On his book Technosystem: The Social Life of Reason
Cover Interview of December 17, 2017
A close-up
Technosystem begins with a lecture that sums up much
of the argument in non-technical language. I use two illustrations to make my
points. A reader browsing the book would be amused by pages 9-12 where I
develop the argument around an Escher print and a cartoon from The New
Yorker. That would be a good starting point.
Escher’s Drawing Hands shows two hands drawing each
other. The circularity of the image is paradoxical. This illustrates the way in
which social groups in modern societies are formed around technical artifacts
and systems which their members modify as they work within them. We both shape
and are shaped by the technologies, the markets and the bureaucracies that
organize our social life. This is co-production.
But Escher’s print is the product of an artist who stands
outside the paradox he depicts. No one draws Escher as he draws Drawing
Hands. Is there an equivalent external position in the rational society?
Many think there is. The scientist, the engineer, the economist, the management
theorist, all appear to stand outside the system governed by the laws they
discover. This is the illusion of technology, the false belief that there is an
external place to stand from which to know and organize society. But society is
not a technical project. This is illustrated by the cartoon which I leave to
future browsers to discover.
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
A close-up
Technosystem begins with a lecture that sums up much of the argument in non-technical language. I use two illustrations to make my points. A reader browsing the book would be amused by pages 9-12 where I develop the argument around an Escher print and a cartoon from The New Yorker. That would be a good starting point.
Escher’s Drawing Hands shows two hands drawing each other. The circularity of the image is paradoxical. This illustrates the way in which social groups in modern societies are formed around technical artifacts and systems which their members modify as they work within them. We both shape and are shaped by the technologies, the markets and the bureaucracies that organize our social life. This is co-production.
But Escher’s print is the product of an artist who stands outside the paradox he depicts. No one draws Escher as he draws Drawing Hands. Is there an equivalent external position in the rational society? Many think there is. The scientist, the engineer, the economist, the management theorist, all appear to stand outside the system governed by the laws they discover. This is the illusion of technology, the false belief that there is an external place to stand from which to know and organize society. But society is not a technical project. This is illustrated by the cartoon which I leave to future browsers to discover.