Technology for Nonviolent Struggle

of technology has not been nearly as common as analysis of social influences on technology. There is not even a good name for the view of technology as biased. To talk of biased technology certainly counters the idea of neutral technology, but it suggests that there is something wrong with it: in a general sense, being biased is not seen as a good thing, even if it is biased in favour of harmony or biased against torture. Also, to talk of biased technology suggests that bias could be removed, which is not possible — the question is which way technology is biased, and in whose interests. The meanings of alternative terms such as embodiment or selective usefulness are not immediately obvious.

Whatever its name, though, this perspective is quite useful for analysing technology for nonviolent struggle. This appendix began with the assumption that it is worthwhile to analyse technologies, including yet-to-be- developed technologies, according to their value to a system for nonviolent struggle. Working backwards, it is possible to judge theories of technology to see how well they serve this purpose. Ideas that technology or technologies are inherently good, bad, neutral or inevitable are not helpful at all. Ideas of social shaping have more potential, but are not well adapted to looking at alternatives to what exists. Most useful is the idea that technologies embody social values and are selectively useful for certain purposes. It should not be surprising that this has been the framework implicitly used throughout this book!

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Notes

Notes to Prologue

1.

Aldous Huxley, Science, Liberty and Peace (New York: Harper & Row, 1946; London: Chatto & Windus, 1947). It has been reprinted by the A. J. Muste Memorial Institute, 339 Lafayette Street, New York NY 10012, USA.

2.

Since Huxley wrote this essay, several authors have written about the corruptions of power, including Alex Comfort, Authority and Deliquency in the Modern State: A Criminological Approach to the Problem of Power (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1950); David Kipnis, The Powerholders (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976); David Kipnis, Technology and Power (New York: Springer Verlag, 1990); Pitirim A. Sorokin and Walter A. Lunden, Power and Morality: Who Shall Guard the Guardians? (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1959). Kipnis’ work reports on psychological experiments that provide strong evidence for Lord Acton’s insight.

3.

This point has also been made by Godfrey Boyle, Living on the Sun: Harnessing Renewable Energy for an Equitable Society (London: Calder & Boyars, 1975).

4.

This point was also made most powerfully in the opening of Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964).

5.

For further discussion, see chapter 9.

6.

Some significant reviews are P. W. Bridgman, “Science and social evolution,” New York Times Book Review, 24 March 1946, pp. 3, 28; R. Brightman, “Science and peace,” Nature, Vol. 160, 29 November 1947, pp. 733-734; R. T. Cox, Science, 31 January 1947, pp. 134-135; Anne Fremantle, The Commonweal, 7 June 1946, pp. 197-198; Joseph Wood Krutch, “The condition of man,” The Nation, Vol. 162, No. 14, 6 April 1946, pp. 402-403. I thank Mary Cawte for tracking down these and other reviews, plus considerable commentary on Huxley.

7.

It is favourably cited and quoted in Godfrey Boyle, “Energy,” in Godfrey Boyle, Peter Harper and the editors of Undercurrents (eds.), Radical Technology (London: Wildwood House, 1976), pp. 52-58, at p. 58.

Notes to Chapter 1

1.

See, for example, Frank Barnaby, The Automated Battlefield (New York: Free Press, 1986); Martin van Creveld, Technology and War: From 2000 B.C. to the Present (New York: Free Press, 1989); James F. Dunnigan, How to Make War: A Comprehensive Guide to Modern Warfare (New York: Quill, 1983); James F. Dunnigan, Digital Soldiers: The Evolution of High-Tech Weaponry and Tomorrow’s Brave New Battlefield (New York: St. Martin’s