E.
F. Schumacher was a British economist and author. He contributed many articles to the London Times. One of his books, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered became a
best-seller.
According
to him, 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’s 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.
But, it is not so with technology. It recognizes no self-limit principle in
terms of its size, speed, or violence. It doesn’t 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. And
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.
Technology that lightens our burden would help give us 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.
Schumacher never says that technology in
itself is bad. But, 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 suggests us is to recapture simplicity
in all that we do so as to produce a self-balancing system of nature and a
technology to which everybody can use and which is for all.
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