VI

It is hard to imagine one’s own time as history. Or to think that someone will examine the artifacts of our own time with as much pleasure as I experience when I examine ancient objects. Yet it will happen, and our artifacts will reflect our values and choices, as artifacts have done throughout the ages.

Let me cite a historical example because I want to stress again that no technology is God-given. The notion that the technical requirements for an efficient operation dictate the way technology is laid out is usually not correct. The way a task at hand is dealt with can change as the values and priorities of a society change. My example involves slag from an ancient Peruvian smelting site. A colleague of mine had excavated a large site. It yielded all sorts of interesting smelting-related technical artifacts, ore and slag, tools and furnace parts. My friend visited me to show me the slags from the site. When we looked at them under the microscope I realized that they were different from any other copper-smelting slags I had seen before — ancient Roman or Chinese, European or Middle Eastern. (One would think that when it comes to copper slags, if you have seen one, you have seen them all.) First I did not believe that what we were looking at was slag at all — and I remember saying, “This isn’t slag, this is a dog’s breakfast.“

Eventually the residue made sense, as evidence of the way such processes were carried out in other societies. In ancient Peru most ordinary people were subject to a labour tax — that is, they gave time to agricultural or other projects of the state or the local community.1 These people were not specialists or particularly skilled at the task at hand. The copper smelting, as the slags showed, was appropriately laid out for these conditions. There were many quite small furnaces, not larger than soup pots, which could be filled with an appropriate mixture of ore and charcoal and heated, using mainly unskilled labour. The little furnaces were left to cool, then broken up — with some of the contents indeed looking like a dog’s breakfast. The mixture of slag and copper could be further broken up using water and panning techniques. This type of smelting could be carried out effectively with non-specialized labour. Only when it came to the remelting and alloying of the recovered copper would skilled artisans — “the experts” — be needed.

A process laid out like this would not occur to us — nor would it have occurred to the Romans — but it made good sense in the context of ancient Peru.

To be sure, history is not a rerun for slow learners. We are not ancient Peruvians. But I cite this historical example to help expand our discourse and our social imagination. Technology is not preordained. There are choices to be made and I, for one, see no reason why our technologies could not be more participatory and less expert-driven.

In this lecture, then, I would like to concentrate on reflections about change. First, I would like to sum up the flow of my exploration of the real world of technology by reviewing some of the concepts I have introduced. I would like to discuss what I think needs to happen if the real world of technology is to become a globally liveable habitat. And finally, I want to suggest some practical steps in this direction that are most urgent and doable. But don’t expect from me a blueprint to cure the faults of all other blueprints. From what I have said during these talks it will be clear that it is the nature of blueprints, of prescriptions and plans, that is at issue here, not the details of one or another scheme.

Time will not permit me to speak about the work of Ilya Prigogine and his associates,2 or to introduce you to the thinking of C. S. Holling on the responses to changes of living systems and on ecosystems management.3 But I see in the contributions of these scholars some of the new and helpful non-blueprint concepts that might allow us to proceed with constructive alterations to the house that technology has built and in which we all live.4

I began this discourse with technology as practice, which allowed me to link technology to culture — culture defined as commonly shared values and practices. The way of doing something can be “holistic” when the doer is in control of the work process. The way of doing something can also be “prescriptive,” when the work — whatever it might be — is divided into specified steps, each carried out by separate individuals. This form of division of labour, historically quite old and not dependent on the use of machines, is a crucial social invention at first practised in the workplace.

Authors who have discussed the rise of bureaucracy have neglected to examine the structures of the workplace.5 It is the acculturation into a culture of compliance built on the willing adherence to prescription and the acceptance as normal of external control and management that make bureaucracy possible. An understanding of the nature of prescriptive technology and the social consequences of the division of labour is important to the appreciation of the speed and strength of the spread of technology. In earlier lectures I also introduced the concepts of a growth model and a production model as schemes that underlie discourse and decision-making in matters of technology. We talked about the separation of knowledge from experience that science has brought. In its wake came the rise of experts and the decline of people’s trust in their own direct experiences.

We looked into the so-called communications technologies and how they drastically altered the perceptions of reality. Within a very short historical period these technologies have affected perceptions of space and time and have led to new pseudorealities and pseudocommunities. I stressed the concept of reciprocity and pointed out that modern technologies are frequently designed to make reciprocity impossible. In such situations human responses can neither be given nor received. The absence of reciprocity turns many communications technologies into non-communications technologies.

The role of governments in the promotion and support of technology changed drastically after the Industrial Revolution. Since then publicly financed infrastructures ranging from railroads to electrical distribution networks and financial and tax structures have emerged. They are largely support systems for the advancement of technology; without them, the development and acceptance of inventions such as the telephone, the automobile, and the computer could not have taken place.

