TECHNOLOGY WITH A HUMAN FACE
E.
F.(Ernst Friedrich)
Schumacher, born
in Germany and educated in England, was for many years the chief economist for
Britain’s National Coal Board.
Schumacher never says that
technology in itself is bad. However, he urges us to utilize the scientific techniques
that help us get to the truth of the matter and increase our knowledge, to
focus on technology that does not lead to giantism, speed, or violence and
destruction of human-work enjoyment. What he instead asks us is to recapture
simplicity in all that we do to produce a self-balancing system of nature.
According to Schumacher, the
modern world has been shaped by technology and continues to shaped looks sick.
We wonder that technology has helped us in many ways, yet the underlying
factors of alleviation of poverty and unemployment have not been solved by
technology at all. In that case, we have to consider whether it is possible
better – a technology with human face. It very strange to say the laws and principles
of technology, the product of man, are generally very different from those of
human nature of living nature. There is measure in all natural things in their
size, speed of violence. The system of nature, which man is a part of it, tends
to be self-balancing, self-adjusting, self-clearing. However, it is not so with
technology. It recognizes no self-limit principle in terms of its size, speed,
or violence. It does not possess the virtues of being self-balanced,
self-adjusting, self-cleansing. Somehow, man is dominated by technology and
specialization. The modern technology acts like a foreign body and it has
become inhuman in the subtle system of nature.
In his opinion, the modern
technology was involved in three crises simultaneously. First, human nature
revolts against suffocating and debilitating inhuman technological patterns.
Second, the living environment is partially breakdown. In addition, the third, it is clear that the
inroads of the world’s non-renewable resources have become serious bottlenecks
and virtual exhaustion loom ahead in the future. It is the result of
materialism and limitless expansionism in a finite environment. It is a big
question whether we could develop technology, which can solve all our problems,
a technology with a human face.
Schumacher says, “The primary task
of technology, it would seem, is to lighten the burden of work man has to carry
in order to stay alive and develop his potential”. Technology that lightens our
burden would help give us had better time to relax and do what we would like,
increase our creativity, work things with our hands that give us joy as defined
by Thomas Aquinas. Schumacher explains it is not the actual production of
‘total social time’ spent roughly one-fifth of one-third of one half, that is
3.5 percent and the rest 96.5 percent of ‘total social time’ is directly product
less. It pales into insignificance, that
it carries no real weight, but alone prestige. Hence, virtually all-real
production has been turned into an inhuman chore which does not enrich a man
but empties him. Taking stock of our goals, everybody would take it a privilege
to work usefully, creatively with his own hands and brains can actually produce
things and would benefit the society.
The modern industrial society is not
romantic and certainly not utopian. It is in deep trouble and holds no promise
of survival. We must have the courage to dream if we want to survive and give
our children a chance to survive. We must develop a new lifestyle, which is
compatible with the real needs of human nature and living nature around us. In
order to avoid the dire consequences, both by rich and poor countries, we need
a different kind of technology, a technology more productive with a human face.
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