THE TECHNOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

A LOOK ON NOWADAYS DETERMINISM

AN CUTLINE FOR A PRO ET CONTRA PRESENTATION

JUAN RIVANO

-1978-

The aim of the present research consists of both, a general exposition, and a general examination of what might be called the “technological argument.” This argument develops itself through various different issues in the history and philosophy of tech-nology, and with a proportionate force of conviction -specially through the last two centuries of technological eclosion. It asserts, implicitly or explicitly, that the very ways of human thought are essentially, affected by the development and proliferation of tech-nologies. It goes so far as to affirm -in the present stage of techno-logical development, the electronic phase -that the most general modes through which scientific thought displays itself are deeply affected by the impact of those technologies -they even appear to be overcome, eradicated, and replaced.

Clear and exact concepts, true and well founded proposi-tions; explicit and coherent systematization of. experience, these are usual phrases for describing what we might call “scientifical modes of thought.” The permanent rejection of confusion, dou-bt-fulness, contradiction, incompatibility, expresses in reversed form the common acceptation of those modes of thinking as the very essence and nature of thought. In the strict use of the words “thought” and “science,” whatever -crosses thought’s borders must conform to the following manners of presentation: a clear notion, an established proposition, a coherent system. Otherwise.; we have only opinion, conjecture, impression, probable content, for the ones; and obscurity, doubtfulness, and oven absurdity, for the others.

The technological argument considers these scientifical mo-des or thought as mere technologies. They are technologies of ap-propriation and manipulation just in the way of fire-arms, fishing nets, jail-ceils, cash-money, or broadcastings, Indeed, it is an old and greatly extended tradition which considers logic only a tool, an instrument, a system of rules that thought must apply to reality in order to adequate an master it. The difference between this traditio-nal view of logic and that of the technological argument’s suppor-ter, consists of the limited and conditioned range the latter assigns to the traditional rules of logic. Defenders of this last posture go so far as to affirm that in the present state of technological growth,

traditional logic appears not only limited and conditioned but overcome by the new technologies. Their opponents, on the con-trary, conceive of the logical range of application as a sort of analogue to the classical physics’ absolute space: the very frame of experience in the form of thought.

As it was already suggested, the technological argument is not considered here as the simple and explicit elaboration of a single mind, It is considered, rathor, as a trend in history, and as a tendency in philosophy which eventually emerges in con-tempo-rary views.

There is, of course, a history of the technological argument ; it is a long one, in which the technological argument insinuates itself, develops its persuasiveness and force, going so to speak from implicit to explicit exposition, consolidating and extending its roots. One can grasp its earlier manifestations in old doc-trines such as Xenophanes’ dictum on religion: if oxes had religion gods would carry horns. Gods in Xenophanes’ times carried lances, bow-and-arrows, and drove war carriages. Aristotle also observed how leisure (i.e. the substantial time-work reduction made possi-ble by technology) is a condition for science and philosophy. In Lao-Tsu’s Tao Te Ching one can perceive the author’s apprehen-sion about the quarrel between established culture and new tech-nologies. In Plato’s dialogue, Fedro, an Egiptian pharaon argues against written speech on the grounds that it would damage and finally vanish memory. This argument (let it be platonic or egip-tian) represents a deeper form of technological determinism when we compare it with the preceding ones. One can also perceive the implicit work of the technological argument in thinkers like Descartes; for instance, when he wondered about the Greek scien-tists who, even though they knew principles like conservation of matter, form, and rest, couldn’t grasp the likely evident principle about velocity. Here we have a negative-positive presence of the technological argument: Descartes considers self-evident without qualification what is only so in relation to the standards of his time’s science and technology. This is an example of what we might call the “technological mirage,” which consists of the pro-jection or prolongation outside of what essentially belongs to, and implies a, particular technological space. Again, we have the implicit presence of the technological argument in Pascal’s cele-brated texts about the two infinities. His concept of infinite sma-llness, in particular, is inseparable from the magnifying lens te-chnologies. Similarly, one can associate the optics’ technologies with the notions of clarity, distinction, adequacy, etc., displayed in Leibnlz’s epistomology; or the geometric tools in Spinoza’s me-taphysics.

