shereen Meraji: You’re listening to Making Contact, a production of the National Radio Project. This program can now be heard across the United States and Canada, South Africa, and around the world on Radio for Peace International Short Wave. You can also hear us on the Internet. If you want more information about the subject of this week’s program or you would like to learn how you can get involved with Making Contact, please give us a call. It’s toll free: 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tape and transcript orders. We also welcome comments and suggestions for future programs. Phillip Babich: Decisions about technology can have significant impact our lives. Yet, there is little input from the public on what technologies are developed or on what scientific research gets funding. The Loka Institute in Amherst, Massachusetts, is trying to add that missing voice. Making Contact correspondent Brian Tremblay visited the Institute. Brian Tremblay: Located on the campus of Hampshire College in South Amherst, the office of the Loka Institute might be mistaken for a dormitory. But the Institute’s work is geared for more than college students. Projective Director Madeleine Scammell and her colleagues are trying to change the way policy is formulated, in a field usually left to so-called experts at the expense of a wider debate. Scammell wants the public to have a say in the science it pays for. Madeleine Scammell: That’s one of the things that makes this work of democratizing technology so important. We don’t realize how strongly decisions around technology impact us as a nation, as individuals living in a nation. Decisions around science and technology have just as much an impact on our society as legislation. Brian Tremblay: Scammell says the driving force of our technology policy is competition. The U.S., we’re told, is falling behind. The high tech industry and trade officials are selling the idea that the U.S. must take the lead in the computer field. Meanwhile, says Scammell, this trade priority is leaving low income communities behind. Madeleine Scammell: Clearly, the people who are losing out from that are the poor, the people who live in rural areas, the traditionally under-served communities. We’re not going to see the benefits of technological developments in our country for a long time. Brian Tremblay: Can you give me an example? Madeleine Scammell: Well, the Internet, for example, is a technology that a lot of people aren’t using. A lot of people are using it to empower themselves, at the community level, but primarily what’s happening is the ‘WalMart effect’ for local economies. Rather than increasing the commerce at the community level, the Internet is sapping commerce at the community level. And Internet bookstores are contributing to the demise of local bookshops. Brian Tremblay: A fascination with all things computer-based has also taken over our education policy; with the focus on technology, other aspects get neglected. Madeleine Scammell: ...technology in every school by the year 2000. There’s no data backing up any research that technology in the classroom will improve or enhance a child’s education. It’s a love for technology that’s unfounded. I appreciate the Clinton Administration’s efforts to have smaller classrooms; those should be emphasized and captured by the media. Brian Tremblay: Even when the bottom line doesn’t dominate the discussion, citizens are often still left out of the debate. Many scientists and engineers play the role of experts and insist that only they can make decisions that could have serious repercussions for everyone else. Madeleine Scammell: But, there are a lot of scientists who don’t think that, fortunately, and they are the scientists who are working in partnership with communities to develop community-based research projects. And fortunately, there have been of community groups who have lobbied for more research on breast cancer and AIDS and participated in the peer review processes that govern how the government funds research. We have to hold up those models as examples of democratic science. Brian Tremblay: Moreover, says Scammell, you don’t have to be an expert to meaningfully contribute to the scientific discussion. After all, you don’t have to be an "expert" to know what your community needs. Madeleine Scammell: There are hundreds of examples of communities struggling to get access to science that responds to their needs, to research that will help them determine whether or not they’re getting adequate housing in their community, or if welfare reform is actually helping people or hurting them - if policies are reflecting their best interests - if their water is contaminated. Why are adolescents having a higher level of alcoholism in certain communities? What are the effects of pesticides in the fields when you’re working with multiple exposures? These are all examples of problems that communities are having that science could address and, for the most part, these issues are ignored by national science policies. Brian Tremblay: The solution, according to the Loka Institute, is for citizens to have a regular voice in the decision-making process. Those outside the scientific community, should help set the technology agenda. Unfortunately, the U.S. is moving in the wrong direction, says Scammell. Madeleine Scammell: In 1995, the Office of Technology Assessment, the U.S. Congressional Office, the only government body that in any way sets the technology agenda, was killed. Congress killed it in 1995. And ironically, the Danish government adopted this idea of technology assessment, but said the U.S. model was flawed, and that it doesn’t include any citizen participation in any way. So, they developed an alternative form of technology assessment called Consensus Conferences. And it’s a really great model for educating and involving lay people, nationally, on impending legislation that pertains to usually controversial and highly complex technological issues. It refutes the idea that lay people