In View: Techno-Optimism
Change of any sort comes with positives and negatives. The claim of the techno-optimist is that for technological change the benefits outweigh the costs, which should include existential risk and long-term costs. Their answer to the possible downsides of new technology is not to have less technology, but to have more and better technology. In the words of one of their critics, John McDermott, the ultimate First Principle of the techno-optimist is that technology “is a self-correcting system”.1 Put another way, techno-optimism is the worldview fragment that centres around the belief that technology is a solution to humanity’s ills. In this post, we will take a closer look.
The techno-optimist fragment shows similarities to other fragments such as transhumanism, scientism, rationalism, physicalism and materialism, reductionism, technocratism, utopianism, and progressivism, understood as the idea that progress of all kinds is both possible and necessary for human improvement. Together, these could form a total worldview. Of course, techno-optimism does not require any of these other fragments to be part of one’s worldview. The contrary worldview is techno-pessimism or perhaps anarcho-primitivism, the worldview that endeavours to bring humanity back to a pre-industrial and uncivilised state of nature. This comes from the belief that technology has more deleterious effects than beneficial ones, and that human flourishing requires close connection to nature and living according to biologically evolved ways of life.
Techno-optimism comes with a host of assumptions and interpretations of the world, of history, and of the possible future. As a narrative, it usually tells the story of a violent hunter-gatherer past and an initially slow technological advance but, from the European Renaissance on, an exponential process of discovery and invention that is accelerating still. This technological progress coincides with improved well-being and happiness, which establishes the moral imperative to hasten technological progress even further. This is, of course, a selective reading of history and many techno-optimists may nuance this reading a great deal. Some questions we may pose are whether it is true that the agricultural revolution led to an improved standard of living when compared to hunter-gatherers; whether technological advances were to the benefit of all humanity rather than primarily certain geographic regions and social classes; or whether such an extrapolation from past to future is warranted when the destructive potential of technology has reached a planetary scale. The sophisticated techno-optimist will argue for the need for institutional innovation to accompany technological innovation. Social security, for example, is an institutional innovation that counters some of the wealth disparities arising from the techno-capitalist mode of production. On the other hand, an overbearing belief in technological fixes makes it harder to instigate behavioural or institutional change when faced with problems such as climate change or possible threats such as artificial superintelligence.
The vision of the future that techno-optimism brings is one of power and bliss. When technological progress reaches the point of the singularity - the intelligence explosion, where intelligent entities, human, machine, or a mix, are able to self-improve to reach ever higher levels of intelligence—the expectation is that it will be for the good of humankind.2 Come at this point, humanity will be augmented to an unrecognisable form and will expand out into the vast reaches of space. The world will be a utopia in which all will experience “surpassing bliss and delight” for the duration of an immortal life, as read in Nick Boström’s “Letter from Utopia”.3 Of course, many doubt this utopian picture, citing a host of existential risks brought about by the technology, A.I. in particular, that should get us there—Nick Boström himself being one of the first among them. Philosopher Nicholas Agar argues against such visions using the idea of hedonic normalisation, which states that one’s subjective experience aligns with one’s objective circumstances. Everyday life is no happier today than two-hundred years ago, despite tremendous technological advances; neither will the future be full of bliss due to even more discomforts being removed. Pleasure and well-being are here thought to be relative and adaptive to the circumstances.4
Worldviews come with an axiology or value theory. They accord value to certain things, actions, and attitudes rather than others. By itself, we can say techno-optimism values the control and mastery over nature, to bend nature to our will, rather than living with nature and at nature’s pace. The transhumanist goal of immortality is an extreme example of this desire for control. Here, death is a limit to be overcome. It is not taken as something that is constitutive of the meaning of existence—some would say that human finitude commands us to pay attention to life. Knowledge, for the techno-optimist, is valuable because it gives more possibilities for control, instead of being intrinsically valuable. In turn, control is valued because it leads to an improvement of the human condition, as evidenced by the above interpretation of history. Techno-optimism, not surprisingly, is the logical extension of a no-holds-barred engineering rationality. As a result, we may see that the meaningfulness of the everyday, of the spiritual and the religious, of the beauty of a sunglazed morning, is somewhat devalued by the emphasis on the future and the idea of how much better life could be. Conversely, there is an awareness that in the past things were worse. Finally, techno-optimism privileges the mind over the body, the former being the seat of abstract reason and the latter being subject to improvement. The transhumanist idea of mind uploading exemplifies this prioritisation of the mind.
From an axiology follows a praxeology, or a theory of action. The techno-optimist worldview fragment prescribes the use of science and technology for solving problems, rather than an appeal to moral values or social norms (though institutional innovation is not excluded, as per the above). For example, the rise in mental illness is to be fixed through pharmacological means rather than through tackling the social problems from which they spring. The same can be said of the development of companion robots for combating loneliness. When this mindset enters the political realm, there is a tendency towards technocratic governance, or rule by experts. Rather than a value-driven decision backed by majority will, a techno-scientifically optimal solution is implemented that is based on a calculation of economic costs and benefits. In practice, this is often accomplished by setting up a market. For example, when governments cut back public funding from universities and let competitive forces determine the price of a degree, rather than society’s valuation of education. In everyday life, a techno-optimist will be unlikely to struggle against the introduction of new technologies, instead being an early adopter. There is a proclivity to adopt new lifestyles based on technology rather than adapting technology to already present ways of life. Experimentation with human enhancement technologies from robotics and biotech is an extreme example. The gratuitous exchange of personal data for online services is more mundane.
Worldviews also make life meaningful by giving us goals to strive for, interpretations that comfort, and hope that sustains. Foremost, techno-optimism offers hope for a better future. In a time where trust in social and moral advance is teetering, the certain progress of science and technology offers a refuge for the desperate. In the absence of religion and faith, science and technology carry the promise of answers and immortality—a salvation of our own making. From an existential perspective then, the (extreme) techno-optimist remains uncomfortable in a world without transcendence.
Further reading
Two historically important texts:
“Science, the Endless Frontier” by Vannevar Bush (1945). Vannevar Bush was the influential chief science adviser to Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and first introduced the language of techno-optimism in American politics with this policy document. It instigated the American government’s massive postwar spending on R&D.5
“Technology: opiate of the intellectuals” by John McDermott (1969). Following the U.S. military’s use of high tech means for destruction in the Vietnam war, John McDermott, a relatively unknown academic, wrote this scathing critique of the techno-optimist ideology that justified this use and instituted a new technoscientific elite that developed and managed this technology.
One techno-utopianist and anarcho-primitivist text:
“Letter from Utopia” by Nick Boström (2008). While Boström is certainly no naive optimist, he does see technology as the means with which humanity could reach perfection.
“Industrial society and its future” by Theodore Kaczynski (1996). This essay was published by The New York Times under threat by the notorious Unabomber (Kaczynski himself) - a serial bomber that wished to unleash a global revolution to return humanity to the pre-industrial age.
4 techno-optimist books
“The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology” by Ray Kurzweil
“Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress” by Steven Pinker
“The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves” by Matt Ridley
“The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World” by David Deutsch
Technology: Opiate of the Intellectuals (1969) by John McDermott
Technological Singularity (1993) by Vernor Vinge
Letter from Utopia (2008) by Nick Bostrom
See, for example, “The Sceptical Optimist: Why Technology Isn’t the Answer to Everything”