In modern science -in its head collision against the tradi-tional ways of thought- one can grasp, for the first time, the es-sential allegation of the technological argument. Modern scien-tists, however, consider their own activities irrespective of such intricacies as the inner vinculations between technology and the ways of thought and experience. It seems, on the contrary, as if they consider technologies as mere tools, instruments, auxiliary means for mastering, investigating, and using some-thing quite apart from them. It never occurred to these scientists to consider technologies as somehow essential to, and inseparable of, scien-ce itself; not even to conceive of applied science, technological innovations, pro-industrial and industrial revolutions , as more than mere process, i.e., continous cultural development out of, and compatible with, previous human performances and previous human conditions. This crude notion of technology is a general and recurrent assumption, even in today’s polemic between tech-nics and humanism. It might be found everywhere. For instan-ce, it is working at the basis of the opposition between “modern illuminism” and “medieval obscu-rantism. “ Given this popular formula, a lot of time was needed before the real opposition came to the surface. Nowadays, on the contrary, the strong determinism created by the technological eclosion imposes new, almost per-plexing views of man, nature, and technology.

But, really, one can expect a more explicit and concrete con-tention in the modern appearance of the technological argu-ment. For instance, the pugnacity we find in Mumford’s inquiries about the inner and deep connections between gunpowder and political absolutism, between modern artillery and the disruption of medie-val culture, between glass technologies and now tastes and customs, between coal, iron, and industrial society, etc. Or the audacity we find in Toynbee -in spite of this author’s high valuation of human will in historical accomplishments- for instance, when he applies the opposition between technologies of transportation by sea and by land to the explanation of the corporate and hierarchic society. The implications of these connections deeply subvert the whole view of human accomplishments, Mumford asserts, for example,

that in “transmarine migration the social apparatus of the migrants

has to be packed on beard ship before it can leare the .... that “all ... of apparatus

“the first price of social apparatus that has to be ... is

the primitive kin-group.” Of course, there is a tremendons amount of implications and consequences in these statements.

But, it is in the post-industrial, electronic, and nuclear pha-se of the history of technologies, that the technological argument reaches its most extreme and menacing formulation. Just like in other well-known expressions of determinism, man is only an appendix, phenomenon or creature of geography, evolution, chromo-somes, oedipus complex, modes of production, environ-ments, pleasure principle, or materialistic dialectics, in the same manner, the present supporters of a technological determinism understand human beings only through the disclosure and deve-lopment of their technologies. There is no place for humanistic or spiritual re-conditions, for fixed and perennial values; and, for instance, early in the industrial era -but also at present- the denuncia-tions about a mechanized man and a robot society are considered only as rethorical, sensasionalist, and recurrently negative versions of man’s technological improvement and de-velopment through history. Indeed, the technological argument makes use of a heavy common sense weaponry: take the sma-llest shortage in technological supply (for example electricity, oil, aircraft, water, vaccination, telephone, television, etc.) and that will suffice to demonstrate not only man’s dependence to technology, but also the very displaying and realization of man through the technological environments. This doctrine is not as paradoxical as it appears if one considers the issue from the point of view of the current high technological compulsion: the growth of tremendous destructive capacities and, at the same time, the dramatic exhibition of impotence, ignorance, and perplexity;

the long process of industrial development, which is full of ac-ceptance, enthusiasm and energy, conducted until the very limits of the ecological catastrophe; the most essential prin-ciples of hu-manism becoming irrelevant matter to the techno-logical eclosion, which appears to transform these principles in something ridicu-lous, childish, outdated and impossible almost the actual version of non-sense.

