填空题 People uncritical of technology also rationalize endangering
Technologies by promoting humanistic uses of a particular technology.
In 1950s, for instance, nuclear weaponry was justified by its 1
"peaceful use": cheap electricity through nuclear power. Later,
when nuclear power"s excesses and dangers came under light, 2
pronuclear people tried to deflect concern by drawing attention to
the medical uses of radiation.
Such rationalizations make a strong effect on both the public 3
and the creators and disseminators of technologies. Since the
notion of the technical solution has so successfully engulfed our minds,
social mores, institutions, the most searing judgment critics have been 4
able to muster does not even question modem technology as such.
Rather it asserts where technologies are neutral: they are just tools 5
that contain no inherent political bias. If there is a problem with
technology, it lay with what class of people controls it. 6
There is other school of thought which views technology as 7
political: technologies serve political ends. They are invented and
deployed by people who benefit and believe in a particular political 8
setup—and their very structure serves this setup. An overview of
mass technological society shows that the kinds of technologies in
place are those serve the perpetuation of mass technological society. 9
For instance, the telephone and computer may look as "people"s 10
technologies", and they do help individuals stay in communication and
collect, sort, and manage information. Yet both were consciously
developing to enhance systems of centralized political power. 11
According to a manually written by early telephone entrepreneurs, the 12
telephone was consciously disseminated to increase corporate
command of information, resources, communications, and time.
The computer is originally invented during World War Ⅱ to decode 13
intercepted radio messages and later to boost military power through
guided missilery. Today these technologies make global
exploitation of nature, urban centralization, and high-tech military
domination not only possibly, but seemingly necessary. In a 14
decentralized, communal society, telephones or computers would be 15
neither politically necessary nor individually attractive. As jerry
Mander sees it, "Each technology is compatible with certain political
And social outcomes, and usually it has been invented by people who
have some of these outcomes in mind. The idea that technology is
"neutral" is itself not neutral."