While surfing the net, getting an x-ray, or driving to school, have you ever wondered: “What have all these technologies got to do with my rights and responsibilities as a Canadian?” Probably not, eh?

However, Darin Barney, who recently spoke at the 2007 Hart House Lecture, argues that we should be asking ourselves this question. If we believe that as Canadians we should have some say about new technologies, then we are exercising citizenship in our rapidly developing technology state. If we don’t care, he says, Canada and other nations will still have to address the unintended consequences caused by the speed and unregulated growth of technology.

To read the full article on Darin Beany and the technological state,

New technological products are continuously coming out, and it seems that as one state of the art piece of technology has come out, another one is coming out to make it obsolete. It was not long ago when I was the cool little kid listening to my sexy yellow (analogue) Walkman but now owning a Walkman is not really cool at all, even though I listen to much of the same music on my (digital) iPod. But is this product change really revolutionary Barney asks, or is the move from the walkman and iPod just a market driven incremental change?

“When we say revolution we mean something big, something life changing,” Barney says, “but usually you don’t know that a revolution has happened until after the fact.” The slogans which some companies use to advertise their technologies is somewhat misleading: ‘This revolutionary new product will change your life!’ But will it necessarily be better?

“What is the good life?” Barney asks, “Can we really say what is good for you is good for me?” He discusses the important distinction between moral and ethical judgement, where the former is a shared set of values in society, or what is inter-subjectively known as ‘ the good’, and the latter is what one thinks our values should be, or what is ‘the good life’.

“Is the good life really characterized by listening to your iPod or having the latest cell phone technology?” I might think so, but what do others think? Some people say that technology is disconnecting people from the real word but not only are there social risks, there are also long term health risks associated with some of these new gizmos (Guys, did you know we’re not supposed to be keeping cell phones in our pocket?).

OK, so fair enough, the good life for me might not be the same as the good life to you. We have different views. Barney tells me these differing views are precisely one of the reasons why technology’s impacts need to be discussed by the citizens of Canada. These diverging views suggest that we need to politicize technology, so we, the citizens, can control how far we want technology to go. In fact, Barney argues, by letting orporations lead the way in technology, we’re letting those corporations determine what technologies we want.

The implications of technological choice are real. Should we continue with stem-cell research? Are biometric identity cards good for security or will they take away some of our liberties? Should we make genetically modified crops to feed all those starving in Africa? All of these questions tie into each individual’s perception of the good life. These are real life questions that need to be answered.

What are the implications of democratizing technology? Do we let Canadian MPs sort it out, or are we going to start electing technological representatives? This might seem slightly absurd, but Barney himself does not suggest what kind of structure these new democratic institutions should have. He does suggest, however, that we need to start discussing the implications of runaway technology on citizenship now.

Barney knows that the path towards the democratization of technology will be fraught with many obstacles. He suggests that technology has become part of the Canadian identity and is something many Canadians hold dear to our hearts; we want to be the leaders of the global technology race. “Are we to let mere politics bring down the technological republic?”

This is a very important question, because democratizing technology could actually impede worthwhile technological development. Would you be prepared to stop stem-cell research if the majority said they didn’t want it? With democracy would come more lobby groups, and more government bureaucracy. But perhaps this will be better than no regulation at all.

Barney’s discussion on citizenship of technology also raises some interesting questions internationally. What happens when a technology
that is legal in one country, spills in to another country that deems that same technology to be illegal? Is there such a thing as technological sovereignty? And if so, what happens when it gets violated?

However there is one question that Barney does not address directly in his presentation that may be the most important question of all: Do we, as citizens, actually care about regulating technology? Furthermore, if it’s important to start caring now, how do we start getting people to care? “That is the million dollar question,” Barney says, “for change of this scale to happen, something big needs to happen to shake up the system, and I don’t know what that change will be.”

Like any good debate, Barney’s theories about citizenship and technology pose many more questions that they answer. Here’s hoping this debate surfaces in the public sphere sometime soon, opening up the possibility we might be voting for Green or Liberal technologies in the years to come.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 28th, 2007 at 1:13 pm and is filed under Events, Guest Blogger, We've Got Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.