But, of course, the technological argument requires, in this extreme version, more than the eventual collapse of tra-ditional humanism. It requires -in substitution to sensibility and thought’s form’s, apparently refused and eradicated- new forms which give positive expression to human beings through the new technologi-cal environments. If not, the old humanistic contentions against technology remain, and at best (which is the case of the electro-nic era: globalizing cibernetics, auto-mation, and computation) we will be forced to accept something like Heidegger’s prophecy: the entrance of mankind in the mid-night of the night of history.

But, where do these new sensibility and thought -this elec-tronic era’s now man- really appear? And before that, are the so-called traditional ways of thought really being questioned, eradicated, and substituted? And even before, is this doctrine sus-taining that human faculties are conditioned and relative? Are these faculties only the expression of technologies? Which is the pretension, the real scope of this technological argument?

We might begin answering these questions by pointing out some relevant instances of the argument in its current shape. For example, the sort of opposition which authors like Innis and MacLuhan indicate it exists between oral cultures and technolo-gies of phonetical writing. The early abandonment of dialogue-forms, when the phonetical writing is introduced, has really a lot

of deep implications. As a conversational form, dialogue is boun-ded, specific, concrete: it is thought urging confrontation in order to acquire general validity, Phonetical writing, on the contrary, by emphasizing sameness and univocality, makes possible both abstraction and universal thought. Simplicity, generality, and the very nature of the alphabetic technology meant the installation of a new world, extended and universal. The platonic image of thin-king as a dialogue of the soul with itself is no more than literary and unfounded transposition from oral environments to alphabe-tic spaces. The “dialogue of the soul with itself” is a misleading name for a new reality -thinking turned into a solitary activity- emerging from the new environment unfolded by the alphabetic technologies. The “dialogue of the soul with itself” really is a linear soliloquy, a solipsist and syllogistic one-oriented course of the alpha-betic mind. In the irruption of alphabetic technologies, and the eradication of dialogistic spaces, we can see the techno-logical basis for man’s detachment, introversion, and solitude. Alphabetic space develops man as an individual who is real and in eminent relation to himself; he is the one who moves aside to be alone for considering things, evaluating alternatives, delibering and deciding action; the one who identifies himself with reason -his own accomplishment in alphabetic concatenation of ideas- arid freedom and dignity -the very conditions of his succeeding detachment.

The mere notion of phonetic alphabet involves reduc-tion, fixation, and rule, which are enough to create the royal court of traditional philosophy, going from grammar to logic, from semantics to syntax; from the theory of proof and defini-tion through induction, deduction, categories, first and ultima-te principles, substancc-and-accidents, substance-and-rela-tion, to the modern sanctuaries of rationality, the order of the ideas, the perfect method, causality, necessity, and truth. We are amazed to learn that the whole of the Western Philoso-phi-cal burdon was already proposed by the early Greek thinkers, and we tend to look at then with admiration. The question is,

however, what had these thinkers done other than develop the obvious questions -nature, limits, and value- put forth by that new instrument of appropriation and manipulation re-presented by the alphabetic technologies? We are also accus-tomed to oppressions like philosophic perennis. Does not this expression signify only the “eternity” of the alphabetic culture?

Let us consider Socrates’ drama. Why is Socrates the major martyr of Western culture? An easy question: he intro-duced at the price of his life the intellectual way of Occident: the formal, logi-cal way. In what did this celebrated method of Socrates consists of ? What were irony and maieutic other than the explicitation of norms demanded by the exact usage of the language? IS not the reaction against Socrates an instance of a “nature-against-techno-logy” quarrel? And these well-known criteria about philosophical esperience which Plato referred to, these perplexity and wonder, are they anything but the psychological effect caused by the co-llision between alpha-betic and oral rationality?. The historical reaction against Socrates might indeed be described as one by the tribal thought -concrete, immediate, all-in-one, mythical, boun-ded, tradition-alistic thought- against a non-committed, uncom-promised, objective, neutral, uniform, single-oriented an compul-sive way of univer-sality and abstraction. At last, the cause against Socrates can be considered as a particular but significant effect of what it is a generalized feature in the history of technolo-gies: the impulse to globalization, and the menace to put down whatever obstruction opposes its inner dynamic.