At this juncture I stressed the distinction between divisible and indivisible benefits and costs and pointed out how the ongoing provision of technological support structures has been accompanied by a neglect by governments of their traditional mandate to safeguard “the commons” as a source of indivisible benefits. I have discussed how often infrastructures that are publicly funded have become roads to divisible benefits, venues of private and corporate profit. At the same time, those things we hold in common (as sources of indivisible human benefits), such as clean air and uncontaminated water and natural resources, are less and less safeguarded by those who have been given authority to govern.

With the predominance of prescriptive technologies in today’s world — technologies that have taken over like a giant occupation force — planning has become the major policy tool. Basically, it doesn’t matter whether one considers governmental or corporate planning. The difference is not always easy to ascertain. What is important here is to realize that there are planners and plannees, that is, there are those who develop plans and those who have to conform to them.

It is equally important to realize that there are, in principle, two different planning strategies. There is planning in order to maximize gain, and there is planning in order to minimize disaster. I gave two examples of public planning for the latter purpose — the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry6 and the report by the Science Council of Canada, Canada as a Conserver Society7 — in order to show that planning to minimize disaster is possible, not only in theory but in practice.

In this context I felt it was necessary to stress that the concept of “the environment” includes two separate components. One refers to the built and constructed environment, which is truly a product of technology; the other is nature, which is not. I made a plea that we get away from the egocentric and technocentric mindset that regards nature as an infrastructure to be adjusted and used like all other infrastructures. I said that if I had one wish, I would wish that the government of Canada would treat nature with the same respect with which all governments of Canada have always treated the United States as a great power, and a force to fear. When suggestions for political actions are given to the Canadian government the first response is often “What will the Americans say?” I really wish we would look at nature as an independent power and when planning ask,“What would nature say?“

Finally, I tried to show some common patterns that occur when new technologies are introduced into society. We looked at cars and the three ages of response to them, and at computers, industrialized food, and sewing machines. I pointed out how often the promise of liberation in the first stages of the introduction of a technology is not subsequently fulfilled, and that there is quite a sophisticated mechanism of building up dependency after having built acceptance of the new technology.

In light of all this, it would be an understatement to say that all is not well in the real world of technology. The social, economic, and human costs of technological advances are in evidence all round the globe. They are described in newspapers and magazines, discussed on radio, television, and in a stream of books. This ceaseless exposition of problems surrounding modern technology has gone on for at least the last two decades. I’ve looked again at Fritz Schumacher’s “Technology for a democratic society,” a talk he gave at a conference in Switzerland in September 1977, the day before he died suddenly of a heart attack.8 Schumacher’s talk contained much, if not all, one needs to know in order to proceed with the task of rectifying the misuses and inhumanities of modern technology. He stressed context; after all, his notions about the appropriateness of technology are based on the recognition of the centrality of context.9 In the speech, Schumacher used wordplay on his name, which means “shoemaker.” He reminded his audience that a good shoemaker not only needs to know about making shoes, but also has to think about feet and how they may be different, because in the end the shoe has to fit the foot. The main theme of Schumacher’s last talk, though, was his concern about technology as “a force that forms society and today forms it so that fewer and fewer people can be real people.“

It seems, therefore, fair to say that the convincing and urgent case for not proceeding with global technological expansion along the then established patterns was made at least twenty years ago (and continues to be made with stronger and stronger arguments). Nevertheless, there has been no change in direction over the last twenty years, but rather an acceleration of technological development along the lines known to lead to greater and more irreversible problems.

We then have to ask, “Why did nothing substantial happen?” Or we can turn the question around and ask, “What will it take to initiate genuine change?” I would like to suggest to you that the crisis of technology is actually a crisis of governance. I say governance rather than government because I think the crisis is much deeper than the policies of any particular government, although some governments are worse than others. The real crisis, I think, can best be addressed if you ask yourself, “What is the task of the government in this real world of technology? What are the tasks for which we elect and pay governments? What do we expect them to do, rather than to say?” And it would seem foolish to assume that in a world in which technology has changed all practices and relationships, the practice of government and the relationship between the governed and those who govern would remain unaffected. Kids in school are taught that democracy means government by the people, for the people, but the major decisions that affect our lives, here and now in Canada, are not made by the House of Commons or as result of public deliberations by elected officials. I hold that, in fact, we have lost the institution of government in terms of responsibility and accountability to the people. We now have nothing but a bunch of managers, who run the country to make it safe for technology.

