Technologies can foster our condition. No doubt.
But to think that technologies only do good is to fail to ask whether technological usage doesn’t also come with a regressional (downside) effect, as philosopher Daniel Ross helped me see.
Philosopher Bernard Stiegler used to write that technological usage is like a drug, a pharmakon, in Greek: the intertwinement of a poison and a remedy, “good” and “bad” at the same time.
A mix which we can’t undo.
When we intake a drug, we can’t just take the remedy; we also have to deal with its poisonous side-effect.
Because we know so, we don’t use drugs unquestionably.
The poisonous aspect of drugs doesn’t mean that we reject drugs either.
We know of the pharmacological effect, so we try to figure how to best use drugs. We do a pharmacology. We use drugs with care.
If we can see technologies as pharmakon (drugs), how can we learn to see which usage are pernicious, and which are beneficial?
Stiegler was not the only one to discuss the side effect of technological usage.
Neil Postman also questioned whether technological usage come with a pernicious effect, he used to ask (I paraphrase): aren’t technologies a Faustian bargain? When we adopt a technology, we surely win something, but, don’t we also lose something?