BELOW IS THE READING FOR THIS LESSON TO HELP WITH PAPER 1.3.3: TECHNOLOGICAL SUBVERSION DAVID STRONG In this reading taken from the author’s book Crazy Mountains: Learning from Wilderness to Weigh Technology, philosopher David Strong asks us to consider the basic question, “Why do we value technology?” In his analysis, we value technological devices because they disburden us of toilsome labor, discomfort, and bother. Technological innovations beckon us with the promise of freedom and happiness. We want things to be easy so that we are freer to pursue our ends without having to worry too much about the means we use to do so, and we believe that being “free” in this sense—that is, disburdened—will make us happy. Using as his examples the replacement of the hearth by the central heating system and television viewing as a primary form of entertainment, Strong argues that this quest for freedom and happiness through technology provides ease and comfort, often alters the nature of human experience in ways that disconnect us from nature and other people, and ironically produces not happiness but alienation. Although some readers may find this philosophical meditation somewhat demanding, those who study it carefully will find that it rewards their effort. FOCUS QUESTIONS 1. What does the author mean by the term technological availability? What specific values does this concept embody? 2. What is the vision of the “good life” that our modern technological society offers us? Why does the author question the goodness of this way of life? 3. What are the main differences between what Strong calls “things” and what he calls “devices”? What values do we sacrifice when we choose the device paradigm over engagement with things? KEYWORDS alienation, commodification, environmental ethics, heating systems, television, wilderness THE UNDERLYING ETHIC OF TECHNOLOGY Some have argued that we live in an invisible iron cage. Indeed, technological forces are shaping people’s lives in ways that they have little or no control over, especially if the basic framework of technology goes unchallenged; but, as Charles Taylor points out, the conquest of nature had a benevolent point to it. It was to serve humanity. So, he finds that, along with other forces, there are moral forces of work here shaping our lives. We live neither in an iron cage nor in an arena of unconstrained choice; we inhabit a possibility space where some moral choices are being made. There is a kind of ethical appeal to not letting our resources go to waste. So what ethical forces might be called upon to reform technology in a deep way? How should we understand the basic choice we face? For developing what I call the vision and underlying ethic of technology, I will draw heavily upon Albert Borgmann’s theory of technology, the best account of the character of the technological culture we have so far. Then we will use this vision of technology to show that the concerns of environmental ethics and people’s better concerns for nature generally will be subverted by technology unless we as a culture come to grips with the irony of this vision and begin to make a fundamentally different choice, that is, choose things over consumption. MAKING THE APPEAL OF TECHNOLOGY INTELLIGIBLE: THE PROMISE OF TECHNOLOGY Neither Heidegger nor Thoreau makes clear what it is about technology that is attractive to people. Claiming that we delight in the exercise of power seems correct enough when we think of the enormous amount of power we wield with technology, yet this view does not address our more intelligible motives and, therefore, does not really address many of the proponents of technology without trivializing their concerns. In one way or another, most of us, if not all, see technology as good. What is at the heart of our petty homocentrism? What good is technology? Typically people articulate what good technology is when they say that something is better or improved and demonstrate that “that’s progress.” Advertisements are continually pointing out what is better about the product advertised, even if the chief “advantage” is two for the price of one. Although they may well dupe us, these advertisements normally appeal to standards that at least on a deep and general level are already in place and widely shared in consumer culture. We hear everywhere around us, not just in advertisements, what better is. “It means less work.” “It’s more comfortable.” “It’s convenient.” “It’s healthier.” “It’s faster and more productive.” “It’s less of a hassle.” “Sleeker looks better.” “It’s lighter.” “It doesn’t get in your way.” “You don’t have to wait on anyone else.” “It’s exciting.” When we see the very latest devices, often our expressions are on the order of “Wow!” or “That’s great!” or “Look at that, would you?” So, at deeper levels, there seems to be a good deal of like-mindedness about what constitutes better in our culture. Another approach is to consider what people think of as clear examples of progress. Television today is far different from what it was in the past. In the early 50s, one was lucky to own a television. Reception was poor, the picture rough and in black and white; the screen was small, the set large; the number of programs was very limited. In addition to other obvious improvements, now the sets come on instantly, are controlled from the couch, can be found in all sizes and nearly everywhere, and have access to a vast number and variety of programs, especially with video cassette recorders. Even if they are not willing to pay the price for all of them, most count these changes as improvements, and rarely do we find people watching a black and white set any longer. What are the