Distance
One of the well-recognized benefits of science and technology is that they reduce distance across both space and time. Science looks back in time toward the origins of the cosmos and provides information about microscopic phenomena and distant planets. Technologies of transportation and communication reduce the significance of distance limitations on human travel and personal interaction, making globalization a commonplace experience. But while celebrating the ways in which science and technology bring the far near, some thought must also be given to the ways science and technology can make the near far.
The social critic Ivan Illich (1973) was among the first to note some cultural and political implications of distance reversal. The automobile, for instance, brings the suburbs within a daily commuting distance of the central city, while simultaneously placing a living interaction with the city itself outside the bounds of a simple stroll. Illich argued that automobiles "can shape a city into its image," practically ruling out other forms of locomotion. He coined the term radical monopoly to designate this type of exclusivity in rendering a service. Something analogous occurs when the telephone, the Internet, and cell phone enhance interactions with distant relatives and friends, while tending to situate immediate neighbors in other worlds. Such technologies invite people to virtually traverse distances at the same time that they might be contributing decisively to the impoverishment of local collectives, communities, and urban spaces. The advent of online education likewise tends to obscure the importance of nearness in knowledge acquisition (Huyke 2001).
As science attaches to the knowledge of distant places and times a kind of exotic glamour, one has to work hard to pay attention to what is immediately at hand. As people get used to online education, for instance, the illustrations brought forth by distant experts may outshine local experience and events. With the advent of biotechnology, high-yielding herbicide-resistant plants of major commodity crops become available throughout the world, shackling farmers to the patented plants and herbicides of a few multinational conglomerates, while also diverting them from local forms of agriculture and a more diverse produce.
Other commentators highlight the positive potential of such transformations in the character of distance. From the perspective of critical social theory, Andrew Feenberg (2002) calls for the democratic design and control of systems that facilitate self-organizing, nonterritorial communities throughout the globe. He likewise defends online education (which used to be called "distance education"), as long as it is "shaped by educational dialogue rather than the production-oriented logic of automation" (p. 130). The phenomenologist Don Ihde (1990) acknowledges an inevitable over-whelming of near "monocultural lifeworlds"—that is, ingrown German or Italian cultures, and especially indigenous cultures—but argues that independent of political efforts to limit the damage, such lifeworlds will become "pluricultural" through selective adoptions and incorporations. With the use of image-technologies, future traditions will inevitably be characterized by multiplicity and abundance, or what Ihde calls plurality. The local adaptation of global trends, a bringing of the far near sometimes known as "glocalization," can free individuals from the limitations of too specifically conceived traditions.
A third response seeks to identify those conditions that allow for personal, political, and cultural flourishing in the context of sciences and technologies that will continue to bring the far close and make the near distant. One insightful representative of this approach is the philosopher Albert Borgmann. In his 1984 book, Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life, Borgmann argued that the key to the good life is engagement with what he calls "focal things and practices" that order and intensify human experience, such as playing music or cross-country running. Contemporary technology, however, exhibits a guiding pattern, which he terms the "device paradigm," that is at odds with such experiences. Rather than needing to be played, music is able to be consumed by CDs and other devices, and running easily becomes an activity that takes place on a running machine rather than in nature.
The abstract problem of distance reversal is made concrete in the technological device itself, which increasingly hides its own near inner workings in favor of unhindered delivery of some commodity. The traditional hearth called forth ordered engagement in cutting wood and tending fire, and how it produced heat was transparent for all to see. The central heating system reduces engagement to a maintenance contract and is more or less mysterious to the consumer. Other examples permeate contemporary life: Few people know how digital clocks work, but such devices unambiguously state the time. Without the burdens of cooking, processed food is everywhere and available at any time. Humans progressively construct a world monopolized by the prominent availability of goods and a parallel disappearance of things and practices that might engage and challenge. Genuine nearness that could lead to "the unity of achievement and enjoyment, of competence and consummation" is replaced by the easy consumption of commodities that in the past would have required the expenditure of time or the traversing of space (Borgmann 1984, pp. 202–203). In the case of virtual reality, the line between the real and the virtual gets blurred in the context of "a deceptive sense of ease and expertise" that comes with digitalized cultural information about things (Borgmann 1999, p. 176).
Borgmann argues for a distinctive reform of technology. He has repeatedly called for the design of technologies that engage people bodily, socially, and politically. In opposition to Illich before him, Borgmann believes that more appropriate or enabling technologies will not constitute the deciding difference for a reformed future, because technological devices exhibit their own perfections and attractiveness. Instead he calls for a two-sector economy that would limit production with devices and of devices, leaving room for and encouragement of focal things and practices. To what extent such a project is politically feasible remains at issue. How it might help meet the challenges of time and space displacements found in scientific knowledge and technological tendencies is yet to be explored.
Material Culture;; Place;; Space.
Bibliography
Borgmann, Albert. (1984). Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. A comprehensive inquiry and critique of the technological pattern that prevails in contemporary life.
Borgmann, Albert. (1992). Crossing the Postmodern Divide. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. A reflection on the importance of the local and the communal for articulating a vision of postmodern culture.
Borgmann, Albert. (1999). Holding On to Reality: The Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millennium. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. A reflection on the history and limits of technological information or information as reality
Borgmann, Albert. (2001). "Opaque and Articulate Design." International Journal of Technology and Design Education 11(1): 5–11. A philosophical discussion of technological design from the perspective of the things and practices people value the most.
Feenberg, Andrew. (2002). Transforming Technology: A Critical Theory Revisited. Oxford: Oxford University Press. An inquiry on the social values that frame contemporary technology and the possibility of a change in direction based on genuine democratic values.
Huyke, Héctor José. (2001). Anti-profesor: Reflexiones contra el profesor y su estudiante, con particular atención en la sociedad, el conocimiento y las tecnologías que se promueven en el salón de clases [Anti-professor: Reflections against the professor and the student with particular attention to the society, the knowledge, and the technologies that are promoted in the classroom]. Río Piedras: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico. A critique of the university professor's role in reproducing some of the most troubling predicaments of contemporary conditions of life.
Ihde, Don. (1990). Technology and the Lifeworld: From Garden to Earth. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. An exploration of some of the most crucial cultural issues presented by the tools and instruments of the contemporary age.
Illich, Ivan. (1973). Tools for Conviviality. Berkeley, CA: Heyday. A critical examination of the institutions that dominate modern life and obstruct creativity and joy.
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