What is needed, then, is to change or reform the institution of government in terms of responsibility and accountability to the people as people. And how could this be done? It cannot be done by some great leader or guru coming out of the woodwork somewhere, and I am most anxious that none of what I say should be interpreted as an invitation to Fascism. What needs to be done cannot be done as a dictate from on high but will come as an inescapable consequence of movements from below.

I have long subscribed to what I call Franklin’s earthworm theory of social change. Social change will not come to us like an avalanche down the mountain. Social change will come through seeds growing in well prepared soil — and it is we, like the earthworms, who prepare the soil. We also seed thoughts and knowledge and concern. We realize there are no guarantees as to what will come up. Yet we do know that without the seeds and the prepared soil nothing will grow at all. I am convinced that we are indeed already in a period in which this movement from below is becoming more and more articulate, but what is needed is a lot more earthworming.

Now, how do we do that? First of all, it is necessary to transcend the barriers that technology puts up against reciprocity and human contact. One of the reasons why I dwelt so much on non-communications technologies and on the concept of reciprocity is that one has to realize just how technology makes it very difficult for people to talk to each other. People rarely work together on regular, non-technologically interrupted projects. Because of this we have to make the time to create the occasion — be it on the bus, or in the waiting room — to talk to each other not about the weather, but about our “common future.“

How do we speak to each other? Here much can be learned from the women’s movement — from the way women got together to talk about their status, about the oppression of women historically, politically, and economically. Let us begin with a principled stand and develop a fresh sense of justice. Many of the issues that need to be addressed are best addressed as issues of justice. It can be done by considering simple and everyday things. Look at the size of North American newspapers. Look, for instance, at the Toronto Star. Its mere size is a question of justice to me. One needs to ask, “Who has given anyone the right to cut down trees and destroy a habitat for the sake of a double-page advertisement for cars?” These are things that in a caring world cannot be condoned. European papers are small. Europeans still sell cars. There is nothing essential in the magnification of the obvious. Or one can ask, “Who has given the right to publishers to suddenly dish out their newspapers in individual plastic bags that just add to the already unmanageable waste? Who gives the right to owners of large office buildings to keep wasting electricity by leaving the lights on all night in their empty buildings?” These are not questions of economics; they are questions of justice — and we have to address them as such.

You see, if somebody robs a store, it’s a crime and the state is all set and ready to nab the criminal. But if somebody steals from the commons and from the future, it’s seen as entrepreneurial activity and the state cheers and gives them tax concessions rather than arresting them. We badly need an expanded concept of justice and fairness that takes mortgaging the future into account. Thomas Berger appointed to his inquiry an intervener for the natural environment. But this is a very rare occurrence. The voices of the powerless are not usually heard in technological deliberations, and we have no civic equivalent of the family’s practice of “one cuts, the other chooses.” If we did, Indian reservations would not be located where they are today.

You may say that the kind of changes required to provide a truly different concept of justice and fairness for decision-making are impossible to achieve. The technological systems — you may say — are so profoundly anchored in our political and social milieu that they cannot be altered so drastically. This I will not accept. There have been profound changes in the past. Slavery was abolished, as was child labour. The status of women has changed quite drastically. All these changes occurred, I suggest, because a point in time came when the general sense of justice and fairness was affronted by, for instance, the owning of people by other people or the exploitation of children, women, or minorities. And to those who may say that slavery was abolished when the institution was no longer necessary in economic terms, that women were liberated when they were required in the workplace, I would say, “Watch it.” It seems to me that the sequence of events was likely different. When, on the basis of principled objections, an established social practice has become less and less acceptable, then, and maybe only then, will alternatives be found. From then on tasks that need to be done will be carried out differently and by more acceptable means.

I firmly believe that when we find certain aspects of the real world of technology objectionable we should explore our objections in terms of principle, in terms of justice, fairness, and equality. It may be well to express concerns as questions of principle rather than to try to emphasize merely pragmatic explanations — for instance, that objectionable practices may also be inefficient, inappropriate, or polluting.10 The emphasis on a pragmatic rationale for choice tends to hide the value judgements involved in particular technological stances.

Today the values of technology have so permeated the public mind that all too frequently what is efficient is seen as the right thing to do. Conversely, when something is perceived to be wrong, it tends to be critiqued in practical terms as being inefficient or counterproductive (a significant term in its own right). The public discourse I am urging here needs to break away from the technological mindset to focus on justice, fairness, and equality in the global sense. Once technological practices are questioned on a principled basis and, if necessary, rejected on that level, new practical ways of doing what needs to be done will evolve.

What I have said may sound like empty words to you, yet it is real and intensely practical. The world of technology is the sum total of what people do. Its redemption can only come from changes in what people, individually and collectively, do or refrain from doing.