standards which make these changes count as improvements? Television as a clear example of technology will play a key role in our understanding of the nature of the fundamental choice we face, but Borgmann uses another paradigmatic example of technology, the central heating system, to disclose most of these standards of technology. We can easily trace the development of central heating systems back to the wood-burning stove or the hearth. The chief advantages of the heating system over these latter two are various. Central heating is easier. We do not have to gather, stack, chop, or carry the wood. An automatic thermostat means that we do not have to trouble ourselves in the morning or evening with setting a thermostat. Central heating is more instantaneous. We do not have to wait for the house to warm up. It’s ubiquitous. Warmth is provided to each corner of the room, to every room, and everywhere equally well. Finally, a central heating system is safer than a hearth. My grandmother was born in a newly built chicken coop because three weeks earlier her family’s house burnt down from a chimney fire. So the standards by which people judge central heating to be better than a wood-burning stove are ease, instantaneity, ubiquity, and safety or some combination of these, for example, convenience. These four “technological standards” can be collected under the more general notion of technological availability. To be more available is to be an improvement, then, in terms of one or more of the four above standards. Why does it seem to people that this availability is good? From one perspective, this availability relieves people of burdens: less effort, less time, and less learning skills are required. Available anytime and anyplace, they are disburdened of the constraints of time and place. They are disburdened of having to take risks. Historically, modern technology was envisioned as enabling people not just to subjugate nature, but to do so for the purpose of freeing humanity from misery and toil. To be relieved of these burdens then fulfills this vision of technology. To the degree people personally share this vision, they will also see its concrete manifestations, such as central heating, as unquestionably good. Compared to older versions, the latest portable computers exemplify this relief from burdens and are attractive to many for this reason. By overcoming nature, technology would, as some in the seventeenth century foresaw, not only relieve humans of burdens, but it would make available to them—easier, safer, quicker, and more ubiquitous—all the goods of the Earth. So, technological availability negatively disburdens people of misery and toil, and positively enriches their lives, makes them happy, it seems. So seen, technology has an attractive glow about it. Technology promises to bring the forces of nature and culture under control, to liberate us from misery and toil, and to enrich our lives… [More accurately], implied in the technological mode of taking up with the world there is a promise that this approach to reality will, by way of the domination of nature, fuel liberation and enrichment. Borgmann calls this “the promise of technology.” Clearly those below the middle-class of advanced industrialized countries and those outside those countries do not derive the benefits of technology, although many do feel the pull of its promise. The claims of social justice will not likely be met until the more privileged ones, the middle and higher classes of these industrialized countries, come to terms with the questionable character of technology’s promise. So, the critique of technology I am developing here does not apply to those in poverty. It applies only to those who have too much. For these latter, technology has made good on its promise in important ways. My grandmother’s father died from what she believes was pneumonia when she was eleven, leaving her and her younger sister to perform heroic feats to save the cattle from starvation in the drought times of an extended winter that followed. Often hitching the team up before dawn and returning hours after dark, especially in winter, her family took an entire day to get to and from town sixteen miles away. For the privileged, then, many past hardships have now been conquered. Although we may have legitimate concerns about whether there is too much medical technology, no one could reasonably refuse every advance of modern medical technology. The weather will never be brought under control, but, via comfortable structures, nature’s heat and cold, rain and snow are controlled as well as darkness and drought. Toilsome labor is largely eliminated within the culture of technology. A reasonable person may reject motorcycles in favor of horses to do ranch work, but that person still rides to town on paved roads in a car, has parts shipped by air, reads a newspaper and books, transacts business over the phone, and owns at least a radio. No thoughtful person will want to turn her back on technology entirely. Thus, technology, by conquering nature, has relieved humans of severe burdens. Today we are still working to overcome those, such as cancer and AIDS, that remain. So, if technology does not saddle us in the long run with more than it has relieved us from, it will have made good on this aspect of what at first seemed and still does seem promising about it. It could turn out that ozone depletion, global warming, ecosystem destruction, the population explosion, polluted land, air, streams and oceans, and human and mechanical errors will impose burdens far greater than those we were relieved from in the first place. To meet these problems certainly calls for a reform of