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“A Way of Revealing”: Technology and Utopianism in Contemporary Culture

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“A Way of Revealing”: Technology and Utopianism in Contemporary Culture “A Way of Revealing”: 58 Technology and Utopianism in Contemporary Culture s Alex Hall e i d u t S y g Abstract o cultural production platforms (e.g., the Internet l o n Although technology was once viewed liter- and film technologies). If the hermeneutic h c e ally as a means of bringing about utopian socie- employed by subscribers to the philosophy of T f ty, its means to that end was exhausted in the Ernst Bloch is accepted, then utopian potential o l a minds of many when it fostered the nuclear can be found in any cultural product. Since most n r u attacks on Japan in 1945. Since then, not only cultural production is dependent upon technolo- o J has technology lost its utopian verve, but it also gy in one way or another, then it hardly seems a e h T has been viewed by some quite pessimistically. stretch to grant technology some credit in the Nevertheless, technology does provide an area of utopian potential, despite what it leaves avenue for utopian cultural production, whose to be desired in others. Still, the history of tech- utopian energy must often be rescued by readers nology’s relationship with utopianism is quite and scholars using the Blochian utopian complicated, especially with regard to technolo- hermeneutic. In this way technology is as gy as a means to a socially utopian end. Heidegger described it—“a way of revealing,” that is, the tool that brings the carving out from Enlightenment thinkers saw technology as within the rock. This article argues that although one of several means of bringing about a perfect technology has come to be viewed by some pes- world, but they also recognized its inherent neg- simistically in the years since Hiroshima and ative possibilities. Technological utopian visions Nagasaki, it is now experiencing a utopian ren- flourished; however, technology remained an aissance in that it allows for utopian cultural object of considerable debate, especially in the production to be widespread as never before. wake of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and This is occurring thanks to new technology- Nagasaki, Japan in 1945, and throughout the facilitated genres such as the Alternate Reality Cold War. At this point, technology all but Game, the mass audiences tuned in to Internet entirely ceased to be the means to utopia it had avenues for utopian production, and the contin- once been credited as, and in fact became quite ued improvement of older technologies such as the opposite in the minds of many, among them film and television. Technology cannot be the Herbert Marcuse. Nevertheless, technology impetus for ideal change by itself, no matter resulted in significant gains in the areas of cul- how embraced such a concept might have been tural production, which allowed for utopian upon the introduction of the telegraph or the visions to be explored, even if an application of Internet, but it has brought about new methods an interpretation of a perfect world was neces- of injecting new energy into culture, which can sary for them to be recognized. Today, technolo- only serve to benefit society as a whole. gy remains that which allows for cultural pro- duction to communicate messages of hope, “A Way of Revealing”: Technology and Utopianism which exemplifies Martin Heidegger’s (1977) in Contemporary Culture idea of technology as “a way of revealing” (p. “Technology is a way of revealing. If we 12), but technology cannot be the locus for give heed to this, then another whole realm for utopian change by itself. In spite of this, new the essence of technology will open itself up to technological innovations might be evidence of a us. It is the realm of revealing, i.e., of truth.” kind of technological utopian renaissance within cultural studies, as new technology-facilitated —Martin Heidegger genres (e.g., Alternate Reality Games, mass audiences tuned into Internet avenues for utopi- Despite the many views of technology asso- an production), and the continued improvement ciated with utopian thinking, one important role of older technologies, (e.g., film and television) that technology plays is its facilitation of idealis- build on technology’s arsenal of cultural produc- tic cultural production—literature, music, visual tion outlets. arts, media. This role can be as simple as the tools that allowed prehistoric man to create cave Technology and Utopianism: A Brief History paintings, or as advanced as contemporary A look at attitudes toward technology and utopianism from Thomas More to the during the triumphant rise of science to cultural Enlightenment (and, indeed, beyond) shows the hegemony in the seventeenth and early eigh- 59 complicated correlation between the two in his- teenth centuries, writers . were already warn- T h tory. M. Keith Booker (1994) credited More ing of the potential dangers (especially spiritual) e J with including in Utopia “ ‘natural