Occasions for choice do arise. A decision that I took with respect to my own research may serve as an illustration. Throughout my academic career I have declined to participate in research projects related to atomic energy, which I find an unforgiving and unforgivable technology. My colleagues often suggest that I might still take part in research on nuclear-waste disposal. My response has been a “yes-and-no” one. I have always said that as soon as Canada decides — as Sweden has done — to discontinue the building of nuclear reactors and to phase out existing ones, I would be happy to contribute all I have to addressing problems of nuclear-waste disposal. However, prior to phase-out, effective disposal of nuclear waste is an invitation to produce more nuclear waste. I do not wish to have a part in this.

Many of us can make choices and we need to talk to each other about how and why we make these choices. This is an important part of the discourse we need to engage in. This discourse has to be political, and feminist in the sense that the “personal is political.” The discourse should be authentic, giving weight and priority to direct experience and reciprocal communication rather than to hearsay or second-hand information. Thus the discourse should seek out those on whom technology impacts.

Attention to the language of the discourse is important. Much clarification can be gained by focusing on language as an expression of values and priorities. Whenever someone talks to you about the benefits and costs of a particular project, don’t ask “What benefits?” ask “Whose benefits and whose costs?” At times it helps to rephrase an observation in line with a perspective from the receiving end of technology. When my colleagues in the field of cold-water engineering speak of “ice-infested waters,” I am tempted to think of “rig-infested oceans.” Language is a fine barometer of values and priorities. As such it deserves careful attention.

Beyond language, however, the discourse will centre on action — individual as well as collective action. At this point I would like to give two examples of relatively minor changes that could become prototypes for a different interpretation of accountability and reciprocity.

Let me set the scene. We once had a neighbour who was the chairman of the Toronto Transit Commission. Every morning he was conveyed by chauffeur-driven limousine to TTC headquarters, just a few streets north. I felt quite keenly that there was something wrong with this arrangement. Surely those who oversee and guide municipal transportation systems ought to use public transit during their work days. Why not put a clause to that effect in their job description or contract? While the chairman’s using public transit would take more time than being chauffeured around, this could become valuable time for learning and reflection.

A job-related constraint, requiring the applicant to use the facilities he or she directs, does not seem to be different in kind from job requirements like speaking the language of the client, agreeing to travel, or not smoking on the job. Requiring those whose work has a major impact on people’s lives to experience some of the impact is really not too much to ask. It means that they speak “people” rather than French, Cree, or Spanish.

By the same token, I think that all those who profit from providing food in university cafeterias ought to be compelled by their leases and contracts to have their executives eat that food every day.

The changes in the contract or job specifications advocated in these examples can be accomplished without bringing the country to the brink of bankruptcy or civil war. It would only take the kind of public pressure that comes from political will to use technology — transportation, industrial food preparation, or any other technology — as if people mattered,11 now and in the future.

To move from the specific to the general: Let’s make a checklist to help in the discourse on public decision-making. Should one not ask of any public project or loan whether it: (1) promotes justice; (2) restores reciprocity; (3) confers divisible or indivisible benefits; (4) favours people over machines; (5) whether its strategy maximizes gain or minimizes disaster; (6) whether conservation is favoured over waste; and (7), whether the reversible is favoured over the irreversible? The last item is obviously important. Considering that most projects do not work out as planned, it would be helpful if they proceeded in a way that allowed revision and learning, that is, in small reversible steps.

Making a checklist part of public discourse and expanding the list as needed could be a real help in clarifying and resolving technological and civic issues. However, in the real world of technology there are also situations in which, in fact, one does not know what to do. Henry Regier (former Director of the Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Toronto) has pointed out that with every development new domains of ignorance are discovered which become evident only as the project proceeds.12 The emergence of domains of ignorance is basically quite inevitable. Some of the side effects of technical processes could not have been known and are still under study. But the existence of domains of ignorance is itself predictable. This means that it is necessary to proceed with great caution when moving into the unknown and the unknowable. At the same time there have to be resources for adequate research into ways of decreasing the size and depths of these domains. Personally, I think we will soon be faced with a huge domain of ignorance related to the effects of non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation on living organisms. This domain need not have been as big and as deep as it is had there been long-term projects of adequate research paralleling the increasing number of electromagnetic radiation frequencies.13

In addition to the lack of research in the public realm that could diminish the particular domains of ignorance, there is also the lack of recognition of the direct experience of those who work day in and day out in front of video displays or live below high-voltage transmission lines. Their experiences may not be as clear cut and decisive as one might expect to obtain in laboratory research programs, but the initial direct experience of people is an important source of information. To marginalize or discard such direct evidence removes an important source of knowledge from the task of decreasing the domains of ignorance.