present practices. We read or hear of these calls for reform nearly every day. More common critiques of technology, such as David Ehrenfeld’s The Arrogance of Humanism, attempt to show that technology will fail its own standards, bringing disaster upon us. Much as reform in these areas is needed and much as these pessimistic critiques deserve thoughtful consideration, the present work will turn to a uniquely different task. It grants and, in fact, seeks to have the reader appreciate the genuine success of modern technology. Technology has relieved, and technology will, I assume for the purposes at hand, continue to relieve, humans of many hardships of the human condition. So what is wrong with technology for those within the realm of its benefits? Underlying these standards of availability is really a vision of a good life that is free and prosperous. What is at the bottom of concern with technological availability is an aspiration for freedom and happiness. Most people, at least in the Western tradition, are concerned with liberty and prosperity. For Aristotle only the Greek free man was able to have sufficient time and sufficient wherewithal to develop the moral and intellectual virtues he thought to be required for happiness or eudaemonia. The Hebrew people’s understanding of the covenant centered on an idea of prosperity. Jesus preached of a free and abundant life. The Enlightenment, as we see its results in “the pursuit of happiness” in our Declaration of Independence, is fully within this tradition. But to find agreement at this high level of abstraction is not to see that the crucial differences lie with the particular versions of freedom and prosperity. For Socrates living well had to do with human excellence and living a just life, not with materialism. The blessed life and the abundant life of the Hebrews and of Jesus was not commodity happiness. So, too, we must look carefully at the particular idea of freedom and prosperity governing people’s attraction to technology, for only at this level of particularity will its misleading and harmful features begin to show. In other words, one can criticize the trivialized forms of freedom and prosperity on which the technological society is centered without, at the same time, criticizing freedom and prosperity more generally as a vision of the good life. Quite the contrary, we can call technology into question even more sharply by showing that technology fails to provide the free, prosperous, and good life we want in our waking moments. Technological society offers a flattened vision of freedom and prosperity. The more disburdened, the better off I am according to this vision. So, the technological idea of freedom is really one of disburdenment. What about prosperity? Cellular phones are currently a status symbol. These devices which disburden people of the constraints of place are taken to be a sign of affluence because, generally, only the more prosperous have them. So, in part, to be prosperous is to have the latest, most refined device. A sign of affluence, too, is to be able to go to an undiscovered exotic place, have the most channels and compact discs, own specially designed clothing, own what no one else has yet. Thus, in part, to be prosperous is to own the most varied, the widest assortment of commodities. Finally, when people buy a product on sale they get both the commodity they purchased and still have money left over. Why is that attractive? Because they can buy something else with the money saved. They are better off that way, they think, because they get more items for the money. Thus people pursue prosperity through the standards of owning the most numerous, widest variety, and the very latest (most refined) commodities. The powers that be in the technological society own and control most of these items. Such is the picture of the good life envied by those keeping up with the Joneses. Our culture’s vision of the good life is the goods life. Does this vision really deliver a good life? If we say no merely because it differs from the blessed life according to Abraham, Moses, and the prophets, or from the Greeks’ eudaemonia, our analysis would be dogmatic and presumptuous. Technology must be thought through; it will not be met by simply reacting against it. So, if we answer “no,” as I will, then we must be able to provide good reasons. THE TECHNOLOGICAL MEANS TO FREEDOM AND HAPPINESS: THE DEVICE The ironic consequences of this vision of freedom and prosperity can be drawn out through a careful analysis of the peculiar way technology transforms, or more specifically, dominates nature and culture. Technology does not dominate these in the traditional manner of lording it over them; rather, as Albert Borgmann shows, technology follows a pattern, unique to the modern era, in the way it gets everything under control. We can expose this pattern by examining instances of it. The central heating system dominates warmth; it brings warmth under control in ways that the wood-burning stoves do not. To show its unique form of domination, Borgmann distinguishes between “things” and “devices.” A thing in his sense is inseparable from its context, namely its world, and from our commerce with the thing and its world, namely, engagement. The experience of a thing is always and also a bodily and social engagement with the thing’s world… Thus a stove used to furnish more than mere warmth. It was a focus, a hearth, a place that gathered the work and leisure of a family and gave the house a center. Its coldness marked the morning, and the spreading of its warmth marked the beginning of the day. It assigned to various family members tasks that defined their place in