19
Darin Barney calls attention to the puzzling nature of the modern concept of technology.
One root, techne, refers to the artificial creation of things that do not already exist in nature. The
other half, logos, refers, among other things, to the activity of discovering and gathering up of
what already exists in nature and is true.
29
The conjunction of these two activities takes what
exists in nature and modifies it so that it is neither all natural nor entirely artificial. Modern
technology poses a problem right from the beginning. How can these two seemingly opposed
activities of creating and discovering be brought into balance? For example, is Prozac a
technology that enables a person to discover or disclose her true self or to create a new more
convenient or contented self? Do simulation technologies that allow urban planners to anticipate
and solve social problems create a world in which those problems are the most visible at the
expense of other more urgent problems or simply enable the planners to see these existing
underlying problems more clearly?
In other words, technology has the capacity through simulations to reveal the structure of
existing power and create new entities – cyborgs – with dispositions to act that had not existed
before. How does one learn to cope with and navigate within this space? Risk and cost-benefit
analysis of particular technologies only scratches the surface. One must still have a means of
weighing competing risks, costs and benefits against each other, especially when the costs and
benefits refer to very different conceptions of how we view ourselves and our communities.
30
Who draws the boundaries and where they will be depend upon the process of democratization,
that is, the way in which citizens learn to make sense of nature and their responsibilities to it.
29
Barney, Prometheus Wired, pp.27-28.
30
Gordon Graham, The Internet: A Philosophical Inquiry, pp.48-56.
Convention