But possibly even more important is the implicit attempt to keep people from challenging technology by making their direct experience appear marginal and irrelevant. This is a form of disenfranchisement, and I see disenfranchising people as one of the major obstacles to the formation and implementation of public policies that could safeguard the integrity of people and of nature. This disenfranchising has accelerated since the time of the Industrial Revolution as governments have turned their attention to the blind support of technology and its growth at the expense of other obligations.

The task of redress requires the reintroduction of people into the technological decision-making process. Action is required on a number of levels, including the refusal of consent to our governments to proceed with heroic technology such as nuclear energy, gas and oil mega-projects, or work in space.

In addition, as a country we need to concentrate on the development of redemptive technologies, some of which already exist. Others can be developed from different roots. In the first instance, existing technologies need to be reviewed in terms of their scale and the appropriateness of their applications. Initially useful prescriptive technologies are often applied to inappropriate tasks, as when production models and techniques are used in education. Or the scale of a given technology may be the root of its problems, as one finds frequently in agriculture.14

Redemptive technologies that arise from the analysis of unacceptable practices of existing technologies should also be accompanied by schemes for assessing appropriateness — like the checklists I just mentioned. New means of technological linkage need to be explored, which would facilitate cooperation without centralization or oppression by scale.

Some redemptive technologies can use existing technical knowledge in a changed structure and for a changed task. For example, I hope that the technical expertise of the Canadian nuclear industry will be redeemed by the industry’s providing teams of experts to safety dismantle nuclear reactors around the world when nuclear power becomes globally unacceptable.

In a similar vein, redemptive technologies are needed to prevent pollution. This will mean redesigning industrial processes, reducing waste, and modifying needs and demands. Impressive work of this nature is already in progress. For practical examples see, for instance, Amory Lovins” Least Cost Energy.15

Another kind of redemptive technology arises from the study of things that do work. I have always been amazed that so many resources can be set aside to inquire into things that went wrong. At the same time, few resources are put into the documentation and analysis of processes and institutions that work well — at times in spite of, rather than because of, the system in which they are situated.

Studies of activities and arrangements that work well will be context-specific and carried out largely on the micro level. From such investigations will come knowledge about the factors — usually people with particular gifts —-essential for the well-being of the endeavour. New and redemptive technologies can emerge from such studies. When Schumacher spoke about “good work” he argued in support of such technologies.

A third group of redemptive technologies could arise directly from the needs and the experiences of those at the receiving end of the technology. These could address as yet unmet needs — such as personal monitoring of health- and environment-related parameters, easy ways to access relevant information, and low-cost protection of individual privacy against assaults by noise and persuasion. All this would constitute “technology from the bottom up,” an approach to new knowledge outlined by Ivan Illich in his essay “Research by people” and by those who speak of “Science and Liberation.“16

Such bottom-up technologies will incorporate opportunities for reciprocity and include indicators of the onset of problems, related, for instance, to physical, environmental, or institutional health. There could be new and transparent methods for record-keeping and assessment — and much more.

To give just one general example of unmet needs: The field of accountancy and bookkeeping is in urgent need of redemptive technologies. In order to make socially responsible decisions, a community requires three sets of books. One is the customary dollars-and-cents book, but with a clear and discernable column for money saved. The second book relates to people and social impacts. It catalogues the human and community gains and losses as faithfully as the ongoing financial gains and losses documented in the first book. In the third book, environmental accounting is recorded. This is the place to give detailed accounts of the gains and losses in the health and viability of nature, as well as of the built environment.

Decisions on expanding, reducing, or changing particular activities in the real world of technology will require access to and consideration of all three books. Needless to say, adequate technologies of social and environmental accounting do not yet exist; they need to be developed and implemented as part of our search for redemptive technologies.

Finally, the development and use of redemptive technologies ought to be part of the shaping of a new social contract appropriate for the real world of technology, one that overcomes the present disenfranchisement of people. This new social contract needs to be one in which the consent to be governed, regulated, and taxed depends on a demonstrated stewardship for nature and people by those who govern.

I would like to close with an extension of a phrase used by the British peace movement. During their struggle against the placing of Cruise and Pershing missiles on British soil, they urged their fellow citizens to “protest and survive.” I want to augment their words and say, “Let us understand, and on the basis of our common understanding, protest.“ We must protest until there is change in the structures and practices of the real world of technology, for only then can we hope to survive as a global community.

If such basic changes cannot be accomplished, the house that technology built will be nothing more than an unlivable techno-dump.