Seven views of technology for a distinctive afro-modernity

Seven views of technology for a distinctive afro-modernity

?Seven views of technology for a distinctive afro-modernity

Jacques L. Hamel [1]

December 2020, unpublished

Summary: Technology is the defining characteristic of any form of modernity. Indeed, human life is more and more mediated, impacted and transformed by technology, which determine who we are, how we work and how we live. The good and nice things that modern technology can do have been aired convincingly in numerous meetings, workshops, seminars, conferences, studies, and policy documents. Heads of State have adopted numerous declarations and resolutions for the adoption of technology as a necessary means for modernization. There is a consistent and generous narrative on the potential of indigenous and modern technology. However, many issues regarding modernization are largely underestimated, such as those associated with the contextualization of technology, or the adaptation of modern technology to African contexts and African cultures to the structural dictates of technology. There are also important concerns related to the larger political, anthropological, and civilizational issues regarding technology. Which views of must one embrace to foster this technologization process? This paper outlines various views grouped into seven categories which may be helpful for shaping technology policies, and for revealing a sustainable style of Afro-modernity, distinct from the unsustainable failed North-Atlantic style, through a strategy of subversive rationalization.

Introduction

Given the low level of technological development in much of the continent, many African cultures, under the assault of powerful foreign technologies, appear to be facing formidable challenges to technological modernization. New ways of 'being-with' technology and a revision of feelings, attitudes and motives towards technology may be needed. And there may be a need to fight both techno-phobism and techno- fetishism and to evolve toward techno-realism in the context of modernization. Moral, spiritual, or religious limitations on technology should not deter the continent from judicious technological uptake, progressively removing some cultural barriers, and espousing a friendly and peaceful technological adventure. History is the result of human actions more than of human design. Thus, even if the limits of a voluntarist modernity are obvious, a meaningful technological journey is possible and can be steered in the right direction and at a sustainable pace with proper knowledge, awareness, understandings, strategies and policies, as shown by Japan and the Asian Tigers, for instance. Africans are challenged by the universalizing pressures and forces of technology. What can they do to turn justified apprehensions into enthusiastic but cautious acceptance? Do they have to take the technological route at all? For this, it is perhaps useful to identify various technological views and group them into non-exclusive, overlapping, competitive and complementary categories, in relation to the idea of control or power, humanity and nature, culture and development, and the idea of values and meanings.

These categories of views, with no clear boundaries, can be grouped into seven as follows: (l) - The Instrumentalist / Utilitarian / Functionalist Views of Technology (2) - The Determinist / Autonomist / Fatalist Views of Technology (3) - The Essentialist / Substantivist / Fundamentalist Views of Technology 4) - Luddist / Rejectionist / Technophobic Views of Technology (5) - Environmentalist / Naturalist / Romantic Views of Technology (6) - Pre-Modernist / Traditionalist / Preservationist Views of Technology (7) - Constructivist / Voluntarist / Idealistic Views of Technology

These views may be helpful to conceive and influence technological design and formulate subversive rationalization strategies, supported by adequate policies in the framework of modernity.

(1) The Instrumentalist / Utilitarian / Functionalist Views

In these views, technology is an economic object, a useful object in the sense of economic utility, governed by economic efficiency. It is essentially a faithful servant. Humans are controllers, managers, and disposers of technology. It is a tool to harness the potential of the nature for economic purpose. In economic terms, it is a factor of production, regulated by economic reason (rationalization). It is the overarching instrument for empowering people, societies, and civilizations. A constant of homo sapiens: human creativity applied on the forces of nature shapes technology, which can take the form of a means, a gadget, an apparatus, an extension of bodies and capacities, an expansion of intellectual faculties, a compensation for human deficiencies, a machine, a weapon, a system, an energy captor, a water well. Technology is fully at the service of humans. It may be perceived as value-neutral, although the pursuits are predominantly economic. It provides well defined means aiming at specific independent ends, in pursuit of fully mastered and internalized economic benefits. Technology is underpinned by an infallible faith in a continuous and triumphant progress, the promise of greater freedom and greater satisfaction of needs and desires. Technology is worshiped uncritically, and its diffusion is not limited by non-technical values. It is expected that a technology working well in a given context would work just as well in almost any other contexts. These are optimistic / positive / euphoric / utopian views of technology. The upbeat aspects are stressed while the detrimental or negative aspects are overlooked. Technology is everything one could wish for and is an object of celebration. Humans think that are masters over their tools.