the household… It provided the entire family a regular and bodily engagement with the rhythm of the seasons that was woven together with the threat of cold and the solace of warmth, the smell of wood smoke, the exertion of sawing and carrying, the teaching of skills, and the fidelity to daily tasks … Physical engagement is not simply physical contact but the experience of the world through the manifold sensibility of the body. That sensibility is sharpened and strengthened in skill. Skill is intensive and refined world engagement. Here, in his retrieval of the thing’s world and our engagement with the thing, Borgmann has been influenced by Heidegger’s fourfold account of things. Obviously, Earth and sky are woven together with mortals. He points out that in Roman times the hearth was the abode of household gods, though he does not make much of it. Borgmann’s account goes beyond Heidegger in emphasizing social and bodily engagement to a degree to which Heidegger seems insensitive. He also steps beyond Heidegger by highlighting the way things focus practices. Practices call for skills and the development of character; the diversity of different characters is joined to each other through participating in a world of practices. In our terms developed earlier, the hearth is the correlational coexistent thing which establishes the world of the household and, correlatively, calls forth its members and calls on their deeper capacities. Today the hearth, if it exists at all, is no longer the central location in the house although the mantel still remains a place of honor. What has replaced the thing is the “device.” The device (the central heating system) provides a commodity, one element of the original thing (warmth alone) and disburdens people of all the elements that compose the world and engaging character of the thing. This world of the thing, its ties to the natural and cultural world and our engagement with that many-dimensional world on bodily, cerebral, and social levels, is taken over by the machinery (the central heating plant itself) of the device. The machinery makes no demands on our skill, strength, or attention, and it is less demanding the less it makes its presence felt. In the progress of technology, the machinery of the device has therefore a tendency to become concealed or to shrink. Of all the physical properties of a device, those alone are crucial and prominent which constitute the commodity that the device procures. To make the commodity even more technologically available, the machinery varies radically in the history of technology (wood or coal or oil or electricity or gas). Owing to this radical variability and to this concealment, the machinery becomes necessarily unfamiliar. I probably do not know by what means the water is heated in a building. But the device is not just machinery or even most importantly machinery. The device makes available a commodity—warmth. Warmth is what the central heating system is for. Just the opposite of the machinery, the commodity tends to expand (become ubiquitous in the house), to remain relatively fixed as the means change (from coal to electricity) and to be familiar. It follows that—unlike with things—there is a wide division between what a device provides, the commodity, and how it provides this commodity, the machinery. Hence, and this is Borgmann’s central insight we saw illustrated earlier with second homes, devices split means and ends into mere means and mere ends. Even though these claims that a thing makes on people are not always experienced as burdensome (as we see from the above account), this very world of the thing and the engagement it calls for can be felt at times as a burden or hassle. The technological device and its refinement disburdens people of all these problems by expanding the commodity, so that the world of the thing no longer determines when, in what way, and where it is available. Thus, it disburdens them of the claims that call for engagement. In short, the technological device disburdens people of the thing’s world and its claims upon them. The device is considered the more refined the more it lifts these burdens from them. The ideal device is one where, from an experiential standpoint, a commodity can be enjoyed unencumbered by means. A reliable self-regulating central heating system whose maintenance and energy bill are taken care of by a management agency can be taken as a paradigmatic example. The peculiar way technology dominates things is not limited, of course, to the central heating system. Considering how household technologies have changed, Witold Rybczynkski in Home: A Short History of An Idea writes: The evolution of domestic technology … demonstrates that the history of physical amenities can be divided into two major phases: all the years leading up to 1890, and the three following decades. If this sounds outlandish, it is worth reminding ourselves that all “modern” devices that contribute to our domestic comfort—central heating, indoor plumbing, running hot and cold water, electric light and power and elevators—were unavailable before 1890, and were well known by 1920. We live, like it or not, on the fair side of a great technological divide. As John Lukacs reminds us, although the home of 1930 would be familiar to us, it would have been unrecognizable to the citizen of 1885. Just as with household technologies, so too with other features of our surroundings and our cultural and natural environment generally. This thing-to-device example is representative of the pattern of the technological transformations of the Earth. Generally then, this transformation is one in which: Devices … dissolve the coherent and