Technicism

Generally, technicism is an over reliance or overconfidence in technology as a benefactor of society.

Taken to extreme, some argue that technicism is the belief that humanity will ultimately be able to control the entirety of existence using technology. In other words, human beings will someday be able to master all problems and possibly even control the future using technology. Some, such as Monsma,^[36] connect these ideas to the abdication of religion as a higher moral authority.

Optimism

Optimistic assumptions are made by proponents of ideologies such as transhumanism and singularitarianism, which view technological development as generally having beneficial effects for the society and the human condition. In these ideologies, technological development is morally good. Some critics see these ideologies as examples of scientism and techno-utopianism and fear the notion of human enhancementand technological singularity which they support. Some have described Karl Marx as a techno-optimist.^[37]

Pessimism

On the somewhat pessimistic side are certain philosophers like the Herbert Marcuse and John Zerzan, who believe that technological societies are inherently flawed a priori. They suggest that the result of such a society is to become evermore technological at the cost of freedom and psychological health.

Many, such as the Luddites and prominent philosopher Martin Heidegger, hold serious reservations, although not a priori flawed reservations, about technology. Heidegger presents such a view in "The Question Concerning Technology": "Thus we shall never experience our relationship to the essence of technology so long as we merely conceive and push forward the technological, put up with it, or evade it. Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it."^[38]

Some of the most poignant criticisms of technology are found in what are now considered to be dystopian literary classics, for example Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and other writings, Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. And, inFaust by Goethe, Faust's selling his soul to the devil in return for power over the physical world, is also often interpreted as a metaphor for the adoption of industrial technology.

An overtly anti-technological treatise is Industrial Society and Its Future, written by Theodore Kaczynski (aka The Unabomber) and printed in several major newspapers (and later books) as part of an effort to end his bombing campaign of the techno-industrial infrastructure.

Appropriate technology

The notion of appropriate technology, however, was developed in the 20th century (e.g., see the work of Jacques Ellul) to describe situations where it was not desirable to use very new technologies or those that required access to some centralized infrastructure or parts or skills imported from elsewhere. The eco-village movement emerged in part due to this concern.

Other animal species

This adult gorilla uses a branch as a walking stick to gauge the water's depth; an example of technology usage by primates.Credit: Public Library of Science

The use of basic technology is also a feature of other animal species apart from humans. These include primates such as chimpanzees, some dolphin communities,^[39][40] and crows.^[41][42] Considering a more generic perspective of technology as ethology of active environmental conditioning and control, we can also refer animal examples such as beavers and their dams, or bees and their honeycombs.

The ability to make and use tools was once considered a defining characteristic of the genus Homo.^[43]However, the discovery of tool construction among chimpanzees and related primates has discarded the notion of the use of technology as unique to humans. For example, researchers have observed wild chimpanzees utilising tools for foraging: some of the tools used include leaf sponges, termite fishing probes, pestles and levers.^[44] West African chimpanzees also use stone hammers and anvils for cracking nuts,^[45] as do capuchin monkeys of Boa Vista, Brazil.^[46]