Again, the technologies of trade and exchange can illustra-te the technological argument’s import. As language, money is a technology of appropriation and manipulation of things. The analogy language-money is rich in revelations. For instance, the well-known opposition between abstract and concrete work, in Marx’s Capital, might be understood in terms of the analo-gy between money and language. It is not a more metaphor to say that money is a sort of language; that they oppose each other

as the sensible and the intelligible; that hard money’s logic differs from soft language’s logic only inasmuch as sensibility differs from intellect. The similarities between money and language can explain the commonly accepted connection between language and magic, Language is a technology of appropriation and mani-pulation of things; but in an intelligible manner, not a sen-sible one. Exactness and rigorousness, abstraction and univer-sality in the use of language, all improve and extend its capacities (and ex-cite the horror of tribal wise men) just like silver, gold, and paper money improve and extend trade and exchange (menacing the primitive societies beyond hope). Strictly, money has its functions in exchange, price, payment and treasury. But it would be ridicu-lous to restrict its meaning to economics. Money underlies a wide structure of forms and relations which go from market to society in general. For instance, under money pressure, work ceases to be a quality, i.e., a concrete activity integrated in the natural flow of tribal life; work ceases to be a proportion of something. This is the Ecclesiastes’ accusation: work suffers a transformation from quality to mere quantity. But, through work, the whole of the so-cial life undergoes the impact of quantification. This is the case of values, notions, and categories. Time, for instance, being abstrac-ted from an integrated tribal activity, becomes mere exploitable quantity, a sort of rarified substance. The celebrated Ecclesiastes’ sayings about a time suitable to every purpose, might again be considered as a reaction against quantified time. Through quanti-fication and generalization of exchange, through new and power-ful treasuring technologies, through universal market language in price-standards and exchange, money imposes now persuasive environments which are opposed to petty tribal categories like work in the form of quality.

Perhaps nothing expresses so vividly and convincin-gly the technological argument’s claims as the gunpowder and its tech-nologies does. To illustrate this point, Mumford, in his Culture of the Cities, asserts that: “Shooting simplified the art of government: it was a quick way of ending an embarrasing

argument. “ Surely, in order to understand modern absolutism, there is no need for more explanation than that provided by the modern artillery. So, if the Government of medieval times was shared by priests, artisans, merchants, and soldiers, the subsequent political explosion was not a result of some innate condition or dialectical grace, but of the technological impact of gunpowder. It doesn’t follow from this phenomenon, however, that somewhe-re, there are a lot of available logical alternatives just ready, so to speak, to enter in existence as soon as the fitting technolo-gies begin their work. The tech-nological argument makes indeed use of this assumption; but in doing that, it is not at its extreme form. There is not an ultramundane or logical world of possibili-ties ready for the technological argument. It is technology itself, its internal dynamic, which displays its own possibility, which creates its own form of reality, which fights and bargains with preexistent technological spaces about their modus vivendi. This bargain and modus vivendi constitute the only a priori frame for political solutions like the one Mumford indicates in the medieval government. Gunpowder, by the way, is the sort of technology with very little interest in bargaining, This peculiarity of gunpow-der explains the depressive spectacle shown by history, and the pressing persuasion it exerts over the technological determinism. But, as it was said, gunpowder cannot be considered merely as a disgraceful irruption into a previous well-established eternal order. Gunpowder means by itself the establishment of absolute political power, administrative verticality, linear rationality, sin-gle-founded systematization; and it also means the cultural cost of that establishment: the destruction of feudal cities, the liquidation of Gothic art (and the introduction of the Baroque style), the set-ting back of architecture (and the rise of engineering). It is not an exaggeration to apply the outlook of gunpowder to the under-stan-ding of Modern thinking. Consider, for example, Dercartes Dis-cours de la Méthode and Meditations Methaphysiques. Consider