engaging character of the pre-technological world of things. In a device, the relatedness of the world is replaced by a machinery, but the machinery is concealed, and the commodities, which are made available by a device, are enjoyed without the encumbrance of or the engagement with a context [that is, the world of the thing]. Borgmann calls this pattern the device paradigm. At times I will call it the separation pattern of technology. We can understand our age as one in which we reduce everything to resources that we want to control. Now we can see that the device pattern is used to get control of these resources. The purpose of the device is to supply people with unencumbered commodities. So now we can develop this picture of our age further. The fuller vision is one in which everything gets reduced to resources, machinery and commodities. IRONIC CONSEQUENCES So far we have developed a theory by which we can interpret what has taken and is taking place with regard to the technological transformation in our time. Using this theory we can pass from technological object to technological object, seeing how they more or less fit the pattern. The illustration of the pattern does not commit us as yet to an evaluation of the good or bad of what has taken place. Now we are in a position to begin that task. What are the consequences of this change from things to devices? Don Ihde finds that technologies transform experience in a “non-neutral” manner. A tool always amplifies in some way certain aspects of normal embodied experience while simultaneously reducing other aspects. A dentist’s probe shows the hardness and cavities in a tooth to a degree fingers miss, while the wetness and warmth of the tooth felt by the fingers go undetected by probe. This change Ihde finds is non-neutral because the amplified features are heightened, drawing our attention, while the reduced features tend to go unheeded and are overlooked and often forgotten. Asked what a hearth is for, we find it logical, after having experienced central heating, to answer that it supplies heat, ignoring or not even seeing its other aspects. Extending Ihde’s insight makes it more intelligible why we become fascinated with commodities, heedless of what has been reduced. Yet pointing out that this change is non-neutral is not enough. We now want to comprehend what exactly has been hidden from us. We need a language which articulates what is overlooked and forgotten, for then we can see in what ways this change is non-neutral. Our language of things retrieves and focuses this loss. It reveals the general pattern that things are transformed into devices, detaching people from things, their world, and each other. Ihde further argues that these lost features only tend to recede, thus, implying that they are retrievable. With certain kinds of instruments (not all technological objects are devices, splitting means and ends), this is true. We can easily retrieve the features missed by the dentist’s probe. With devices, however, these features do not just tend to withdraw, so that a change of attitude, perception, or act of will could retrieve them. Notice that mere warmth, no matter how expanded the commodity has become, is not a substitute for the thing of the wood-burning stove. Mere warmth could not be the essence of a household; it does not warrant the kind of attention or care, of heeding. Indeed the source itself is concealed and the warmth is suffused throughout the house so that it fails to provide a focus. So warmth is no substitute for the thing because it lacks a world with which to become engaged. More than this, because it is impossible to recover in the mere warmth of the central heating plant, the full-bodied experience of the hearth, the machinery of devices ineluctably withdraws the world from people. A device is necessarily unfamiliar in the ways that the context of the thing was familiar. Thus the transformation of the thing into a device does not merely tend to obscure possibilities of experience, but its very material structure makes the rich experience of the thing impossible. Another way of putting this is that devices allow the possibility of only slim points of contact with “narrowly defined aspects of what used to be things of depth.” Devices force people to take them as commodity bearers; they leave them no choice. So our way of taking commodities is not a psychological matter, but a real matter. Technology is not only a way of seeing (and for this reason characterizing technology as a vision is perhaps misleading), it is more importantly a way of shaping. The very material structure of a device is such that it can be experienced only as holding up a commodity calling for consumption and nothing more. The implication of this change of shape is alienation. What seemed promising at the outset—relieving people of burdens—leads ironically to disengagement, diversion, distraction, and loneliness. In short, we become not-at-home in the universe. But clearly, simply finding ourselves free from the exclusive use of candles and outhouses does not place us in this alienated position. So how can such positive events as electric lighting and indoor plumbing lead to these ironic results? To be relieved of famine, cold, darkness, confinement, and other genuine adversities of the human condition was an intelligible and urgent demand for the early phase of modern technology. For the middle-classes of advanced industrialized countries, most, not all, of these kinds of challenges have been met for some time. At the stage of mature technology, the challenges can be quite frivolous. Food processors, electric pencil sharpeners, prepared fishing leaders, automatic