The Recovering Technologist

The beginnings of a book proposal

If there is ever to be a book I have written, for which these posts have functioned as raw material, it might be called ‘The Recovering Technologist’. Hence, the mockup.

Recovering from what, is the question. We identify with technologies in various degrees, as makers, operators, or owners. The more one identifies with their car, for example, the harder it will be to ask such means of transport difficult questions. If one has built a career in automotive, it will be difficult to flip one’s perspective towards the trade. Personally, I have identified with various creative media technologies, such as video games and other immersive things. Understanding these interactive things in the context of history, and how they continue and extend humans’ needs to transport themselves into a fictional world, and studying this extensively (up to a PhD and beyond), has been a source of pride and identity for me for decades. It has been a struggle to reach a detached view; to see them without identification.

Across decades of expertise and narrow focus, one finds themselves painted into a corner — there the question becomes about how to reinvent oneself, when you have bills to pay and dependants to nurture. Below, I quote meditation teacher Rob Burbea, who writes about attachment, but in this context I want to refer to his words in the context of the amassed knowledge about a specific topic; how what is considered expertise can lead to a form of learned helplessness:

If, for example, I own an expensive china vase, my knowledge of the many and rare conditions which had to come together for its creation — the particular mix of clays sourced perhaps from various barely accessible mountains, all the conditions involved in the formation of those clays over time, the conditions for their extraction, all the conditions involved in the development and handing down of the techniques used by the artisan who crafted it, the conditions sustaining the life of that artisan, and so on — rather than leading to my letting go of attachment to the vase, might actually increase my attachment to it. — Rob Burbea, Seeing That Frees. Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising, p. 15. (2014)

Recovering by detachment

As with any profession, technologists participate in communities. Recently, Robin K. Hill wrote about tech solutionism in the magazine of one of my communities, the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery).

The unspoken foundational claim is not that computing technology confers certain benefits, a pragmatic claim, and a matter of fact, but that it carries normative value, that it’s good; in particular, our tech is good, and therefore should be out there in the world. — Robin K. Hill (2024), The Techno-Pro Attitude.

Hill concludes her article by observing that the critical question is not to ask why technologists and tech entrepreneurs are so convinced about the goodness of technology, but rather, where does the pro-attitude come from. This is a complex issue, but with the help of the Iain McGilchrist’s hemisphere hypothesis, I do believe that its roots can be traced to the dominance of the left hemisphere and the mechanistic models it favours, as put forward by most educational systems. When one is in that mindset, every problem can be dissected to be potentially knowable and solvable, and technology then follows as the go-to tool to provide the solution.

Such solutionism has solved many problems. Yet, if one looks at the outputs of technological solutionism, optimism, and determinism, and how they have contributed to where the planet is today, things appear in dire need of changing. The (often unspoken) normative of technological good needs to be subordinated to the normative good for the planet, its finite resources, and the flourishing of all living beings - a normative return to sustainable living.

Indeed, dictionaries define recovery as “a return to a normal state of health, mind, or strength” and “the action or process of regaining possession or control of something stolen or lost”. I suggest detaching is a form of recovery, to regain the intangible valuables from the past that we have lost sight of, in our fascination with making and consuming technologies and extracting natural resources for it.

The waypoints

However, detaching takes time, a compass, and a map so that one finds paths towards the positive ends of what I have called an awakened design approach.

The idea is that the book would present that map. Following the map draws a path that is not necessarily linear, it is not a twelve-step program because everyone’s starting point is different. Paths that will be eye-opening to one might be a dead end to another — there is no one size fits all. Nevertheless, I suggest a selection of branching waypoints, so that individual seekers can forge their path (in no particular order):

• The recovering technologist lets go of a traditional engineering mindset that tends to gravitate immediately towards technology as the fix for societal problems.

• The recovering technologist rebuilds a relationship with technology that strives to cultivate moral acts and human flourishing.

• The recovering technologist cultivates a nuanced understanding of various technologies and their contexts, but balances them with wisdom about their transient and limited nature. For example, s/he champions green technologies with an understanding that they can help deal with the predicament of climate change but are not able to ‘solve’ it.

• The recovering technologist rehomes technology with a mindset of learned ignorance.

• The recovering technologist balances rational thought with bodied and spiritual thought; leverages intuition and embodied ways of thinking; draws from indigenous knowledge — these are all manoeuvres that reinforce the sense of coming home from the mental displacement that technologies can cause.

• The recovering technologist shifts their thinking into a planet-centric perspective instead of the human-centric view that has dominated modernity and led to the unsustainable exploitation of nature.

• The recovering technologist adopts strategies for economical degrowth, or sustainability by minimum, with the acknowledgment that we cannot keep everything but rather, it is necessary to take up a discerning view to the countless modern and resource-hungry inventions that have led us to the multiple crises of today.

• The recovering technologist might find the field kit for the work the ruins helpful in making the above judgments.

• The recovering technologist explores pockets of the world, alternative to the prevailing economic systems (gift economies, permaculture farms, community land trusts, etc.) and lets the communities be as tech-non-savvy as need be.

• The recovering technologist takes part in cultivating small communities of living culture, e.g. participating in the regrowth of local ties and produce.

The map is not the territory

The territory is where the work towards recovery is done, every day. I have tons of work to do; I have not addressed all of the above to the extent that I would like to. So I am drawing my map as I go, documenting it here, but I’m hoping the process would be of interest to others having second thoughts about their career in technology. Please comment if you recognise the sentiment.

Thank you for reading.

With love and kindness,

Aki