(2) The Determinist / Autonomist / Fatalistic Views

In these views, technology is an autonomous developmental force, which determines the fate of peoples, companies, countries and regions. Technology is under the tyranny of technical reason, purely technical modes of thought and mechanistic worldviews. Life consists in playing a technological game. Technology is a winner: it is winning over humans, who become themselves somewhat technological slave artifacts. Technology is the master. It standardizes cultures around technology. It is growing and taking over the world. Humans and technology are more and more enmeshed. The destiny of human simply follows the destiny of technology, not the other way around. Technology controls human trajectories. Technology is the destiny. It erodes the sovereignty and accelerates the obsolescence of humans, in an increasingly over-technologized and over-mechanized world, governed by robots, computers and artificial intelligence. Humans are progressively transformed into technological beings. Technology is a historical object or a self-generating driver of historical trajectories. It is governed by its own internal 'imperial' dynamic and logic and regulated by purely technical efficiency, novelty and demands. Technological discontinuities and ruptures are unpredictable and unavoidable. Humans are powerless to stop technological progress. Technological innovation is the results of zillions of interactions, driven by growing communication and social networking technologies, which are epoch-making technologies that were not anticipated, desired, designed or planned, in line with the idea of technology that contains ‘an autonomous power’ or a force for which humans are rapidly losing grasp. It fulfils needs that were not even dreamed of or uttered a few decades ago. Technology is hardly regulatable, and it also appears as value-neutral, neither good nor bad in themselves. It is primarily an open-ended means in continuous search for open ends and it can find a variety of unimagined or unintended innovations, benefits and losses. Humans are entering into the realm of technological objects, in technological societies made for technology's sake. The users of technology become progressively toys, playthings, standing reserves, raw materials, cogs, devices, machines, or reproductive sex organs (McLuhan). The relation between technology and power is a permanent feature of historical development. Their cumulative nature strengthens their hegemonic character and the asymmetric global technological order. Modernity is characterized by the necessary illusion of an autonomous reason and society is willingly or unconsciously organized around technology, gradually producing an iron cage of bureaucratic rationality and robot-like humans. These are rather cynical views of technology and humans. So far, there are thousands of ingenious pre-modern technological forms but only one impoverishing form of modernity driven by technology. Buildings, streets, cars, mobiles and computers, suits and neckties, in Dakar or Lagos, look like those in Liverpool, Osaka or New York. Can an afro-modernity produce an alternative distinct technological regime and landscape for a distinct modernity? A technological conquest of some sort seems to be an inescapable necessity for any form of modernity, which may require letting modern technology truncate, prune or hone African cultures to the hard necessities of technical rationality, where the dominant paradigms (capitalist order) and standards (high- income countries) are not under the control of Africans.

(3) The Essentialist / Substantivist / 'Fundamentalist' Views

In these views, humans and technology are merged, humans become hybrids. It is an anthropological object or a 'second human nature'. Technological evolution is a process of human denaturation / renaturation, or de-hunanization / re-humanisation. Technology reveals being. It uncovers what it is to be human, in contradistinction to animals. Humans are progressively transformed into humanoids. Technology is not only something we use but something we are part of, something we inhabit and something we are. We dwell in a technologically textured world, where technology acts as a frame, a manipulator, a controller, a shaper. We are our tools, our hammers, and we are tooled by our tools. We fashion technology, which in turn fashions us. Humans and technology are cause and effect, they are co-produced and co-producing. Humans produce technology and, in a circular way, technology produces ever new humans. We have already been grasped long before we grasp technology. Technology is value-loaded towards the ideology of innovation, development, progress, and power. Various human pathologies arise from an ever-increasing dependence upon and ever increasingly invading techno-complex. Techno-scientific and ethical controversies. Technology has the potential of manipulating and killing (if not creating) forms of life and animal life. Some biological characters and human capacities are lost while some artificial efficiency is gained. Human life is structured to conform to the blind adoption of technical possibilities. These are among the most puzzling views on technology, which may verge on sci-fi. An afro-modernity should compose with the unavoidable dehumanising / re-humanising bias of technology.

