The Nature and Risks of Technology

The Technique and Technology

Technique is a skill by which a natural reality is transformed into an artificial reality. This term encompasses both the products obtained and the realization processes and instructions for making them.

The term 'technology' applies to techniques linked to scientific knowledge, often associated with craft manufacturing. Therefore, any technology is technical, but not all technique is technology.

The Philosophy of Technology

The philosophy of technology is a reflection on technical systems and their effects on society.

1. Lewis Mumford was the first to offer an interpretation of the value of technique.
2. Ortega believes that man must create himself. The human being is a project, and technique helps in its creation. He identifies three stages through which mankind has passed in the development of his techniques: the technique of chance, the technique of the craftsman, and the technique of the technician (technology). The technique of the technician (technology) overrides the human being because it enslaves.
3. For Heidegger, technology is a form of truth that is fading.
4. Habermas believes that science and technology do not actually seek truth, as they are contaminated by values and interests unrelated to the search.
5. The technological society and the state bureaucracy have led to depoliticization and civic apathy. Citizens are considered incompetent to make decisions. Technology has become an instrument of domination.
6. Hans Jonas warns of the dangers of technique to humans and the catastrophic consequences for the environment. Against this, a new type of human action is needed.

The Risks of Technological Development

The society of our time lives at risk of collapse, facing the nightmare of a global environmental catastrophe.

Technology is a variable and a challenge of our time. Its ambiguity is scary. The future is viewed with uncertainty, and how that future unfolds is also uncertain as it is being produced. There is thus the paradox that acting against the risk is also a risk.

Philosophical analyses stress the dangers and evils that technology can bring to humanity, though many studies are fraught with irrationality or based on untested assumptions.

We must increase measures for its evolution and control.

Technology is not omnipotent. An intelligent machine is a model or simulation of human intelligence. A machine cannot shape every aspect of thought.

Technology has negative effects, but these can only be combated with appropriate knowledge. The answer is not to deny technology in an irrational manner, but subject it to the control of reason.