even the form of these writings, the self-confident manipulation of the whole universe by an individual can, the premeditated aban-donment of an entire tradition, the deliberated lack of partners’ fe-llowship, or authorized supporters. Consider, over all, Descartes’ view of the universe as a brick-building activity, or as a single-founded edifice (just like an inverse pyramid), and his pretension and assurance to do himself the travel to the underground, to dis-cover there the principles of matter and mind, and to establish firmly, absolutely and forever the foundations of science. There is an interpretation in a book by H. Marcuse -Negations- which we may consider in this connection. Marcuse argues that “according to the view characteristic of the dawning bourgeois era, the cri-tical auto-nomy of rational subjectivity is to establish and justify the ultimate essential truths on which all theoretical and practical truth depends” and that “at the close of this era, knowledge of the essence has primarily the function of binding the critical freedom of the individual to pregiven, unconditionally valid necessities.” (p. 44) The technological argument, perhaps, has nothing to say against elaborations of such a kind; but it has a lot against the idea that a class, group or whatever it be, pre-exists to and makes later use of technologies that really are the very condition of such social realities. We can observe here a bit of a difference between the technological argument and the historical materialism’s cri-teria.

Again, the assembly line, the technology of industrialized production, suits rightly the technological argument’s present-ation. From time to time, we all hear the charges against me-chanized society, labor specialization, and mass-production. We are all acquainted with the image of man as a nullified being, as a little wheel’s sprocket inside the enormous industrial ma-chine. It is added to this view -commonly in the same trend and without notices of contradiction- the denunciation of mass-society: mass cultural irruption, mass levelled consump-tion, mass flatness in both taste and arts. The loss of deepness for the sake of wideness is the general formula for what is consi-dered industrial barbarianism. It must be noticed, however,

that all these many implications extracted from the Industrial so-ciety, are elaborated by accusers, not defenders. That is surely the reason why expressions like “humanism” and “industrial • so-ciety” have so easily become almost incompatibility in proppria persona. In an industrial society, man is the alienated being, the impeded person, the repressed, enslaved one who cannot.”’ freely realize all the capabilities of the human nature. The technolo-gical argument, on the other hand, ignores such sort of formal substantialism, such an a priori monopoly of man’s nature and destiny, and it advocates a more positive perception of modern industry and its environments. Man is also man and displays posi-bilities and values through industrial environments. It’s quite easy to argue against industrial inhumanity out of idealized standards from nowhere. Massification, alien-ation, repression, etc., are one-sided, ill-disposed names for what, from a more sensible point of view means real access for men to material goods, social freedom, and culture. The indus-trial society is such a complete hell for common humanistic methoric, that no one can understand how wisdom, sciencie, and art flourish under these conditions. But so they do. There is an art distinctive and dependent of industrial society; and a literature, a science, a philosophy as well. From positivism, conventionalism, formalism, logical empirism, opera-tioralism, behaviourism to expressionism, cubism, psychological novel, abstract painting, theater of the absurd, we can observe the many cultural consequences of the industrial technologies. We enjoy tne reading of both Joyce and Steinbeck; we rejoice the paintings of Picasso, Kandinski, and Mondrian; wa are delighted, and applaude the films of Griffin, Eisenstein, Clair, and Chaplin; we discuss Mach, Poincaré, Russell, and Skinner.

Faced to the objective idealism of platonic thinkers, faced to transcendentalism, or to the traditional forms of empiricism, no-minalism, formalism, conventionalism, probabilism, or behaviou-rism, the technological argument sustains that there is no other logic (necessary relations, inner grammar) than the one implied and unfolded as the form and dynamics of technologies. It is im-possible, for instance, to grasp a problem or construct a theory of infinite . sets without a suitable numeration technology, Meither can notions like abstraction or universality exist without tech-nologies -money or phonetic writing, for example- that disclose everywhere the conditions of sameness, interchangeability, and the like. Nor is it meaningful, or even possible, to consider social organiza-tions (even less, to hold a belief in an all-extended world organization) without military technologies. Nor can theoretical and grandiose rational achievements like Universal History be conceived of without the technologies of transportation, commer-ce, and war.

