IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2018 - 52

Cultural Losses of Faith in Technology

Framing by elites may disempower
communities that opt for
technological fixes.

technological quick fixes were proposed as timely and
reassuring solutions. Current options include oil-digesting microbes to deal with spills and industrial waste,
biodegradable packaging, biotechnologies for fuel production, and schemes for addressing anthropogenic climate change via geo-engineering [35]-[37].
A second domain of problems attracting technologydominated responses is terrorism. As airplane hijackings proliferated during the early 1970s, and more
varied threats were identified after 2000, technologists
responded with imaginative solutions ranging from lowtech lockable cockpit doors, to technologies monitoring
Internet communications, to materials-detecting and
body-scanning systems. In the tradition of technological
fixes, these hardware solutions are rapid responses to
events that have relatively complex social, political, or
economic roots.8

Quandaries and Implications
of Technological Fixes
Such examples suggest support for the notion of technological fixes by large companies, governments and
the general population, as much as by engineers themselves [39]. But alongside unreflective acceptance of
clever technological solutions for urgent problems,
there is evidence of growing societal concerns about
some aspects of technological fixes. Such concerns
deserve to refocus the discussion begun by Weinberg
fifty years ago.
Critical assessments of technological fixes have variously identified reliance on technological solutions as
evidence for inadequate engineering practice, failures of
government policy, or outcomes of modern consumerism. These concerns suggest that technological fixes
have important implications for shared social values,
the wellbeing of wider publics, and the social role of
engineers. In short, technological fixes have cultural,
ethical and political dimensions.

Like expressions of technological faith, critiques of technology have grown around particular examples. As early
as the 1960s, opponents of the Vietnam War cited the
impotence of high-technology military systems against
the guerilla methods of a resourceful enemy [40]. If high
technology can be negated by such social and political
opposition, this seemed to suggest, why should technological fixes be trusted as a panacea for social and political problems?
For urban audiences over the same period, nuclear
technologies were increasingly cited as inherently dangerous. For growing numbers, the field represented a
failure of government-managed safety certification procedures and a secretive industry. Similarly the chemical industry, which had once been praised for
technological fixes such as DDT to kill agricultural
pests and assure high crop yields, was now criticized
as the source of widespread ecological damage [41].
Such technological criticism in America was pointed to
catastrophes such as super-tanker spills9 as representative of decision-making that prioritized the global
petrochemical economy. And while human health
remained the domain of technological fixes evincing
the most widespread optimism, some topics raised
growing disquiet among consumers. Among them was
an entirely new field for technological fixes: genetic
engineering to design foods that could be longer-lasting or more nutritious (but not necessarily tastier), or
to cure inherited illnesses or extend human choices
(but also introducing myriad moral questions alongside
these new powers). Such cases were cited to argue that
technological solutions streamlined analysis, prioritized economic, corporate, or consumer interests rather than wider benefits, and under-estimated societal
side-effects.

Ethical Implications
Early scholarly criticisms of Alvin Weinberg's notions
criticized them as naively confident about the outcomes
of science ("scientistic") and tending to narrowly define
the complexity of problems ("reductionistic") [42]. Be cause of its exaggerated attention to measurable outcomes, rational decision-making carries additional
philosophical and ethical dimensions. This confidence
in positivism prioritizes confidence in quantitative evidence, and necessarily devotes less consideration to
aspects of human values that cannot be counted.

Engineering disciplines have adapted to the contemporary environment
of terrorist threats by creating special-interest groups to promote security technologies and funding for technological fixes. Among them is the
Homeland Security group of SPIE, the optical engineering society, which
aims to "stimulate and focus the optics and photonics technology community's contributions to enhance the safety, counter homeland threats, and
improve the sense of well being" [38].

International incidents included spillages from the oil tankers Amoco Cadiz
(1978) and Atlantic Empress (1979). Later incidents, such as the Exxon Valdez (1989) and Deep Water Horizon (2010), fueled public debate about societal reliance on large-scale technological systems, ironically while promoting
technological fixes for avoiding or cleaning up after such accidents.

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

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march 2018

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