cameras, electric knives, and some pain relievers are typical. The basic question here is: Do we need to be relieved of every last and least burden? Aren’t some of these burdens actually good in senses that touch our very humanity? When people reflect on these questions they may answer them differently, but when they act, they tend to act in agreement with a vision that seeks to bring everything under control. Ironically, in the wake of such technological success, in the wake of the initial excitement over owning the latest item, the item falls back into the ordinary every day and they become bored. Being bored, they become disengaged and alienated from what may have been a vital practice, such as preparing meals or gardening or photography. Accordingly, they seek diversion. Thus, ironic consequences follow from the disburdenment of every hassle, problem, or felt demand. If we pursue disburdenment in this unchecked and unreflective manner, as people are doing in the stage of mature technology, then these are the results we should expect. However, it may seem as though we have been just too nostalgic. The disburdenment devices yield “frees us up for other things” as people commonly say. Yet this perspective makes us think that technology is mostly about freedom, as Charles Taylor thinks, when the promise and vision of technology are mostly a promise of happiness. The most unique and devastating critique of technology is not centered on technological freedom, but on the fact that technology fails most where it succeeds most at procuring happiness, at procuring the good things of life. As a culture, we think not only that we can use technology to liberate us, but also that we can use it to fill that new possibility space with technologically available goods. In short, what people are freed up for are not other things, but more commodities. Then too when people imagine what they are doing as they throw food into the microwave as freeing themselves up for other and more important things, they ignore how pervasive the technological order is. The totality of technological devices is far more consequential than any particular device. The former point can be advanced best by developing the latter first. Extensively yet unobtrusively this technological way of taking up with the world pervades and informs what people think, say and do. We need an account of technology as correlational environment. Organizations, institutions, the ways nature and culture are arranged and accessible all become modeled on the device. As people make more decisions for consumption against engagement, our average, everyday world is stamped more deeply with the pattern of the device. In other words, devices do not simply liberate people from some things and free them for other and better things. We are surrounded. The things enabling correlational coexistence have nearly disappeared. As the totality of our daily environment changes from an environment of things to an environment of devices, from an environment making demands on people to an environment that is more at their fingertips, this change necessarily entails heedlessness and evokes an attitude of cultural petty homocentrism. So it is important to consider not just the appropriateness of this or that device in a particular context, but to consider what the consequences are of the totality of these devices and people’s typical use of them. We would expect the consumptive ways of life in such surroundings to be disburdened and disengaged. So what are people finally freed up for? How do they attempt to use technological means to positively enrich their lives? Typically people use devices to procure entertainment commodities. Hence our culture treats tradition, culture, and nature as resources to be mined. Just as ubiquitously available warmth is not a substitute for the hearth, entertainment commodities are at best insubstantial aspects of the original things. Because they use devices here to procure the delights that matter, final things, these entertainment commodities can be thought of as final commodities. In this respect, to consume a final commodity is no different from consuming an instrumental one that disburdens us of a chore. THE IRONIC CONSEQUENCES OF FINAL CONSUMPTION Television is a clear example of a final commodity. Its refinements from the first sets to those of today fit the same pattern as the refinements in central heating and the refinements of devices in accordance with Borgmann’s device paradigm in general. So television is an instance of the vision of domination, liberation, and enrichment. It does not make demands on people and is a window of the world, making all the goods of the Earth available, technologically available, to them in their living rooms. Understandably, television has tremendous appeal to us as a culture. It’s where technology comes home to people. The amount of time they spend watching it indicates its power. The A.C. Nielsen Company (1989) currently estimates that people in the United States view upwards of 4 hours of television each day. Given the likelihood that such estimates are inflated, let us assume a more conservative estimate of 2 1/2 hours of television viewing per day over the period of a lifetime. Even at this more conservative rate, a typical American would spend more than 7 full years watching television out of the approximately 47 waking years each of us lives by age 70—this assuming an average of 8 hours of sleep per day. Such a figure is even more striking when we consider that Americans have about 5 1/2 hours a day of free time, or approximately 16 years available for leisure of the same 47-year span. From this point of view and