(4) The Luddist / Rejectionist / Technophobic Views

In these views, technology is a 'subverter' of economic, social and cultural life. It is a destroyer of labor-intensive industries and low paid jobs, a disfiguring 'mediatizer' of social relations, a demolisher of 'family dinners', an inhibiter of genuine human interactions, a transformer of humans into machines, a vehicle for a culture of domination. Humans capacities and life are devalued and deteriorated by technology. The simplicity of a non- technological life is preferred to an over-technologized life. Skills are eroded and loss. Pathologies arise from the subjection of workers to the idiosyncrasies of technology. All this is raising anti-technology feelings. Some movements are being formed on controversial issues to stop or slow the invasion or colonization of our lifeworlds by technology. These views are also associated with outright anti-modernist views, and anti-nuclear views. In extreme cases technology is believed to be a runaway monster, devouring the very essence of human beings. Controversies around GMOs, Monsanto, reproductive health, are as acute as in Africa as in other parts of the world, including RSA which is often a separate more evolved case (environmental and cultural fears of technology are discussed below). Technology is associated with danger. Many scientists and thinkers throughout history hid (until their death) or even destroyed their findings or inventions for fear that their knowledge or technology would be misused. Many have been put to death for challenging erroneous views. In Africa, the burning of the famous ancient library of Alexandria is one of the most Luddist act in history. Prominent political philosophers have revealed the dehumanizing, deskilling and destabilizing effects of technology on workers. Since then, the issue of technology is part of every labor conventions, particularly job security, health, training, in the context of inevitable technological change. In Africa, technological pursuits are understood by many as inferior activities compared with more dignified and noble political, spiritual, social, administrative, cultural or football pursuits. In some African societies, wealth, success or affluence are not particularly well seen in a landscape dominated by spirituality and poverty. And why build fences - a successful technology - to keep animals in the field while young boys can do the job just as well (but out of school)? Africans may naturally defend their cultures, systems of beliefs and ways of life, which are being assaulted, shattered, or ruined by technology. Technological progress inevitably introduces all sorts of disturbances into any society. It embodies the values and power structures of communities. There are reasons for not taking the technology route when traditional values are deemed dearer than modern ones. Technology is very violent, cruel and vicious. Traditional societies will not survive the challenges of modern technologies without losing their uniquely distinctive characters. Modern technology contains universalizing Western values, which tend to obliterate geography. These are among the most profoundly negative views of technology. Policymakers must mitigate the destabilizing / subverting effects of technology adoption.

(5) The Environmentalist / Naturalist / Romantic Views

In these views, technology is a processor, a 'profanizer', a raper, a consumer, an abuser, a 'denaturer' of nature. It is a builder of beautiful environments but also a generator of various unwanted 'collateral damages’. It can torture or even kill nature - several species have already died during our man-made 6th extinction. Means necessarily subvert ends. Technology will kill humans (or humans commit suicide). Environmental pathologies are the main object of focus and the remedy consists in moving from environmentally violent technologies, if not 'ecocidal' technologies, to nature-friendly, eco or green technologies. In Africa, the possible environmental contamination with genetic modification technologies, for instance, is a concern that may justify fear, in addition to the violence of the international trading (competitive) system itself. Climate change, on the other hand, - the product of an over-heating technological mega-engine — is affecting everybody. Economic interests (capitalism), group interests and elite interests determine major technological trends and environmental risks. These risks generate immense concerns. Unwise technology adoption will structure the continent for many years to come. Modernity would rehabilitate damaged environments and use appropriate 'hygienic' sustainable technologies, including particularly in energy, water and soil fertility, which require mammoth investments. Policymakers must mitigate the destructive effects of technology. These are among the most disturbing views of technology.

