Robert McGinn: Technology, Demography, and the Anachronism of Traditional Rights

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Robert McGinn: Technology, Demography, and the Anachronism of Traditional Rights Robert McGinn Chair of the Science, Technology, and Society (STS) Program at Stanford. STS: The newish (faddish?

1 Robert McGinn: Technology, Demography, and the Anachronism of Traditional Rights Robert McGinn Chair of the Science, Technology, and Society (STS) Program at Stanford. STS: The newish (faddish?) institutional home for interdisciplinary studies in science and technology. His book Science, Technology, and Society (1991), inter alia, develops the argument contained in our selection. And that argument? 1

2 The Potentially Problematic Pattern Technological maximality, unfolding under the auspices of traditional rights supposedly held and exercised by a large and increasing number of parties, is apt to dilute or diminish contemporary societal quality of life. Technological Maximality (TM) The quality of embodying in one or more of its aspects or dimensions the greatest scale or highest degree previously attained or currently possible in that aspect or dimension. Technologies can be maximalist in any of several respects 2

3 1 Product size or scale Trump Tower, Trans-Canada Railway, West Edmonton Mall 2 Product performance (power, speed, efficiency, scope, etc.) Bovine Growth Hormone (rbgh), GM crops, Moore s Law 3 Speed of production of 4 Volume of production of 5 Speed of diffusion of 6 Domain of diffusion of 7 Intensity of use of 8 Domain of use of 9 Duration of use of assembly line production; Taylorism, fast food, factory farming television, telephone, polio vaccine television, telephone, Coke clear-cut forestry, ocean-bottom trawling paper-clips, credit cards, computers, electricity, smart phones Teflon, polyester, microwaveable plastics Traditional Rights McGinn: Rights traditionally have been construed as individual entitlements that are timelessly valid and morally inviolable. I.e.: McGinn assumes a basically Lockean view of rights, which holds that rights are (self-evidently) inalienable. For Locke, rights exist prior to society; society comes into existence in order to better protect our God-given natural rights. 3

4 Interactive Nature of the Pattern McGinn argues that the conjunction of 1) technological maximality with 2) traditional rights and 3) an ever-increasing number of rights-holders is apt to put society at risk (59). The conjunction of these three phenomena is what McGinn calls the troubling triad Examples of the Troubling Triad Medicine: Intensive, often protracted use of an ever increasing number of life-prolonging of technologies, for an increasing number of patients, such uses supposedly being called for by the inviolable right to life. Environmental Management: The proliferation of mopeds, ATVs, snowmobiles, and other kinds of transport vehicles in special or fragile environmental areas, such use supposedly being sanctioned by mobility rights. Urban-Planning: Increasing numbers of high-rise buildings in city centers, supposedly justified by property owner or developer rights. 4

5 The untoward effects exacted by the unfolding of our triadic pattern included steep financial and psychological tolls, the depletion and degradation of environmental resources, and the dilution and disappearance of urban amenities. In short, the costs of operation of the triadic pattern are substantial and increasing. (59-60) Why has the triadic pattern gone largely unnoticed? 1. The effects of the behavior of the individual agent are negligibly problematic. (Compare: Hardin) 2. Powerful cultural forces encourage each element of the pattern 5

6 TM, for its part, is fostered: a) by the free-market economic system: Increased efficiency and economies of scale provide an incentive for TM in the form of greater profits. b) by a general orientation in modern Western culture towards the technological fix and c) by a general expectation in Western democracies that new or better technologies are not to be reserved for the elite, but made available to everyone. And, as for rights: As McGinn notes, in the historical context in which they were first recognized, it was (politically) useful to imbue rights with an immutable character. In the historical process of legitimizing the idea of rights, it was strategic to accord rights a quasi-sacred status (63). But this status has now made it more difficult to think of rights in a new way (perhaps in the right way). We are trapped, in other words, by the strategy that was originally supposed to help emancipate us. 6

7 Similarly, it sometimes made sense, once upon a time, to encourage rapid population growth, especially in places like the North American West. (Saskatchewan: The Last Best West! ) Yet, this has left us with a legacy of social attitudes and tax policies that promotes the continuation of increasing numbers of rights-claimants. This same phenomenon is exacerbated by the widespread belief that reproduction is a matter of individual rights and thus not a legitimate subject for social control. (Again, recall Hardin) What can be done to change the pattern? I. We could directly control the increase in the number of rights-holders II. We could directly control individual instances/types of technologically maximal behavior For various reasons (political, social, economic) McGinn suggests that coercive solutions of this sort would not work in practice at present. 7

8 Contextualized Rights Instead, McGinn suggests that we alter the way we conceive of rights; that we move towards a contextualized theory of rights. An acceptable theory of rights in contemporary technological society must be able to deal with the implications of the exercise of rights in a context in which a rapidly changing, powerful, technological arsenal is diffused throughout a populous, materialistic, democratic society. (66) In other words, we need to lower the threshold of individual wrongdoing to reflect the manifest wrong effected by aggregation. With such a revaluation, the individual would have no right to act as he or she once did because of the newly declared immorality of the individual act. (66) 8

9 Grounds for Contextualizing Individual Rights The existence of society is called into question by the exercise of the putative right. Continued effective social functioning is threatened by the exercise of the right. Some natural resource essential to society is threatened due to the exercise of the right. A seriously debilitating financial cost is imposed on society by the widespread or frequent exercise of the right. Some phenomenon of significant aesthetic, cultural, historical, or spiritual value to a people is jeopardized by the exercise of a right. Some highly valued amenity would be seriously damaged or eliminated through the exercise of the right. 9

The Dynamics of Sociocultural Systems. By Dr. Frank Elwell

The Dynamics of Sociocultural Systems By Dr. Frank Elwell Introduction In the last lecture I presented the universal structure of all societies and categorized the various parts of sociocultural systems.