From Steve Talbott's Devices of the Soul[1],
"Now, jumping ahead to our own day, I’d like you to think for a moment of the various words we use to designate technological products. You will notice that a number of these words have a curious double aspect: they, or their cognate forms, can refer either to external objects we make, or to certain inner activities of the maker. A “device,” for example, can be an objective, invented thing, but it can also be some sort of scheming or contriving of the mind, as when a defendant uses every device he can think of to escape the charges against him. The word “contrivance” shows the same two-sidedness, embracing both mechanical appliances and the carefully devised plans and schemes we concoct in thought. As for “mechanisms” and “machines,” we produce them as visible objects out there in the world even as we conceal our own machinations within ourselves. Likewise, an “artifice” is a manufactured device, or else it is trickery, ingenuity, or inventiveness. “Craft” can refer to manual dexterity in making things and to a ship or aircraft, but a “crafty” person is adept at deceiving others.
This odd association between technology and deceit occurs not only in our own language, but even more so in Homer’s Greek, where it is much harder to separate the inner and outer meanings, and the deceit often reads like an admired virtue. The Greek techne, from which our own word “technology” derives, meant “craft, skill, cunning, art, or device”—all referring without discrimination to what we would call either an objective construction or a subjective capacity or maneuver. Techne was what enabled the lame craftsman god, Hephaestus, to trap his wife, Aphrodite, in a promiscuous alliance with warlike Ares. "
It's powerful groundings, and all too often I wonder & I fret about where we stand: how understandable is our technology? How much technology exists that spreads the memetics, the idea of it's means, that illuminates the world? Trying to understand technology feels like being lost in the labyrinth, I fret.
At this point, Ursala Franklin's Holistic and Prescriptive technologies wikipedia link[2] is on my browsers hotlist, it knows real quick where I'm headed, cause I go here a lot. Prescriptive technology is designed to enact control, to perform functions: it's about a mechanism that does the task, does the job. It's the pulley block factory production line mentioned in the article. And modern technology, even social ones, resembles this: use technology to gather posts/pictures/content from all over, bring them together into big data centers, then send that data back out. This is technology as mechanism, a device.
Ursala also describes holistic technologies. These are more the tools Marc Brunel and Henry Maudslay used to create this production line, the tools they used to devise their factory. Holistic technologies don't necessarily have to enlighten & illuminate their users, but they do have to empower them, give the user flexibility.
I have great hopes that computing is a place where we can extend the holistic nature of technology. Where technology is less about deviousness of bending materials & systems &, in communicative capitalism, people, in to a specific form, and more about expanding generally prowess & capability of the weilders. And letting users participate in expanding & augmenting the tooling, letting the user become a tool maker. But, as the article does somewhat mysteriously abruptly shift & wrap up to,
"As Daniel Susskind so dismayingly notes, our computational muscle has now reached a point where we can create machines—devices variously mechanical, electronic, or atomic—that can think for themselves. And outthink us, to boot.
[...] and though not all is lost to science since in certain places our ability to perform archaic crafts remains intact, still there is an ominous note sounding not too far offstage."
[1] https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/devices-of-the/97805965...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_Franklin#Holistic_and_p...
Still the scariest part, via the awesome great fantastic in-depth with-great-links-to-previous-stories staceyoniot coverage[1] on Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA, the alliance behind this Matter specification):
> The CSA is also focused on releasing as much as it can as open-source code, which strikes me as somewhat incongruous with the fact that to see or vote on the developing standard, companies had to pay to join the CSA and the Matter working group. However, the code is all available on Github, and anyone will be able to see it and download it for their applications and devices.
It's just so depressing thinking that there's this industrial standard for the most ubiquitous & pervasive devices on the planet, the things that fill our home, AND THAT WE CANT KNOW OF IT. We don't get to know how our devices work, even though there's a common language. It's miserable, anti-Enlightenment, and it enforces a cruel & brutal consumerism & keeps mankind from grappling with the role of technology in our lives. It makes me think of Steve Talbott's great write up, The Deceiving Virtues of Technology[3]:
> This odd association between technology and deceit occurs not only in our own language, but even more so in Homer’s Greek, where it is much harder to separate the inner and outer meanings, and the deceit often reads like an admired virtue.
I want honest, genuine technology, that gives me a fair shake, that says what it is. CSA builds upon the unreasonable, deceitful Thread standard to build another new web of control & manipulation, that similarly releases some source, but refuses to share understanding, refuses to illuminate what is happening here. We should not accept this dark technology into our homes.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27121525
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27122604
[3] https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/devices-of-the/97805965...