"Technology is a synthetic or artificial way of doing what natural things do"
The high degree of advancement of the technology is such that no individual in the society can alone reproduce or repair, not to mention understand, most technological devices.
High technology is evidence of a high collective intelligence in technologically advanced societies. Instant communication, accessible mass communication, fast travel, efficient resource distribution, lethal war technology, advanced entertainment, information, medical and building technologies, and so on, are all conclusive evidence of high collective intelligence.
Technology intimidates us into concluding that all or at least top-level engineers, doctors and scientists must individually be highly knowledgeable and highly intelligent. It's a fallacy to conclude that high technology implies intelligent scientists and engineers. It is a fallacy to conclude that high collective intelligence must have originated in and be supported by at-least-a-critical-mass of individual brilliance.
Just as over four billion years of biological evolution has produced a biosphere so impressive that it infantilizes us to the point of believing in ghosts and concluding that their must be a god-creator or gods, the technophere is so impressive that it leads us to conclude that it must be the product of geniuses. Indeed, we venerate idolized scientists and inventors as gods in the human realm.
The truth is that technology is the product of centuries of tinkering, accidents, adjustments and applications -- with cross-culture fluxes and multiple drivers -- without any need for high-priests, only practitioners who conserve the recipes and perpetuate the methods.
This is also true of the highest technology (quantum dot electronics, etc.) where the narrative that this highest technology stems from theoretical scientific advances is a scam mostly only perpetrated by the theoretical scientists themselves.
We need to stop believing that there are geniuses and an intelligent elite class among us and start thinking for ourselves. We have succeeded in a cultural understanding that politicians are dangerous and manipulated idiots. That was progress. We need to understand the same point about researchers, doctors and scientists; technology's talking heads. Technology does not come from geniuses.
The high degree of advancement of the technology is such that no individual in the society can alone reproduce or repair, not to mention understand, most technological devices.
High technology is evidence of a high collective intelligence in technologically advanced societies. Instant communication, accessible mass communication, fast travel, efficient resource distribution, lethal war technology, advanced entertainment, information, medical and building technologies, and so on, are all conclusive evidence of high collective intelligence.
Technology intimidates us into concluding that all or at least top-level engineers, doctors and scientists must individually be highly knowledgeable and highly intelligent. It's a fallacy to conclude that high technology implies intelligent scientists and engineers. It is a fallacy to conclude that high collective intelligence must have originated in and be supported by at-least-a-critical-mass of individual brilliance.
The fallacy stems from not recognizing that, contrary to Western scientific progress mythology, technology is a living and evolving macro-structure that does not require exceptional individual intelligence. Instead, technology has developed by common trial, error and adaptation, for over one hundred thousand years. It is the product of an evolution; a unique evolution tied to all of its historical circumstances and geopolitical textures.
We need to stop believing that there are geniuses and an intelligent elite class among us and start thinking for ourselves. We have succeeded in a cultural understanding that politicians are dangerous and manipulated idiots. That was progress. We need to understand the same point about researchers, doctors and scientists; technology's talking heads. Technology does not come from geniuses.