based on a conservative estimate, Americans are spending nearly half of their available free time watching television. Since it is the most popular way people enjoy final consumption, it is worthwhile to examine in detail the experience of this form of consumption as we develop the ironic consequences of final consumption. Television and the Quality of Life by Robert Kubey and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi … do just that, examining systematically the reported experience of television in contrast to the reported experience of other activities people spend time on in their daily life. So we need to look closely at their findings with a view to showing how technology in the form of TV does not fulfill its promise. Kubey and Csikszentmihalyi find that television is inexpensive and is easily and quickly available for those who have time for it. It helps people to relax and, at times, may help some to retreat before gathering themselves to face a difficulty. People can watch it for prolonged periods without wearing themselves out physically. It tends to bring families together and family members normally do talk with each other while watching. They also feel better than when watching alone. It is used for news programs, for nature shows, and to present dramas such as Death of a Salesman. It could be used to present lectures in chemistry and Plato. It helps connect us with our culture and some of its common stories. On the other hand, “viewing is almost always mildly rewarding in that it provides relaxation, distraction, and escape with minimal effort.” It gives people something to do with their time and most report they do want to watch it. With so much of our leisure time taken up with television and with so many benefits, one might mistakenly conclude that people choose to watch because it is better than anything else they could be doing. Yet the actual cumulative benefits they receive from television are rather low and often negative. Ironically, the reported experience of people viewing television often turns out to be one of disappointment. Not only are chemistry courses not aired because few would watch them, not only do most people gravitate toward watching movies with light and escapist content rather than challenging dramas, but, just as important, half the people who watch television do not use television guides to help them decide what to watch. The stories viewers share, then, are not those shown on public television. The shows tend to support existing beliefs. As Stu Silverman told Kubey, “Television reassures us, it’s ‘nice,’ it doesn’t offend or challenge an audience. It is designed to do just the opposite of art, to reassure rather than excite. That often is what people want.” Although television does help people to relax, it does not do so any more than other activities such as reading. Moreover, it helps people relax only while watching it and not later as sports and other activities do. Although this study found that television is not a completely passive activity, it is comparatively so. It is not usually challenging, requires little mental alertness, and is reported to exact fewer skills than eating. Only idling was reported to be more passive. Unlike activities that gather and restore a person, a “passive spillover effect” tended to follow watching television, making people feel duller, more passive, and less able to concentrate. Families for which television provides a center also experience this spillover effect carried over into other family activities. Finally, the positive benefits one receives from television tend to be enjoyed less the more one watches. Heavy viewers are not made happy by watching it; they generally feel worse than light viewers both before and after viewing. Even light viewers do not report themselves to be any happier than average while watching. Aristotle found amusement, like sleep, to be therapeutic as long as life is oriented around exertion. So, too, Kubey and Csikszentmihalyi find that those who stand to benefit most from television use and need it least. More often television is used to disburden people of problems in ways that do not go to the roots of the problems, are only marginally effective, and, hence, are entirely inappropriate. People disburden themselves of the problem of leisure time that their time-saving and labor-saving devices have created by killing time watching television. They disburden themselves of the problem of loneliness when devices leave them isolated by turning on a device, the television set. Heavy use is higher among singles. Such an answer to loneliness is only a diversion from genuine forms of social engagement. On the other hand, television is often used as a way for family members, usually fathers, to avoid talking with other family members and avoid dealing with family problems. Television resolves the problem of independently ordering one’s life, of giving shape to the day. It takes care of boredom. Heavy television viewing is likely driven by a wish to escape, to be disburdened of bad days and bad moods, of personal problems and of alienation from self. Diverting one’s attention, it tends to mask the deeper and more real problems a person is having and, hence, leaves these problems unintelligently resolved. Does it meet the task of leading a more rewarding and meaningful life? No. “Happiness is a more complex state than relaxation. It requires a more elusive set of conditions, and is therefore more difficult to obtain.” Television seems to “encourage a false sense of well-being in some people,” distracting them from and becoming an obstacle to the hard work it takes to realize one’s potentials. More