A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology

1. From Cultural Criticism to Cultural Lag

Two influential and related general descriptions of the new stage lighting in which we perforce assume our roles emerged in the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century social sciences. In Europe, a key figure in the development of what became known as the cultural criticism of modern technics was Georg Simmel. As has been argued by José Luis Garcia (2005), Simmel’s socio-philosophical study of money analyzed how what began as a simple enhancement of the means of exchange, through the monetizing of all exchanges, fundamentally altered socio-cultural life. This alteration, which Simmel identifies with the particular technical means known as money, applies even more to modern technics as a whole. The result of industrial production, mass consumerism, and “creative destruction” – to use Joseph Shumpeter’s illuminating descriptor for the unification of the technical inventive and commercial impulses – nevertheless tempers any unqualified Enlightenment, liberal or socialist belief in progress. Technological progress appears to bring not only the goods of increased wealth, reduced physical labor and extended lifespan but also the more problematic, unintended and not easily controlled consequences of alienation, bureaucratization and intensified decision-making – not to mention environmental pollution and transformation. For Simmel, Max Weber, Walter Benjamin, Romano Guardini, Günter Anders and others, the combination was creating a new type ...