Your name Student Name Professor Name Subject 3 September, 2012 Technology is Value Neutral

The argument: Technology is value neutral evokes a great deal of debates. However, it is not an argument. The given essay will take into consideration all the arguments inherent in it. Technology is only one of the specific types of activity. From the philosophicalmethodological point of view technology concerns not the bases, but the data domain; it is studied by means of such categories as activity, reality, existence, value and others. The representations of activity as technology are quite lawful means if to take into consideration the appropriate context - the analysis of the essence of any technologys genesis in culture. Out of this context the identification of technology with activity can lead to various paradoxes. One of them is that technology can be both valuable and valueless. Thus, it is possible to assume that there are two arguments inherent in the argument Technology is value neutral. On the one hand, technology represents the activity in the frames of which there are not only innovations, but also control of their development. On the other hand, technology is a social cultural sphere, the peculiarities and evolution of which are caused at least by five global factors - cultural schematics and world patterns, social institutes, values and beliefs of a modern person and structure of our technogenic civilization. Simultaneously, the technology itself causes the specified global factors in many respects. Such a role of the modern technology led our society, nowadays more than ever, to the explicit conviction that

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technology is an important determinant of values in our lives. Therefore, this is the first argument inherent in the argument Technology is value neutral. Modern science and technology promptly expand the natural possibilities of a person. There are revolutionary changes in various areas of a science and extraordinary progress in all areas of knowledge. However, this development of knowledge and technologies increases the rupture between the exterior possibilities of people and their internal moral forces. Therefore, as people have both good and bad qualities, this growing misbalance between the exterior possibilities and internal moral forces leads to the numerous unfavorable situations and problems. Technology is not equivalent to the essence of technology. Likewise, the essence of technology is by no means anything technological. Thus we shall never experience our relationship to the essence of technology so long as we merely represent and pursue the technological, put up with it, or evade it. Everywhere we remain not free and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it (The Question Concerning Technology: n.d.). Nowadays technologies can be compared to a bistro where a person is fed up very quickly but not with a very nutritious food. The same things happen to technologies: there is enough knowledge and information, but there is no wisdom. Many highly-educated people became successful in the professional work using modern technologies,; however, they happen to be full losers in mutual relations, their behavior and a width of views. The majority of them confess that they are not happy. The mankind has saved up a lot of information almost for any subject for the previous century. Day by day its volume increases, but the main questions are: who I am, where I came from, what purpose of my life is, etc. All these questions remain insoluble for the majority of people. Thus, there is a crisis for people. Collisions, conflicts, and pressure arise

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because of this lack of knowledge and the lack of values. The world is divided, and one of the basic reasons of it is a wrong identification of oneself with a matter - with a material body. This ignorance should be eliminated. The problem consists in the ignorance which is caused by the absence of values caused by technologies. Our world moves ahead very quickly and the constant appearance of new technologies make people to be deprived of the values (both moral and ethical). The task of any society is to change the situation and to make technology valuable. It is the requirement of a modern life. Only training to moral and cultural values will allow achieving this goal. The fulfillment of such great task demands a strong will, a solid determination and a frank cooperation of everybody who cares for the bringing of the values to the world. The knowledge or technology filled with moral and cultural values is wisdom, blessing, gift and knowledge or technology deprived of these values; it becomes an operation tool, a way to arrogance, and the means of achievement of the financial comfort. Moreover, it leads to the materialism, a consumer attitude to life and a bare commercialization. The wrongly used technology becomes an evil, and today there are a lot of examples for it. Therefore, we should give orientation to values to the technologies to make the person humane and to transform this knowledge into blessing. There is the problem of the nature of technology. From the point of view of Norman Whig, the majority of debates about the technologys nature are focused on three concepts: instrumental, socially-deterministic and autonomous technology. According to Whig, the instrumentalism assumes that technology is simply the means of goal achievement; any technological innovation is designed in order to solve a certain problem or to serve the specific human purpose. Moreover, the technological determinism or the concept of independent technology considers technology as a self-controlled force. It means that technology develops according to the logic and forms a human development more than serves

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human values. Therefore, it is possible to make the second argument inherent in the argument Technology is value neutral. Nevertheless, according to many researchers, the mankind does not have other alternatives and, consequently, people are forced to limit the growth of technology and, so to say, to humanize it; on the other hand, to change the way of life cardinally means to make it more filled with values. It is necessary to make selection, to stop technologies which serve the long-term social and moral purposes. Analyzing the necessity of cardinal change of the values in human life it is possible to say that they will cause the deep changes in public and economic structures which had been deeply implemented in human culture. The growth of the worlds development will stop for the reasons not dependent on a human choice, and the absence of values caused by the technology can be much worse than a choice which is carried out by a society for the technology. There are the following arguments inherent in the argument Technology is value neutral. They are: technology is not value-neutral and technology is value-positive. There are the following arguments for them: 1. Prosperity of all forms of life on the Earth is valuable and does not depend on the development of technologies. 2. Prosperity of human lives and culture is compatible only with the essential lowering of human population. 3. The current intrusion of people into nature leads to the disastrous consequences. 4. It is necessary to change the technological policy and to affect basis economic, technological and ideological structures, being guided by the internal values of nature, instead of the aspirations to higher standards of life.

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Technologies are not morally neutral. Each technology has the capacity to encourage some actions and discourage others. These actions will in turn change the way a technology is further adopted or rejected. It is impossible to know what, if any, societal changes will occur as the result of the introduction of a new technology. Neither is it possible to say if future individuals will find the consequences good or bad. The opposite is true. All we have access to now is an awareness of current values. Problematically, it is so easy to neglect those values to keep up with progress (Burgess: 2010). In conclusion, it is necessary to note that technologies develop very quickly in the modern world and we, people, should fill them with values. Technology is not value-neutral; it is value-positive.

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Burgess, J. T. F. Smart-world Technologies and the Value of Librarianship. Computers in Libraries. 30:10: 12+. Ohm, Paul. The Argument against Technology-neutral Surveillance Laws. Texas Law Review 88.7 (2010): 1685+. Pitt, Joseph C. Thinking about Technology: Foundations of the Philosophy of Technology. Seven Bridges Press. New York. 2000. The Question Concerning Technology. (n.d.). Available at:

http://www.wright.edu/cola/Dept/PHL/Class/P.Internet/PITexts/QCT.html