Blogito Ergo Sum

"I think, therefore I am... I think..." So went the neo-Cartesian wisdom of the Moody Blues, circa 1971. The pillar of the famous philosopher's quest for certainty was thereby subverted, and replaced with the age-appropriate degree of uncertainty and relativism; appropriate, that is, to the questioning of authority and tradition that came in the wake of the social upheavals, cultural changes and mind-altering drugs of the late 1960's and early 70's.

"Of course you are, my bright little star! And now to suit our Great Computer, you're... Magnetic Ink!" Ouch! What a swift kick in the shins to the glassy-eyed optimism of a generation that planned on changing the world into a global village - the Woodstock variety of village, that is, not, of course, featureless banality of Peyton Place, much less the kind later imagined as the quiet, dystopic horror of Twin Peaks.A specter was haunting that idealistic vision, one that was well recognized by some of its own prophets (like Marcuse and Alvin Toffler): the spectre of technology. "Back to the land!" we cried, as if there were victory even in retreat. Well, that response did have its positive outcomes, like organic farming, an acoustic music revival, and an appreciation of cultures otherwise marginalized as "primitive". But it also had its limitations. In partciular, technology had about as much respect for the "Wooden Ships" attitude ("we are leaving... you don't need us") as kudzu has for weed killer. Its growth has a logic of its own, and if you merely wave goodbye and try to walk away you may just turn around and trip over an ethernet cable.

"I'm more than that... at least, I think I must be." And so we quickly became aware that the problem required somewhat deeper consideration. And indeed, as we looked around, we noticed that it had already received some attention, not only from the camp of Marx and his Frankfurt school offshoots, or John Dewey, but from such politically unlikely allies as Heidegger and Nietzsche. It is nevertheless notable how few of the major philosophers after Hegel took the trouble to talk specifically about technology and its meaning or social impact. The threat and management of technology was already perhaps the primary focus of the science fiction genre well before the 1960's, but as usual, the novelists were way ahead of the philosophers. But as the computer revolution unfolded, and the impact of digital technology spread first to every imaginable kind of electronic device, and then to the very way we interact with one another socially; as both the promise and the threat of the network society began to come into focus; as people began to wonder what would happen to privacy, to manual know-how, to language, to society itself, the occasional commentary exploded into a raging river of words, By the time the public availability of the Internet came along, there had already been more written on the subject than most people could digest in a lifetime.

Since then, for anyone who follows this debate, the meaning and status of technology in society has been the subject of countless tomes, thousands of articles, and millions of web offerings. As seems to be the nature of things in general, it was the growth of technology itself that provided the best means for questioning that growth and mounting a defense of values perceived to be threatened by it. There are at least a couple dozen web sites
run by organizations devoted solely to the study and critique of technology's impact on society. For some the focus is on privacy issues; for others, digital rights and copyright; security breaches and information control form another major area of concern. There are sites devoted to the ethics of biometric identification systems, sites that examine robotics and artificial intelligence, lots of attention to the impact of technology on the environment, and of course, innumerable discussions and resources which turn on issues at the intersection of digital and medical technology, or bioethics. (The latter of course providing an inspiration for the title of this blog.)

On Tuesday, the day of the last scheduled debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the New York Times ran an article in which they asked several commentators to come up with previously unanswered questions for the debate. Christine Rosen, who is identified as "a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a senior editor of The New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology and Society", came up with several questions about Internet and Blackberry usage and their effects on the candidates and on society. Needless to say, these are not the questions that were asked by the moderators of the debate. But we have reached the stage - indeed, we had reached it in the last election - where it would be far from startling to have presidential candidates interrogated about their views on the impact of technology in society. Indeed, though there were 19 previous debates (none of which I watched) it would be very unfortunate if any future president were elected without having to voice an opinion on at least digital privacy issues, ecommerce policy, and the social impact of technology. It is time that this country had a software policy, a hardware policy, a network security policy, and an Internet policy, at least, but since we do not even have an industrial or science policy worthy of the name, that is unlikely to happen soon. (Having a policy does not have to mean clubbing technology users into submission, but can often be a matter of promoting best practices by providing incentives, examples, training, and the like.) Nonetheless, the time is clearly upon us when everyone, including presidential candidates, can hardly avoid considering technology policy. The task is to put it up there with the more traditional foreign and domestic policy issues. Right now, there are a million small voices shouting from various corners of the political and geographical spectrum about the use and abuse of technology, but very little of a positive nature happening on the national scale.

In starting this blog, I add yet another squeak to the chorus of quiet noise from Whoville. "Why?", you undoubtedly ask. Part of my answer is in the title of this post. I am already the author of two other blogs (which I shall not promote here, but one concerns the arts and public policy, and the other cognitive science and the philosophy of mind). I have been writing commentary in one form or other, some of it published but much of it not, since I was in high school. Now, after 25 years as a computer professional, nearly 20 years as a student and teacher of philosophy, having published and taught a bit on technology and ethics, I have come to have sufficient familiarity with the subject to think I might conceivably have something interesting to say; or if not, at least sufficient interest to want to explore it more deeply. Then why not write a book, you ask? Okay, if anyone is really inclined to ask that, the answer is, I am. I'm writing a book in public, so to speak. The journals and notes of many a philosopher and author have been published. This one can be too, if you wish. But here it is self-published. I am all for peer review and editorial oversight, but writing a blog does not preclude this. It simply gets copy in front of an audience more immediately, and there is a lot of value in that. Part of the value is purely personal: I don't have to wait for someone to assess whether my voice is worth hearing. If it is not, the market will judge, but in any case I can keep talking as long as I want, with the only loss being a few square microns of space on a silicon chip as my ravings are stored on one of Google's servers. But there is also a value for democracy in general (too obvious to explicate) and for society, in having a more immediate record of how people react to ethical questions than the highly refined and formally constrained record of journal articles or professional books. "Information wants to be free", the old slogan goes (from the days when Wired was more interested in exploring moral and social questions than in hooking clients for ads from every luxury car company in the universe). So do ideas, as "meme" theorists have impressed upon us. Blogging lets ideas circulate without much hindrance.

In what follows I hope to explore ethical issues in technology and bring to them something of both the philosopher's critical eye as well as the writer's flair (if I have any flair, but reading over some of my other blog posts, I think I have at least a little). And with any luck I hope my readers will join me and make this a much wider forum than the opinions of one individual can provide. There are many blogs in which these issues are addressed from time to time, but I think there is value in having an ongoing discussion of this subject alone. Not that I claim to be the first. Let's just see if this doesn't add up to some kind of worthwhile contribution to debates that cna alter the nature of our society and ourselves.