But technologies must not be considered here as mere au-xil-iary conditions. Neither are they the only conditions which make things possible -some occasional cause or happy chance for the actualization of possibilities which could be developed through other ways. That would be accepted almost everywhere by everybody. In this context, the technological argument consi-ders technolo-gies as essentially necessary and -one could even say- nearly sufficient conditions of what they convey. Infinity-and-its-problems, for instance, is the expression of a phenomenon that merely suits the enumeration technology, like a ready-made capability which only waits for the fitting occasion to make itself known. Infinity-and-its-problems, strictly, is the tech- ‘ nology of enumeration considered under certain respect -prolonging, so to speak, its own rule, its own way of working beyond actual nume-rable groups. When we discuss infinity, we are not talking about something made apparent by itself or by some tools we use, but about the tools themselves in some peculiar, singular respects.

Again, when we discuss about universality and universals -whether they are real things or barely flatus vocis- we can see the effects of what we have called “technological mirage.”

The exchange technologies -money, for example- are just a way of manipulating merchandises; and this way imposes the reduction of the thing exchanged to abstract sameness just like physical bodies introduce gravitation. To question the reality and effi-caciousness of universals has no sense in the technologi-cal contexts which imply and impose them. And it has no sence, either (unless you give it a merely exploratory, symbolic, or meta-phoric meaning) the projection or prolongation of these forms and determinations of exchangeable things beyond their technological context.

The technological mirage exhibits its pervadity ad nauseaum in the instances of power. It is common to hear about a tremen-dous power contained in ideas (we can even find the notion of force-idea in some psychologists). Similarly, it is a sheer truism to speak of spiritual power and moral forces. One of the most representative advocates of the “mirage” form of they technologi-cal argument seems to be Stalin. Churchill refers in his Memoirs that while discussing about eventual political troubles with the Vatican, the Russian chief asked: “How many divisions does the Pope have?” In our time, there are lots of arguments against “the power of ideas.” Ideas are powerless in face of militarism, nuclear weaponry, or the eventual des-truction of mankind and civiliza-tion. In this context, the tech-nological argument cooly sustains that the arms race stabiliza-tion depends on the very logic and dynamics of the nuclear weaponry technologies, war technolo-gies in general, and the entire technological concurrence, rather than on mountains of good reasons, brilliant speeches, passionate rethoric, deep philosophy, or balanced ethics.

Once again, such a delicate cultural achievement as Uni-versal History is not only made possible by, but it is no more than an inner aspect of, transportation, commerce, and war. The techno-logical mirage induces in many people the belief that a theo-retical object -Universal History- is high up in the absolute heavens. But -so the technological argument runs- Universal His-tory is nothing but an implication of the expanding war and com-merce, nothing out an ingredient of the world globalization’s at-

mosphere, which demands, wherever it goes, openning, ac-knowledge-ment, and mutual acceptation. One can even say that transporta-tion, commerce, and war established Universal History through the very act of their own establishment. Of course, so-meone can argue that transportation, commerce, and war, are not to be confused with the implied technologies. Cut this is a conten-tion that the technological argument is going to reject very cons-picuously: if you, by some magic device are able to remove all the technolo gies of war, for instance, then there wouldn’t be any trace of war, or meaning of war in whatever actual sense you may use this word. And the same happens with whatever technology you choose: if you abstract technologies from the environment they create, you annihilate all things coming into existence because of such technologies; and it doesn’t make any sense to treat them as if they were, notwithstanding, “possibilities.” So, without the te-chnologies of war, commerce, and transportation, there would be no war, no commerce, no transportation. And without them, how could you possibly conceive of Universal History?

