On Morality and Technology

If one were to attempt to evaluate the morality of technology it might seem the first task would be to move from the general to the specific. Different technologies have different moral qualities, do they not? A medical imaging device that can save tens of thousands of lives is fundamentally different morally from a weapon system that is designed only to kill effectively. This is an extreme example and, as a long dead Greek gentleman once said, extreme cases make bad laws.

If we consider what technology does generally we might be able to make some general statements about it. Technology, in whatever guise, increases our ability to alter our circumstance, to tailor our environment to suit, to force reality to conform to our wishes. It seems like a certainty that any technology not specifically designed around a basic moral premise (like the Doctor's famous "do no harm") must necessarily be amoral at best and immoral as a general rule. The reasoning behind that judgment is unclear so let me explain.

One of the Great Russian Authors, I forget which one, noted a strange quirk of human nature; those who profess to love the human race as a whole tend to dislike humans as individuals and vice versa. I am one of those people who dislikes the species as a whole but likes individual representatives. I do not think highly of humans. We are venal, cruel, and brutish. It therefore follows that those things which increase our ability to act on our nature will result in an increase in venality, cruelty, and brutishness.

Whatever you think of the preceding argument, you will admit technological advances do not occur by themselves. The greatest engine the human species has ever created for spurring technological advance is capitalism. So the morality of technology can only properly be examined within the context of the capitalist societies that advance it. The first thing that must become apparent to anyone who has any knowledge of either history or anthropology is capitalist societies are spectacularly unkind. The are venal and avaricious by definition and brutish to those who are least capable of defending themselves. The more advanced the economy, the more unkind the society.

That is the downside of capitalism. Even its harshest critics will admit it creates wealth almost as well as it creates technology. But the division of wealth that is the heart of capitalism is, in many ways, its cruelest aspect. In non-capitalist societies (it would be more proper to describe them as pre-economic or pre-capitalist) it is almost universally true that no one starves until everyone starves. This is manifestly untrue about capitalist societies.

In the smaller picture, at the level of the individual wondering whether or not to purchase a new technology, economics is also germane. I am writing this on an old MacBook Pro. While I love this computer (and have since I bought it) I can't quite bring myself to purchase another while Chinese workers in Apple factories are committing suicide to protest working conditions or while minerals necessary to build a replacement are mined by slaves in some of the worst places in the world.

Morality, it is worth remembering, it not something I do to myself, but how I act towards others. And in the world in which we live money is a form of action. I don't bother myself about my money making executives even more ridiculously wealthy but I cannot help but be bothered when the way I use my money makes some of the most miserable people on the planet even more miserable.