Skeptical about corporate technology? Think it and science are two different things?

[saras]

Ten recommended attitudes about technology, from Jerry Mander.

1. Since most of what we are told about new technology comes from its proponents, be deeply skeptical of all claims.

2. Assume all technology to be guilty until proven innocent.

3. Eschew the idea that technology is neutral or value-free. Every technology has inherent and identifiable social, political, and environmental consequences.

4. The fact that technology has a natural flash and appeal is meaningless. Negative attributes are slow to emerge.

5. Never judge a technology by the way it benefits you personally. Seek a holistic view of its impacts. The operative question isnot whether it benefits you, but who benefits most? And to what end?

6. Keep in mind that an individual technology is only one piece of a larger web of technologies. The operative question here is how the individual technology fits the larger one.

7. Make distinctions between technologies that primarily serve the individual or the small community and those that operate on a scale outside of community control.

8. When it is argued that the benefits of the technological lifeway are worthwhile despite harmful outcomes, recall that Lewis Mumford referred to these alleged benefits as "bribery". Cite the figures about crime, suicide, alienation, drug abuse, as well as environmental and cultural degradation.

9 Do not accept the homily that "once the genie is out of the bottle you cannot put it back," or that rejecting a technology is impossible. Such attitudes induce passivity and confirm victimization.

10. In thinking about technology within the present climate of technological worship, emphasize the negative. This brings balance.

[MineralMan]

1. It's interesting that you treat 'technology'

as one thing, really. I like to look at each new technology as a separate thing and explore its negatives and positives on a more specific basis.

For example, take the technology you are using to post this. Lots of positives in it, and few negatives.
Or, take alternative energy generation. It's hard to find fault there, pretty much.
Or medical technology that allows replacement of failed knees and hips and extends mobility in our elders.
Or immunological technology that has eliminated smallpox from the planet, and has almost eliminated polio, while making childhood diseases a far less serious threat to our society.

There are many aspects of science and technology. Some technologies are very beneficial, while others are decidedly negative.

Being a Luddite is not a good thing, really. It blinds people to the good that also comes from technology. I suggest you get more specific with your anti-technology message. It will make a lot more sense if you do. I'm skeptical about broad-based negative views of technology.

[JoeyT]

2. While I agree with you about

considering each technology on its own merits, many of your examples had some huge negatives. I think that's the main point of the OP.

The metal on metal hip implants that were insufficiently tested and fragment off causing metallosis. The alternative energy generation field is positively overflowing with scammers and frauds. And the worst example of all: Windows ME.

There's a huge gulf between warranted skepticism and a luddite's kneejerk rejection of new technology.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. I can't tell if that was a serious post or not

By ending up with the worst example of 'technology' being Windows ME, I tend to think it wasn't.

[ElboRuum]

3. Trying to understand how...

...having a preemptive skepticism, complete with itemized heuristics, could ever be considered legitimate application of skepticism.

OP is Luddite nonsense. No points there.

[EvolveOrConvolve]

4. I made it to #2

before realizing how full of shit this list really is. It's one degree of separation from conspiracy woo.

[TheWraith]

6. What a lovely guidebook to knuckle-dragging regressivism.

Irrational, illogical, predicated on fear and fallacious "argument." Not to mention on pure, 195-proof golden-age thinking, the belief that life was somehow better at a previous point in time, which is transparently false. Ask the people from the times when polio ran rampant, or when your employer could lock you in the building 12 hours a day, or way back to the beginning before all that "evil" technology, when all we had was caves and spears--and an estimated one third of all early humans died from homicide.

[longship]

7. The flush toilet is evil!!!

1. It was and is nearly universally championed by lots of people, therefore it must be bad.

2. Flush toilets must be presumed to be evil. Throwing the contents of the chamber pot out the window is not.

3. The flush toilet requires a system to deliver water. It's expensive to dig up all those streets and the cost of water purification is too high. Don't get me started about the evils of potable water being available to just anybody, or the horrors of fluoride.

4. The flush toilet ignores the joys of having the contents of a chamber pot being dumped on your head as you walk down a street under windows.

5. Flush toilets benefit only big plumbing, the utterly evil empire of big guys showing butt cracks while they snoop for leaks under another abomination, kitchen sinks.

6. Isn't this just a restatement of #3? See #3 for how bad this is.

7. Huh? Word salad to me. But I am sure that flush toilets fail this one, too.

8. The cultural degradation of flush toilets is immense. People would be able to poop anytime they wanted! And there would be no joy in dumping the chamber pot out the window just when the neighbor you don't like walked by.

9. Don't be victimized by this new flush toilet craze. Chamber pots were good enough for my ancestors and they are good enough for us. We need to go backwards, not forwards!

10. I witnessed my brother-in-law worshipping at the altar of the flush toilet last weekend after a night of drinking alcoholic beverage. It was a disgusting display, with the porcelain bowl grasped in his hands, he repeatedly invoked the name of the flush toilet god, "Rork! O'Rork!"

Needless to say, these technologies are evil! We need to make a law outlawing them before we become doomed and damned!

Oh, the humanity!

(Better do this... )