science’ of an overreliance on scientific and technologi- o u r among the pursuits that bring moral and cultural cal methods of thought and problem solving” (p. n a l improvement to the citizens of his ideal society,” 6). Even so, Segal (2005) pointed to the Marquis o f T and noted that “science has been linked to utopi- de Condorcet’s anticipation of “scientific and e c h an thinking since the very beginnings of modern technological advances surpassing those imag- n o l science in the seventeenth century” (p. 5). If sci- ined by Bacon” (p. 59) as evidence of the evolu- o g y ence and technology are “interdependent,” as tion of technology’s relationship with utopi- S t Walter L. Fogg (1975, p. 61) pointed out, then anism. u d i e Booker’s observation holds true for the relation- s ship between technology and utopianism as well. Condorcet, near the end of the eighteenth century, and according to Segal (2005), “evinces Though More’s Utopia appeared in the six- an unprecedented optimism about the prospects teenth century, it defined a literary genre, of for realizing utopia: its realization, [Condorcet] which Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis is a part. believes, is virtually at hand . and he grants Booker (1994) called New Atlantis “one of the technology an unprecedented role in establishing most optimistic imaginative projections of the utopia” (p. 60). However, Condorcet’s hope for beneficial impacts that science and technology humanity’s ability to reach utopia is not entirely might have on human society” (p. 5), whereas based in the evolution of technology. Segal Fogg (1975) considered Bacon a “thinker who (2005) pointed out that “increasing seculariza- saw the potentialities of modern science” and tion, education, and equality” were the variables “the growth of scientific knowledge as an histor- to which Condorcet credited “mankind’s ical moment, a collective, incremental enter- advances,” and that “the technological advances prise, a revolution in which man would control he so carefully and lovingly [delineated] are nature, reform his fundamental conception of only indications of the way society is moving things, and bring about peace and plenty on generally, not blueprints for a specific future earth,” calling him “the prime example of a society” (p. 60). utopian who firmly believed that the practical application of the new science and technology Following Condorcet, Henri de Saint-Simon meant the progress of mankind” (pp. 61-62). It and his student Auguste Comte recognized is worth noting that Nell Eurich (1967), in her the importance of technology in utopian Science in Utopia, saw Robert Burton’s “prag- thought. Saint-Simon, according to Segal matic approach to a better state” as presented in (2005), argues that the intellectual, social, the “Preface of Democritus Junior” in The and cultural unity that Europe once enjoyed Anatomy of Melancholy as that which “prepared has collapsed under assault by the stage for the entrance of the new scientific Protestantism, Deism, empiricism, national- utopia” (pp. 91-92)—even if Burton (1948) saw ism, and commercialism. A new unity must utopia as something “to be wished for, rather be forged, and its basis must be ideological. than effected,” and the literary scientific utopia The ideology that is to forge this unity is New Atlantis, among other literary utopias1, as science, which will replace the divisive and “witty fictions, but mere chimeras” (p. 101). shaky world views currently presented by Still, according to William Rawley’s (1982) religion. Science is to be applied in the introduction to New Atlantis, “most things there- practical form of “industry,” which includes in are within men’s power to effect” (p. 418). both manufacture and distribution and which amounts to technology. (p. 61) Howard P. Segal (2005) agreed that these works position technology as a means to a utopi- Although he eventually abandoned his an end, but pointed out that “their authors absolute technological position, he agreed with remain sufficiently wary of mankind to propose Comte, whom he also separated himself from establishing limits within utopia,” and so “envi- intellectually near this time, on what Segal sion a fixed, unchanging society without further (2005) termed “the need for science and tech- technological progress” (p. 59), which is consis- nology to solve major social as well as technical tent with Booker’s (1994) observation that “even problems” (p. 61). Following the intellectual trend of viewing kinds of culture. In particular, the new con- 60 technology as an integral part of utopian realiza- sumerist ethos, combined with certain techno- tion, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels too saw logical advances (such as the development of s e i the potential of technology for social liberation. commercially viable film technologies), helped d u t According to Segal (2005), “[Marx and Engels] to trigger an explosive growth in the production S y repeatedly hinted at a society radically superior and distribution of popular culture .
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