The promise of progress
Kevin Parker, Editorial Director -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 10/1/2001 12:00:00 AM
Terrorists, whether the Unabomber or Osama bin Laden, hate technology. They do so because changes in the technology infrastructure lead to changes in how we live and work.
Whether for an individual in Western developed economies, or for entire traditional societies, dealing with these changes can be wrenchingly difficult.
The history of Western thought and practice centers around a pragmatism and instrumentalism that empowers individuals so as to achieve the maximum efficiency. A formula as simple as "If...then...." is not only the basis of logic as formulated by the Greeks more than 2,000 years ago, but also of the PC tools we use every day.
Perhaps this is why in a severely traditional society such as that which the Taliban is imposing on Afghanistan, something as innocuous, to us, as chess or card playing is illegal. Someone practiced in thinking, "If my knight moves to here, then your queen is threatened" is quite likely to begin working out other formulas bearing more immediately on the circumstances of daily life.
For example, the invention of labor-saving devices for the home has freed women in the U.S. and Europe to seek other types of work and gain degrees of independence not known before. While women in the West still have not gained parity with men in salary and other areas, and no one would say the home needs no labor, nothing is more threatening to both fundamentalists in our own country and entire traditional societies than scenarios in which men and women chose for themselves the life roles they wish to play.
Globalization and information technology, for the fundamentalist, only exacerbate the perceived threat. That is why, perhaps, the terrorists struck at our ability to move freely around our own country and the world, and our ability to freely trade stocks and bonds so as to achieve maximum efficiency and benefit.
It's reprehensible for people like Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell to suggest that the U.S. somehow deserved the tragic events of September 11, 2001, because people in the West are free to formulate their own values, and therefore may make choices not strictly aligned with tradition.
If there is one thing the cultural revolution of the 1960s and the Reagan economic revolution have taught us, it is that Americans can work hard and adhere to common decency while enjoying large degrees of freedom in their private lives.
Technology advances will continue to pose for us many profound questions, whether it be related to stem cell research, inequities born of globalization, or freedom of information. MSI is based on the premise that information technology, rightly applied, can be used to improve productivity, which leads to higher living standards for all. The making and distributing of goods, however, is only one area in which thinking men and women believe that technology, rightly applied, can be an instrument for progress and the greater good.