What we have said about infinity-and-its-problems (i.e., that when we discuss it we are not talking about something made apparent by itself or by some tools we use, but only about the tools themselves in some peculiar respects) can be enunciated in general. It is something of the kind we find in the examination of metaphysics, as it is carried out by positivist thinkers -that is, metaphysics in only a language’s miracle: the meta-physical phi-losopher believes he is talking about reality, but in fact he only talks about talk. And the same explanation maybe applied to tech-nologies in general: the technological miracle makes us believe we are considering reality when, really, we are only considering technologies -their forms and implications.

One can also formulate the technological argument by con• trasting it with classical and accepted views of technology. The most common way of considering technology in the tool-form one. Accordingly, technologies are tools or means of doing a task -means of action, knowledge, administration, communication, in-formation. This common notion assumes a three-terms relation: can, technology, and nature (or subject, means, and object). The means lack sustantivity, belongingness, and value in them-selves. They are limited almost by definition: they give access to the object only under certain conditions. Hence, the failure to reach a given object is imputed to the means. Technology would be so-mething working between man and nature,= so that it interferes any direct relation between them. Because of this interference, te-chnology frustrates any direct and genuine con-tact between man and nature. Not only that: it also alienates the extremes it was designated to mediate. Man is compelled to identify himself with the technological medium, losing his inner essence and value; similarly, the ends sought through technology vanish, and techno-logy becomes an end in itself.

The technological argument refuses this three-terms analysis and its main consequences altogether. In opposition to the tool-form view of technology, it fosters the extension-form view.

There is no reality-in-itself to be reached by technological tools; no pure nature which happens to be falsified, alterated, by using or misusing unsuitable media; there is no man essentia-lly apart from tho instruments he creates. Let us consider, for instance, the telephone. We are not, in this case, inserting so-mething in between previous hearing and sounding. Telephone, strictly, means a new medium of resonance, extended through the whole world. The simple endeavour of reducing the entire world space to the sounding of the human voice makes an es-sential change for human voice and sounding. Human voice ex-tends itself by transforming its nature through the electric trans-mitting medium. Human hearing extends itself by substituting throughout the physical support of resonance. Telephoned voice is voice in a medium of its own. There is no sense in consider-ing the telephone as causing something -i.e. the natural voice, the natural spelling or hearing- to be deformed, adultered, or

hindered. Again, gunpowder is not a tool, a kind of auxiliar force added to a previous established power. This tool-form represen-tation drives some writers to consider gunpowder as an addition to previous power which helps pre-conditioned, ill-natured, cruel, egotistic, and dogmatic persons to impose absolute dictatorship over mankind. To the technological argument, on the other hand, gunpowder creates the man it needs. To say the same, epigrama-tically: one shouldn’t un-derstand gunpowder through man and power, but man and power through gunpowder. Finally, let us con-sider current humanistic pleas such as Green Wave, Third World Development, Birth Control Movement., Human Rights, Mino-rity Rights, etc. There is no proportion between the enormous quantities of rethoric flowing through the media and the actual accomplishment of such ambitious objectives. Or such matters, of course, the technological argument contends that whatever may happen to mankind in the future technological society, humanism -i.e., the traditional vindication of freedom, dignity, equality, and so on- if having at all a partaking in it, will contribute more through obstruction than in a constructive way. To create the new preconditions for a new man’s society is a task that only technolo-gy might accomplish. In short, the technological argument denies such dichotomies as means-and-aim tool-and-object, man-and-nature, etc., as appropriate descriptions of technology, and sus-tains that each technology sizes its object and reaches its targets according to its own grammar, its inner dynamical principle. Even more: there is no absolute grammar beyond the technolo-gical one. This affirmation sounds like a technological prin-ciple of relativi-ty: there are no standards to explain or reduce the various existing technological grammars into a fixed one. There is no man-in-ge-neral, i.e., a substantial archetype whose specifications or instan-ces are: man-in-artisan-society, man-in-industrial-society, man-in-post-industrial-society, and so on. If we must conceive of man as man-and-his-surroundings, then we require the technologies that make possible and sustain the surroundings of man. Again,