(6) The Pre-Modernist / Traditionalist / Preservationist Views

In these views, technology is under the authority of cultural reason. It is embedded in traditional principles, customs, magic, rituals, and knowledge, which tends to be very rigid or strictly enforced — a challenge in a fast-moving world. From inside, traditional belief systems are conceived as truth, and from outside as fading vestiges of pre- scientific times. Nature is conceived in social terms or as populated by visible and invisible beings. Time is rotative / circular / the same. Societies are tribal, totemic, phallocratic, patriarchal, animists. Technological advances are hardly known, and what are known are as perplexing as magical. Technological stagnation may be culturally sustained. Technological progress may be a nightmare. In this perspective a technological system is a cultural system, and a technology transfer is a cultural transfer. Foreign technology absorption is always an inter-cultural encounter. It is a destabilizing choc. Doctrinaires, idolatric, phallocentric, Abrahamic religious systems, can be viewed as super-technologies of salvation, with profound historical knowledge bases and impressive technological infrastructures and institutions. Technology often involves a turning away from long-established beliefs, from faiths and divine providence, particularly from ‘Africans-of-one-book’. It may undermine traditional virtues in an over-religious region. Thus, modernization is to some extent kept in check by immensely powerful spiritual / religious knowledge. Long-lasting respect for ancestors and strong attachment to some traditional ways of life are not conducive to modernity, which is oriented more toward innovation and change. Rudimentary technologies have worked well in the past but are now subject to powerful and convincing alternatives in a fast-changing world. Under the external forces of change there is a counter-reaction of protection and of conservation. In pre-modern Africa, as it was the case in pre-modern Europe, technology is often associated with lower human activities, such as those of craftsmen, than other non- technological activities, such as those of artists, philosophers, theologians, administrators, politicians, rich merchants, teachers, doctors, soldiers, sportsmen. Modern technology introduces societal instabilities or disruptions in technology-power structures, which are feared. It embodies the standards, morals, ethics, and ideals of a particular society. Whole rural populations have never encountered modern technologies and have only a sketchy idea of what they are and what they can do to transform lives. The forces of technological immobility often win over the forces of technological change. Charlatanism, sorcery, witchcraft, alchemy, magic need to be pushed back. An astrology column can be found in most newspaper of the world but nothing on astronomy. Modernity requires processes of re-sacralization, re-enchantment, re-socialization, re-mythologization and re-cosmologization. Adapting pre-modern cultures to these processes and to technical rationality could be extremely demanding and extraordinarily challenging. A contradiction: a modern Africa, of the North Atlantic type, would be a catastrophe for humanity. It would lead to the impoverishing loss of original local indigenous cultures, distinctive languages, exquisite arts, alternative ways of life, creative know-how and unique knowledge, including of biodiversity. It would strengthen some human capacities and at the same time it would weaken others regarded as essential to the identity and survival of people. Traditional life should resist the destructive dictates of technical rationality. Is this feasible? These views are also immensely challenging. An afro-modernity would have to compose with the unavoidable tragedy of the de-culturalizing bias of technology.

(7) The Constructivist / Voluntarist / Idealistic Views

In these views, technology is a political object, regulated by political reason. Technology a terrain of constant political struggles. Political powers and compromises are at play. Technology is a promise, a savior, a messianic hope, a liberator, an emancipator, a humanizer, provided it is well managed. Technological violence can be mitigated or tamed. Technology is primarily a chosen way of life, a chosen adventure taking the best of what it has to offer and fighting the worst that it can bring in its wake. It is influenced by social demands, economic forces, cultural receptiveness, and political decisions, where a strategy of rational subversion /subversive rationalization can be shaped. It co-emerges and is mutually constitutive of the social, economic, and cultural orders. It is predominantly a political object providing a framework for various technological lifestyles, for various ways of being-with technology. Technology can be better designed to better serve its creators. It is transforming cause-effect relations into means-goal circular relations. It is aiming selectively at desired ends while combating undesired or unintended ones. It is aiming at realizing the highest possibilities of human beings while containing environmental cruelty, excessive technical mediation, and societal disruptions. It is aiming at conquering the non-technical aspects of technology and at mitigating the pressures of technical rationality. It is the normative approach to technology (technology has to ...). Traditional ways of thinking and values, mythologies, superstitions, prejudices, illusions, cosmo-fables, pre-scientific worldviews / mentalities / mindsets, harmful traditions, religious fantasies, delusions and (food) taboos, cannot all survive the development of ever more life-structuring technology. But some selected, unique, and defining characteristics of a meaningful modern 'Africanity' can live proudly. This requires the modernization of our mental and intellectual costumes, the secularization of over-religious knowledge systems, meaningful democratic participative controls, social justice, and political sagacity.  These are all constitutive of the technological horizon of a distinctive and sustainable afro-modernity, through a strategy of subversion and rationalization.

[1] Jacques - ([email protected]) is an engineer, an economist, a scientist, and a promoter of effective knowledge systems for uncovering a meaningful Afro-modernity