Technology and Culture
La tecnología como expresión material y organizativa de la cultura redefine la relación del ser humano con los objetos, las acciones y las estructuras sociales que él mismo crea.
The study of any field of knowledge usually begins by marking its boundaries and drawing up an inventory of what those boundaries contain, both to define and delimit the field and to establish its relations with what lies outside them. When confronted with a phenomenon as complex as artificiality, we are immediately tempted to separate the technological from other cultural dimensions: the artistic, the religious, the ethical, the sociological, and so on. Yet this attempt at classification is itself a distortion of an indivisible reality.
One of the ways of acting upon objects is to create them, to bring them into existence when they did not previously exist. In the previous chapter, when the metaphysical preeminence of action was emphasized by defining the technological act as action together with reflection upon itself, the artifact—the Technological Object—was not placed at the center of that definition.
Technological actions do not operate either in a vacuum or within the realm of the purely mental; they always act upon an object, whether to use it, to modify it, or even to destroy it. The pedagogue Tornds Buch observes that children, especially very young ones, act upon objects in order to apprehend them and to find their own place in the world in relation to them. This process must be studied together with the conditions that accompany technological creation.
Understanding is deepened through doing. For this reason, pre-technology curricula emphasize practice, encouraging adolescents to approach technology through projects in which technological actions are carried out. Actions, however, are subordinated to the ends they pursue, and not the reverse. For this reason, an “algebra of techniques” centered exclusively on actions does not advance much beyond formalization, nor does it apply itself consistently. In this book, therefore, the focus will be placed on Technological Objects, and only afterward on the actions that operate upon them, create them, or modify them. A formal definition of the concept of “Technological Object” will not be given at this point; its content will be progressively revealed throughout this chapter. For now, there is no intention to oppose the concept denoted by the word “object” to that of “subject” in a positivist sense.
Artificial objects are evidently of very diverse kinds. The oldest and most obvious among them are “things”: tools, utensils, and clothing, together with all that has historically derived from them. As will be shown in this chapter, however, many technological objects are not “things.” We also call “objects” abstract entities such as the educational system or information itself. The argument is taken even further by designating technological actions themselves as Technological Objects, thus apparently negating one of the two axes just defined. This negation, however, is only apparent: what is called a “Technological Object” must always and in all circumstances be understood as including the human being, both as its creator and as its ultimate addressee.
In this way, the role of the human being is redefined, not only within the productive process but in life itself and in the relationship with objects of one’s own creation. This new world may become one of human freedom or one of human marginalization.
Humanity began to manufacture instruments in the most remote prehistory, and there is evidence that hominid species preceding our own already knew how to control fire. Indeed, remains attributed to Homo erectus show evidence of such control dating back one million years. Moreover, human beings are essentially social, and therefore cannot exist outside communities with their own structures and forms of organization. The innate form of social organization was the clan or the horde, but organizational schemes have progressively acquired greater complexity and artificiality, culminating in the modern state or the large corporation. This transformation implies a growing awareness of the existence and nature of social structures and, consequently, an increasing “technologization” of them.
This position, however, does not seem entirely adequate. Culture encompasses the totality of social relations, the ends a society sets for itself, its myths of origin, the structure of its language, and its artistic, philosophical, religious, and political expressions. Technology draws upon culture, but it is not identical with it. It may be said that technology is the materialization of culture, extending the concept of “matter” beyond its usual meaning, since technology clearly includes many non-material components—such as information and organizations—in addition to instruments, as will be examined in this chapter.
