Leo Marx, through an arduous reading experience, explores a landscape in which two, perhaps opposing, views on technological progress exist. I believe that the current view of technological progress expressed by a majority of Americans in 2015 is certainly oriented in the same manner as his described "technocratic" view of progress. Many people, especially older folks who experienced the adversarial culture to technological progress, represented by nuclear development of power and weaponry in the 1960's, something mentioned in the paper, definitely hold onto the skepticism and attitude that enables easy distaste of technology that is present in Marx's "enlightenment" perspective.
The Economist recently detailed many types of war-waging robots and asks the question: "Do armed robots make killing too easy?" In other words, just as many acts today, such as social interaction, have become more casual, does the existence of these robots mean war will become a more casual act? Based on their provided statistic, which I believe to be understated, it may seem that way, "In the past eight years[,] drone strikes by America's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have killed more than 2,400 people in Pakistan, including 479 civilians." 479 civilian lives taken by the barbaric American tactic of 'Well, we thought it was him because he was tall.' What The Economist is really asking here is, Does the existence and use of these robots devalue human life? Perhaps that answer should come from one of the 479 civilians or the many living today who can only find peace in a cloudy day, because it covers the sky above them. Is this specific technological progress actually a depiction of universal progress? Many argue that it is not; under the ideas of Marx's "enlightenment." If this is universal progress, then why is it not positively affecting all human beings? That is what universal implies, after all.
In Marx's essay, he addresses that the advance of the assembly line, and other efficiency-minded advances displaced the jobs of workers. This continues to be a topic of discussion to this day. Although we have absolutely moved into the Jeffersonian idea of keeping our work-shops in Europe China, we have not necessarily taken an enlightening stance in doing so, depending on perspective. From one perspective, we are abiding by Jefferson's enlightening request, but in another perspective, we damn an entire culture, that being the lower classes of many "less-developed" parts of the world, to poverty; surely considered a social injustice that Marx claims enlightenment aims to avoid. What may be enlightening to us, might be delivering that same oppression, that enlightenment attempts to overthrow, unto another people. With yet another perspective, the same one held by those older folks mentioned earlier, perhaps due to a lack of actual experience with modern technology and new positions created through technological progress, we lose American work-hours to those damned by our actions in other parts of the world. The only difference between that circumstance and the drone predicament is that instead of work-hours lost to new assembly practices, lives are lost to a more casual method of killing.
The Economist definitely appears to take the enlightening stance with "Robots go to war," not touching on the benefits to soldiers nearly as much as the costs to those affected by the warfare. Although the nature of the technology itself may not be reducing human life. That is to say, that organic life is not devalued by the existence of synthetic war-waging machines, just as it is not devalued by synthetic life, to take another step in the direction of synthetics. Drones are to guns as guns are to swords. They do not necessarily do the killing, but those (indirectly) wielding them have proven that they can do more harm than good. On one side, the drones keep American lives safe and out of combat situations, regardless of that cost. Looking from another perspective renders that the drones take more lives than they save. The cost of the pursuit of unmanned combat will be measured in casualties, not in dollars. Although the monetary cost is yet another thing to keep in mind.
Those who practice skepticism of technology do so because they have seen that technological progress can harm society as much as it can help. In other words, technological progress is not the same thing as universal progress. That is not to downplay the positive effects that a large portion of technological innovation can have. Technological innovation is paramount to humanity, and that should not be undermined, however, just because we can travel to Mars does not mean that we are better as a society, when a large portion of the global population lives in poverty.
