The argument: “Technology is value neutral” evokes a great deal of debates. However, it is not an argument. The given essay will take into consideration all the arguments inherent in it.
Technology is only one of the specific types of activity. From the philosophical-methodological point of view technology concerns not the bases, but the data domain; it is studied by means of such categories as “activity”, “reality”, “existence”, “value” and others. The representations of activity as technology are quite lawful means if to take into consideration the appropriate context - the analysis of the essence of any technology’s genesis in culture. Out of this context the identification of technology with activity can lead to various paradoxes. One of them is that technology can be both valuable and valueless. Thus, it is possible to assume that there are two arguments inherent in the argument “Technology is value neutral”.
On the one hand, technology represents the activity in the frames of which there are not only innovations, but also “control of their development”. On the other hand, technology is a social cultural sphere, the peculiarities and evolution of which are caused at least by five global factors - cultural schematics and world patterns, social institutes, values and beliefs of a modern person and structure of our technogenic civilization. Simultaneously, the technology itself causes the specified global factors in many respects. Such a role of the modern technology led our society, nowadays more than ever, to the explicit conviction that technology is an important determinant of values in our lives. Therefore, this is the first argument inherent in the argument “Technology is value neutral”.
Modern science and technology promptly expand the natural possibilities of a person. There are revolutionary changes in various areas of a science and extraordinary progress in all areas of knowledge. However, this development of knowledge and technologies increases the rupture between the exterior possibilities of people and their internal moral forces. Therefore, as people have both good and bad qualities, this growing misbalance between the exterior possibilities and internal moral forces leads to the numerous unfavorable situations and problems.
“Technology is not equivalent to the essence of technology. Likewise, the essence of technology is by no means anything technological. Thus we shall never experience our relationship to the essence of technology so long as we merely represent and pursue the technological, put up with it, or evade it. Everywhere we remain not free and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it” (The Question Concerning Technology: n.d.).
Nowadays technologies can be compared to a bistro where a person is fed up very quickly but not with a very nutritious food. The same things happen to technologies: there is enough knowledge and information, but there is no wisdom. Many highly-educated people became successful in the professional work using modern technologies,; however, they happen to be full losers in mutual relations, their behavior and a width of views. The majority of them confess that they are not happy.
The mankind has saved up a …