are inept or incapable of dealing with technological issues. I would like to see our government support citizen panels or consensus conferences on technological decisions. I would like to see investment in science that was not just about dollars, but about people participating in science, so that they would be better empowered by the scientific process and could use science to effect social and environmental change in their communities. And, have a better understanding of science as a result. Brian Tremblay: Madeleine Scammell, project coordinator for the Loka Institute. For Making Contact, I’m Brian Tremblay in Amherst. Phillip Babich: We now present more of our discussion with Paul Goldstene. He starts by talking about how science can challenge the status quo. Paul Goldstene: It’s a disruptive force. It bothers people. I think most people want certainty. Most people want order. I think most people want predictability. Science doesn’t give you any of that, despite the way we teach it and despite the propaganda. I think, historically, science has unsettled all those things. It’s always easy to see it historically, because we’re not in the middle of it. The battle between the Catholic Church and Copernicus and Bruno and then Galileo and so on. Why did the Church get so upset? - Because certain notions of reality were being challenged. That has value implications and power implications. We define science as the way we would like it to be, because we are yet to get rid of it. But, when you get rid of it, in a high tech society, then what is the basis of your reality? It’s got to be, if not empirical, not material, then it’s going to be some kind of a mystical something. It could be a church, it could be a Fuehrer, it could be IL Duce. Look at the claims of these guys, Hitler and Mussolini. They are romantic, they are anti-mind, anti-empirical. They hated science. Under the Nazis, what became dominant in German Universities was something called "Aryan physics." That meant "we do not allow Jewish physics in German Universities." What was Jewish physics? Einstein, relativity. Out! Expelled out of German Universities. Phillip Babich: I wonder, then, if you could talk about the direct effects on democracy, per se, in this country as it relates to technology and its impacts on our society and culture. Paul Goldstene: Well... Phillip Babich: I mean, it’s presented to us that technology is the ultimate democratizing thing and it’s sounding like it not be. Paul Goldstene: Well, first of all, democracy is a doctrine of politics and, as such, it’s a doctrine of power. And doctrine means the way things ought to be. What democracy argues is that power ought to be absolutely equal because people are absolutely equal, in terms of their capacity to understand reality. That’s just basic Jefferson. But it also means that 100 percent who are voting are in touch with reality. What does that mean when what you vote for is a consequence of how effective a campaign was put on the television tube? And you have no connection to it whatsoever? I don’t think we can seriously talk about democracy in the kind of world we live in. I think we can talk about pluralism. Pluralism meaning you chop it up in a lot of ways and set one part against the other. The only trouble with American pluralism, from an egalitarian point of view, is that very few people have been in the game. The ‘60s represented a broadening of who gets into the game. You can see the reaction going on in Washington, right now. It’s been going on for 30 years. How do you roll back the egalitarian impulses of the 1960s? Phillip Babich: And I wonder, then, if you can relate this rolling back of egalitarianism to the tendency of technology to lean toward a more authoritarian system of rule and control. What’s going on here? Paul Goldstene: I think what’s going on is a kind of a dialectic schizophrenia, because I there’s a real tendency among those who rule major corporations ‘rule’ I think is the right word - like anybody who rules, to want to get rid of any kinds of forces that are operating against them, that can disrupt their control. On the other hand, down deep, a lot of them know they can’t do that, because to get rid of science, which is what that would amount to, would be to get rid of that which allows the technology to be created, which is the basis of their own power. So, I think they’re in that schizophrenic position. When you push it over and you can’t live with the tension. And you just push over and take a total authoritarian point of view on it, you destroy science. Then you have fascism or Nazism. It doesn’t have to be those forms particularly. You don’t have to have, say, Nazism. You don’t need a racial argument to have fascism. The trouble with fascism is that it eats up its own basis, and it does so very quickly. The technological development is lost very quickly. Phillip Babich: I’ve been speaking with Paul Goldstene. He’s a professor of political theory at California State University, Sacramento. Paul, thanks for joining us at Making Contact. Paul Goldstene: You’re welcome. It was a pleasure. Phillip Babich: That’s it for this edition of Making Contact, a look at technology and democracy. Thanks for listening. We had production assistance from Eric Hamako. Music this week was by Samuel Barber and Gema y Pavel. Laura Livoti is our managing director. Peggy Law is executive director. Our production assistant is Shereen Meraji. Norman Solomon is senior advisor. Our national producer is David Barsamian. And I'm your host and managing producer Phillip Babich. If you want more information about the subject of this week’s program, call the National Radio Project at 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tapes and transcripts. Making Contact is an independent production. We’re committed to providing a forum for voices and opinions not often heard in the mass media. If you have suggestions for future programs, we’d like to hear from you. Our theme music is by the Charlie Hunter Trio. ‘Bye for now. |