The following appeared in Volume 97, Number 2 (Spring, 1998) of the APA Newsletters

In 1949 President Truman presented a plan for global industrial growth. "More than half the people of the world are living in conditions approaching misery....For the first time in history, humanity possesses the knowledge and skill to relieve the suffering of these people," that possession being, "greater production through a wider and more vigorous application of modern scientific and technical knowledge."[1] Implementing this plan became known as development. This led to the division of the world into cultures that are considered developed, underdeveloped, or developing. This qualitative classification of cultures, explicitly biased against the traditional and non-technical, has become a potent source of debate. Particularly interesting to philosophers is the emphasis that advocates of development place on creating conceptual change

"Development, therefore, involved not simply the transfer of technology but also the communication of ideas, knowledge, and skills to make possible the successful adoption of innovations. Needed then was an expanded base of expertise to, inter alia, persuade and motivate the Third World peasantry to cast aside their traditional ways in favor of the new. To the pro-innovation bias, consequently, was added a pro-persuasion bias and, with it, an implicit acknowlegement that Third World peasants were not disposed to submit meekly to radical change."[2]

Education, communication technology, and philosophical discourse have been employed as instruments of persuasion for pro-industrial cultural change. Thus, now, it is immanent to consider how deeply our cultural agenda is encoded in the computational technology that is becoming primarily identified with information, communication, and power itself.

Almost fifty years after The unveiling of Truman's technology/culture development plan, the global misery index appears little improved. The really bad news is that six to seven million children worldwide die every year from malnutrition. This holocaust is preventable, hence unforgivable. Failing to feed our children renders our scholarly achievements moot. In the face of such staggering human stupidity, scholarly philosophy may be rendered a ridiculous vanity. Worse, the computational turn in philosophy appears to some as a quickening of such global disaster. Their key argument runs thus: war and greed (not scarcity) are the causes of mass hunger. War and greed are results of economic imperialism which is primarily fueled by industrial technology. Luddites (i.e. contemporary critics of technology), such as Kirkpatrick Sale, identify the computer as the locus of contemporary industrialism;

"nothing has had as reticulate and reverberating an effect on industrial society as the electronic digital computer, the "master technology" that stands behind so many other inventions and processes of our lives...it is the computer and those who feed and handle it who reign supreme: in the country of the sighted, the all-seeing one is king. Control of information is control of power."[3]

On this view, everything the industrial revolution has contributed to the destruction of our environment, the oppression of entire populations, and the starvation of children is accelerated by current computer technology. Given the Luddite view, the question is: how can any philosopher of conscience embrace such a curse?

In "Technology and Culture in a Developing Country" Kwame Gyekye (University of Ghana) sketches a basis of the conflict traditional cultures have with technological innovation [4]. As the Truman "Four Point Plan" recognized, technological development requires expanding expertise among those who will use the technology. Such expertise need not be scientific knowledge, theoretical or applied. Rather, it is an expertise in the uses and roles of technology in daily life. People who do not correlate illness with medical causes and treatments will not avail themselves of medical technology. Gyekye observes that the deep infusion of religious and spiritual thought in traditional African cultures sets up a conflict with imported technological expertise.

"Our cultures appreciated the notion of causality very well. But, for a reason which must be linked to the alleged intense religiosity of the cultures, causality was generally understood in terms of spirit, of mystical power."[5]

The agentive causation associated with spirit is concerned with who and why questions as opposed to the what and how questions of empirical causation. People who view health and illness as matters of agentive causation are unlikely to make the connections necessary to utilizing medical technology in a systematic way. People whose world view is infused with agentive causation will have conflicts generally with the life required by technological innovation. Consequently, the successful importation of industrial technology to a traditional culture requires the diminution of that culture's spirituality. This requirement is explicitly recognized and pursued by efforts like Truman's plan and is why education and persuasion are so integral to such plans. Gyekye's essay opens a gap between the horns of the cultural annihilation or technological abnegation dilemma. He describes technological development as compatible with traditional cultures so long as the development is responsive to the cultural conditions.

"Ideally, technology, as a cultural product, should take its rise from the culture of a people, if it is to be directly accessible to a large section of the population and its nuances fully appreciated by them."[6]

Where technological development is an expression of a culture, there will be the base of expertise that renders the technology valuable within that culture. For half a century the plan for industrial development has assumed the need to convert the ideas and values of traditional cultures. Gyekye challenges this assumption;

"The adaptability of technological products to local circumstances and objectives must be an important criterion in the appropriation and development of technology."[7]

It is questionable whether industrial technology is capable of meeting that criterion. Luddites frequently point out that technology is non-neutral and that its implicit values are hostile to the well-being of traditional cultures and the natural world. Gyekye's ideal development may have no significant practical application. I maintain, however, applying Gyekye's adaptability criterion is precisely where computers become interesting to the problems of technological development.

In attacking computers as the last nail in nature's (or liberty's, or privacy's, etc.) coffin, Luddites do not distinguish features of the technology. This is an oversight. Software is in many respects unlike industrial machine technology. One such respect is the individual customization open to users of quality programming. The plasticity of web browser software, for instance, emerges in three aspects:

NEWSLETTER ON PHILOSOPHY AND COMPUTERS

• From the Editor
• From the Chair
• Computers and the World Congress of Philosophy, Bill Uzgalis
• Feature Section
  • Internet: International or Interventional?, Jon Dorbolo
  • Internet, Emerging Culture and Design, Silvia Austerlic
  • On the Internet and Cultural Differences, Soraj Hongladarom
  • Cosmopolitan Ideal or Cybercentrism?, Charles Ess
• Computers and Teaching Philosophy
  • WWW Resources for Teaching Philosophy, Ron Barnette
  • Internet Resources for Teaching Computer Ethics Courses, Herman T. Tavani
• Web Site Search
  • The Alan Turing Home Page, Reviewed by James H. Fetzer
  • International Society for Environmental Ethics, Reviewed by Gary Varner
  • Problems with Wilfrid Sellars, Reviewed by Daniel Bonevac
  • Electronic Journals: Number 2, Reviewed by Robert L. Causey
  • Web Site Search Reviews Index
• Announcements
• Internet Resources
  • Machine Translation, Jon Dorbolo
  • Review of Globalink Power Translator for Windows, version 6.02, Lawrence M. Hinman
  • Review of Easy Translator for Windows, Eric Salahub
• Platform
  • Cultural Plasticity, Jon Dorbolo