1) To explore computational technology as a means to fix the environmental problems caused by the industrial revolution.
2) To explore what these technologies are and how they work.
I also should explicitly state one of things I didn't try to do, namely:
To explore the environmental problems that need fixing
In an attempt to understand why I found it difficult to make this link more I turned to the history of the discussion of technology.
In a long, paper/essay like entry in the Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy (SEP) on the 'Philosophy of Techology' the SEP notes that it wasn't until the late twentieth century that philosophers seriously began considering the 'ethics of technology', that is to say take and discuss perspectives on the phenomenon and its relation to others. I, as someone who is far from an expert of philosophy, found this surprising given the range and depth of topics subject to consideration by thinkers in the field. The SEP proposes that this late development is a result of societal consensus that advancing technology was simply a positive thing. It gives us many possibilities and enables us to do more things, and this is a good thing of course.
As someone who has spent more time studying the Environment than the philosophical can easily understand this. Although human technology has been having undesirable consequences on the environment (on spatial and temporal scales of mensionable significance) for a long time -- perhaps as early as the the Neolithic revolution, certainly as early as our first use of fossil fuels that occurred in tenth century Chinese iron smelting industry (Steffen, Crutzen, and McNell: 2007) -- we're only just discussing it and systematically studying it!
Additionally, although there was a profound absence of actual formal and intellectual assessment on technology an alternative was had in the form in propagating tropes in myth, art and literature. For example, it was clearly understood that technology can be put to bad use or lead humans to hubris - see here (kinda):
The SEP says that this way of understanding it, i.e. as having no innate positive or negative quality, is known at the 'neutrality thesis'. A number of heavy weight twentieth century philosophers disputed this into disrepute. So, in the last 50 years or so, the scope and agenda of the ethics of technology has grown massively. People have begun to talk about it variously as a social activity, a cultural phenomenon, a professional activity and a cognitive activity.
The coincidence of this increase in talk in the ivory tower about the meaning of technology, the studying of its environmental consequences and rise of technology is at once amazing and unsurprising.
In search of a more detailed answer to the question: what held this debate in philosophy back from technology so? - my reading lead me to Schummer's (2001) paper titled Aristotle on Technology and Nature. He inadvertently provides some satisfying answers. He says that any view that philosophers historically had of technology came out of one of three theses, (the paper discusses whether or not they can be attributed to Aristotle, hence the 'inadvertently').
1) Technology imitates nature, such that there is no place for authentic human creativity.
2) Technology in supplementing and completing nature fulfills but the inherent aims of nature.
3) There is an ontological hiatus between natural things and artifacts such that technology cannot reproduce or change natural things.
I would be lying if I said I understood what an 'ontological hiatus between natural things and artifacts' was but for my purposes its not important. Schummer nicely illustrates one of my closing points to this blog. This is that 'technology' as a term has become so profoundly useless. For the whole of this blog, as one always should, I've tried to avoid talking in meaningless generalities but it is only really now that I am realizing how much of one the word 'technology' itself is. This is what has held back Philosophy for many years, even now it seems that philosophical transactions are dominated by discussion of what it actually means rather than what it is doing. If very early on people had talked about specific practices, ideas, creations, or groups thereof perhaps Philosophy as a discipline would be further ahead in this area and would have provided Geography with the impetus for investigating anthropogenic impact on environmental change sooner *.
So, whilst I would never, of course!, ever, want to blame one of the inadequacies of this blog upon the neglectfulness of over two thousand years worth of philosophers and other thinkers besides, let alone the inadequacies of language itself, this sure has made my task hard.
This is therefore one of my concluding thoughts of this blog. We all need to stop talking about technology and be more specific. After all, can 3D printing really be discussed under the same term as environmental monitoring and smart roads?
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In my post next week I'll try to pull everything to draw some other meaningful conclusions.
Annoyingly, but at the same time luckily, while put finishing this (penultimate) post I've discovered a journal called Environmental Technology. After writing this blog for over 4 months, the countless internet searches I've done, papers, articles, blog posts I've read and videos I've watched only now do I learn about this. For sure I'll be using this to write my next post.
*
Its also more than probable that Geography wasn't ready for it anyway being stuck in deep thoughts and studies of regionalisms and being busy being the 'Imperial science' that it was. These are also explanations why Geography couldn't bring this about itself.
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