indirectly, we can ask what people are missing when they watch television. When viewers are not pleased with the amount of time they watch television, the entire reason is not only that it is a low-grade activity, one that many think best fits the phrase “Am I lazy!” Part of the reason, too, has to do with what television is displacing. Many report that they feel as though they should have been doing something else. College educated viewers felt this way more often than other people because “they should have been doing something more productive.” Television rearranges life through decreasing the amount of time spent involved with other activities. It at times provides a center for the household, but such a center seems flimsy at best, especially in comparison with other potential centers or centers of the past. In another context, Kubey and Csiksszentmihalyi speak of these kinds of centers of life. When people are asked what they enjoy most, and enough time is left for a genuine answer to emerge, we often find that the most enjoyable things involve doing something, and usually something rather complex and demanding. Rarely does watching television get mentioned, or any other passive or consummatory activity… The first reflex for many people is to say that one most enjoys going on vacations, going to movies or restaurants—the typical “leisure” responses in our culture. But as people think more deeply about their real feelings they will mention enjoyable times with their families, and then there is often a point when their faces light up and they say something like: “Actually, the best times in my life have been…” and start talking with great enthusiasm about designing and sewing quilts, rock climbing, playing music, working on a basement lathe, or about other activities that require concentrated skill, that do not separate the individual from the end result of his or her effort, and that provide the kind of exhilaration and high focused attention of flow. So… we are still able to keep in sight those vivid signposts that show what it is that makes life worth living … [On] reflecting on such occasions, people often say that not only was the experience enjoyable at the time, but that it helped them grow and become more than they had been. Compared to such optimal experiences, much television watching could be deemed a waste of time… wasting it amounts to wasting life. Casting television in terms of the symmetrical relationship of correlational coexistence developed earlier, we can see that the medium is just not enough for humans to make the center of their lives. It does not call forth their humanity in any depth. Hence, Kubey and Csikszentmihalyi worry that by spending so much time viewing television “one may well lose opportunities to grow as a human being.” Kubey and Csikszentmihalyi find that a mistaken cultural assumption underlies much of the appeal of television. For them the mistaken cultural assumption is narrowly one of thinking that physical and mental exertion are bad, and that they are unrelated to human growth and living a worthwhile life. In contrast, for us, the more comprehensive mistaken assumption is that technology generally can fulfill our aspirations for freedom and enrichment. Considered from the standpoint of the vision of technology, television is a paradigmatic example of and not an exception to the unimpeded development of technological culture. As for liberation, it is a commodity which does not make demands—in dress, transportation, or manners, or even having to be at home when a program is aired. Following the device’s split between means and ends, people exert themselves in labor and expect to relax completely in leisure. They want amusement, not challenge or disturbance. In terms of prosperity, with video cassette players and hundreds of channels, the most, the most varied, and the latest programs can be watched. Advertisements, too, and the settings of the programs themselves celebrate this prosperity of technology. In short, the incredible attraction of television is that it is the homeplace of the vision people are still spellbound by. It confirms them in that vision and tells them what’s what in the universe. Its glamour binds and soothes while simultaneously disappointing them with the flatness and shallowness of its nourishment, its ironic unfulfillment. Television as an exemplar of a final commodity represents the ultimate appeal of the promise of technology. It is, then, the success story of the technology. Television is the vision of technological culture. So while technology is successful on its own terms when it make goods available, its success is merely a Pyrrhic victory. What makes good things rich and involving has been lost. We have been seduced by a shallow semblance. Thus, technology fails to deliver happiness, not because it fails to make goods available, but because such goods as it does make available turn out to be merely ironic goods. What seemed promising in the appearance is disappointing in the reality. Our aspirations for freedom and happiness go awry when we attempt to procure them with devices. So does technology deliver the goods? Does technology help people live more rewarding and meaningful lives? As people make the things that count in their lives technologically available, they empty them of depth and they lose them. It is a lesson our culture has yet to learn when we let television turn us into something less than members of the animal kingdom. Source: Reprinted by permission from Crazy Mountains: Learning from Wilderness to Weigh Technology by David Strong, the State University of New York Press © 1995, State University of New York. All rights reserved.