<\/p>
Grant poses some challenging questions for those who argue that technology is neutral in the sense that it does not impose on us how it should be used. He points to the automobile: Weren\u2019t we free to use it in any old way, or refuse? Grant finds that kind of naivete delusional, and characteristically modern, in the sense that it assumes the utter freedom of the human will. <\/p>\n
He applies a similar line of thinking to the computer: \u201c\u2018The computer does not impose on us the ways it should <\/em> be used\u2019 asserts the essence of the modern view, which is that human ability freely determines what happens.\u201d But the exaltation of the will implied in \u201cdoes not impose\u201d undermines the force of all \u201cshoulds.\u201d The \u201cshould\u201d is only a masquerade that \u201ccushions us from the full impact of the novelty it asks us to consider.\u201d The full impact is evident when we penetrate past the technology itself to the anthropological assumption being made. If we are as masterful as the statement implies, then no \u201cshould\u201d can stand in our way. <\/p>\n More broadly, \u201cThe coming to be of technology has required changes in what we think is good, what we think good is, how we conceive sanity and madness, justice and injustice, rationality and irrationality, beauty and ugliness . . . . the result of this is that when we are deliberating in any practical situation our judgment acts rather like a mirror, which throws back the very metaphysic of this technology which we are supposed to be deliberating about in detail. The outcome is inevitably a decision for further technological development.\u201d Elsewhere, Grant makes this point concerning modern political life: Progress, defined in terms of technological advance, is the raison d\u2019etre <\/em> of modern political systems; as a result, political deliberation about the \u201climits\u201d of technology (eg, should we clone humans?) is predetermined in favor of unlimited technical progress. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Grant poses some challenging questions for those who argue that technology is neutral in the sense that it does not impose on us how it should be used. He points to the automobile: Weren\u2019t we free to use it in any old way, or refuse? Grant finds that kind of naivete delusional, and characteristically modern, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy"],"yoast_head":"\n