A Critique of (a-political) Technology CritiqueMichel Bauwens3rd April 2015photo of Michel Bauwensits obvious to me that technology criticism, uncoupled from any radical project of social transformation, simply doesnt have the goods. By slicing the world into two distinct spheresthe technological and the non-technologicalit quickly regresses into the worst kind of solipsistic idealism, paying far more attention to drummed-up, theoretical ideas about technology than to real struggles in the here and now.Excerpted from Evgeny Morozov:Today, its obvious to me that technology criticism, uncoupled from any radical project of social transformation, simply doesnt have the goods. By slicing the world into two distinct spheresthe technological and the non-technologicalit quickly regresses into the worst kind of solipsistic idealism, paying far more attention to drummed-up, theoretical ideas about technology than to real struggles in the here and now.The rallying cry of the technology criticand I confess to shouting it more than onceis: If only consumers and companies knew better!In a nutshell, the problem is this: given enough time, a skilled technology critic could explain virtually anything, simply by assuming that somebody, somewhere, has confused ideas about technology. That people have confused ideas about technology might occasionally be the case, but its a case that ought to be made, never taken for granted. The existence of Facebook-enabled trashcans does not necessarily mean that the people building and using them suffer from a severe form of technological false consciousness. Either way, why assume that their problems can be solved by poring over the texts of some ponderous French or German philosopher?Alas, the false consciousness explanation is the kind of low-hanging fruit that no technology critic wants to pass up, as it can magically transport us from the risky fields of politics and economics to the safer terrain of psychology and philosophy. Its so much easier to assume that those trashcans exist due to humanitys inability to peruse Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty than to investigate whether the inventors in question simply tapped into available subsidies from, say, the European Commission.Such investigations are messy and might eventually prompt uncomfortable questionsabout capital, war, the role of the statethat are better left unasked, at least if one doesnt want to risk becoming that dreadful other type of critic, the radical. Its much safer to interpret every act or product as if it stemmed from some erroneous individual or collective belief, some flawed intellectual outlook on technology.Take our supposed overreliance on apps, the favorite subject of many contemporary critics, Carr included. How, the critics ask, could we be so blind to the deeply alienating effects of modern technology? Their tentative answerthat we are simply lazy suckers for technologically mediated conveniencereveals many of them to be insufferable, pompous moralizers. The more plausible thesisthat the growing demands on our time probably have something to do with the uptake of apps and the substitution of the real (say, parenting) with the virtual (say, the many apps that allow us to monitor kids remotely)is not even broached. For to speak of our shrinking free time would also mean speaking of capital and labor, and this would take the technology critic too far away from technology proper.Its the existence of this technology proper that most technology critics take for granted. In fact, the very edifice of contemporary technology criticism rests on the critics reluctance to acknowledge that every gadget or app is simply the end point of a much broader matrix of social, cultural, and economic relations. And while its true that our attitudes toward these gadgets and apps are profoundly shaped by our technophobia or technophilia, why should we focus on only the end points and the behaviors that they stimulate? Here is one reason: whatever attack emerges from such framing of the problem is bound to be toothlesswhich explains why it is also so attractive to many.If technology criticism were solely about aesthetic considerationsIs this gadget well made? Is this app beautiful?such theoretical narrowness would be tenable. But most technology critics find themselves in a double bind. They must go beyond the aesthetic dimensionthey are decidedly not mere assessors of designbut they cannot afford to reveal the existence of the rest of the matrix, for that, too, risks turning them into something else entirely.Their solution is to operate with real technological objectsthese are the gadgets and apps we see in the newsbut to treat the users and manufacturers of those objects as imaginary, theoretical constructs. They are imaginary and theoretical inasmuch as their rationale is imposed on them by the explanatory limitations of technology criticism rather than grasped ethnographically or analytically. In the hands of technology critics, history becomes just a succession of wise and foolish ideas about technology; there are usually no structuressocial or economic onesthat get in the way.Unsurprisingly, if one starts by assuming that every problem stems from the dominance of bad ideas about technology rather than from unjust, flawed, and exploitative modes of social organization, then every proposed solution will feature a heavy dose of better ideas. They might be embodied in better, more humane gadgets and apps, but the mode of intervention is still primarily ideational. The rallying cry of the technology criticand I confess to shouting it more than onceis: If only consumers and companies knew better! One can tinker with consumers and companies, but the market itself is holy and not to be contested. This is the unstated assumption behind most popular technology criticism written today.Well, suppose consumers and companies did know better. This would mean, presumably, that consumers would change their behavior and companies would change their products. The latter does not look very promising. At best, we might get the technological equivalent of fair-trade lattes on sale at Starbucks, a modern-day indulgence for the rich and the doubtful.The first optiongetting consumers to change their behavioris much more plausible. But if the problem in question wasnt a technology problem to begin with, why address it at the level of consumers and not, say, politically at the level of citizens and institutions? The lines demarcating the technological and the political cannot be drawn by those forever confined to think within the technological paradigm; one needs to exit the paradigm to get a glimpse of both alternative explanations and the political costs of framing the issue through the lens of technology.Thus, technology critics of the romantic and conservative strands can certainly tell us how to design a more humane smart energy meter. But to decide whether smart energy meters are an appropriate response to climate change is not in their remit. Why design them humanely if we shouldnt design them at all? That question can be answered only by those critics who havent yet lost the ability to think in non-market and non-statist terms. Technological expertise, in other words, is mostly peripheral to answering this question.But most of our technology critics are not really interested in answering such questions anyway. Liberated from any radical inclinations, they take the institutional and political reality as it is, but, sensing that something is amiss, they come up with an ingenious solution: Why not ask citizens to internalize the costs of all the horror around them, for that horror probably stems from their lack of self-control or their poor taste in gadgets? It is in this relegation of social and political problems solely to the level of the individual (there is no society, there are only individuals and their gadgets) that technology criticism is the theoretical vanguard of the neoliberal project. Even if Nicholas Carrs project succeedsi.e., even if he does convince users that all that growing alienation is the result of their false beliefs in automation and even if users, in turn, convince technology companies to produce new types of productsits not obvious why this should be counted as a success. Its certainly not going to be a victory for progressive politics (Carr is extremely murky on his own). Information technology has indeed become the primary means for generating the kind of free time that, in the not so distant past, was at the heart of many political battles and was eventually enshrined in laws (think of limits on daily work hours, guaranteed time off, the free weekend). Such political battles are long gone.In the past, it was political institutionstrade unions and leftist partiesthat workers had to thank for the limited breaks they got from work. Today, these tasks fall squarely on technology companies: the more Google knows about you, the more time you will save every day, as it personalizes everything and even completes some tasks (like retrieving boarding passes) on your behalf. At best, Carrs project might succeed in producing a different Google. But its lack of ambition is itself a testament to the sad state of politics today. Its primarily in the marketplace of technology providersnot in the political realmthat we seek solutions to our problems. A more humane Google is not necessarily a good thingat least, not as long as the project of humanizing it distracts us from the more fundamental political tasks at hand. Technology critics, however, do not care. Their job is to write about Google.