Everything about Techno-utopianism totally explained
Techno-utopianism or
technoutopianism refers to any
ideology based on the belief that advanced
science and technology will eventually bring about an
utopia or, more precisely, a
techno-utopia, a future society with ideal living conditions for all its
citizens.
History
Techno-utopianism in the 19th century
Karl Marx believed that science and democracy were the right and left hands of what he called the move from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom. He argued that advances in science helped delegitimize the rule of kings and the power of the
Christian Church.
19th century socialists,
feminists and
republicans were generally advocates of reason and science. Techno-utopianism,
atheism, and
rationalism have been associated with the democratic,
revolutionary and
utopian Left for most of the last two hundred years.
Radicals like
Joseph Priestley pursued scientific investigation while advocating democracy and freedom from
religious tyranny.
Robert Owen,
Charles Fourier and
Henri de Saint-Simon in the early 19th century inspired
communalists with their visions of a future scientific and
technological evolution of humanity using reason as its
secular religion. Radicals seized on
Darwinian evolution to validate the idea of
social progress.
Edward Bellamy’s
socialist utopia in
Looking Backward, which inspired hundreds of socialist clubs in the late 19th century
United States and a national political party, was as highly technological as Bellamy’s imagination. For Bellamy and the
Fabian Socialists, socialism was to be brought about as a painless corollary of industrial development.
After
Auschwitz, the optimism of
positivist views led to more pessimistic conceptions of science. The
Holocaust, as
Theodor Adorno underlined, seemed to shatter the ideal of
Condorcet and others thinkers of the
Enlightenment, which commonly equated
scientific progress with social progress.
Techno-utopianism in late 20th century United States
A movement of techno-utopianism began to flourish again in the
dot-com culture of the
1990s, particularly in the West Coast of the United States. It was reflected in, reported on, and even actively promoted in the pages of
Wired magazine, which was founded in San Francisco in 1993 and served for a number years as the "bible" of its adherents.
This form of techno-utopianism reflected a belief that technological change is revolutionizing human affairs, and that digital technology in particular - of which the
Internet was but a modest harbinger - would increase personal freedom by freeing the individual from the rigid embrace of bureaucratic big government. "Self-empowered knowledge workers" would render traditional hierarchies redundant; digital communications would allow them to escape the modern city, an "obsolete remnant of the
industrial age".
Principles
Bernard Gendron, a professor of philosophy at the
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, defines the four principles of modern technological utopians as follows:
- We are presently undergoing a (postindustrial) revolution in technology;
- In the postindustrial age, technological growth will be sustained (at least);
- In the postindustrial age, technological growth will lead to the end of economic scarcity;
- The elimination of economic scarcity will lead to the elimination of every major social evil.
Criticism
Critics claim that techno-utopianism's identification of
social progress with
scientific progress is a form of
positivism and
scientism. Critics of modern libertarian techno-utopianism point out that it tends to focus on "government interference" while dismissing the positive effects of the
regulation of
business. They also point out that it has little to say about the
environmental impact of technology and that its ideas have little relevance for much of the rest of the world that are still relatively quite poor (see
global digital divide).
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