Interpretation On Neo-Luddism Cultural Criticism Of Technology

Neo-Luddism,which captured its name from the historical British Luddites,is receiving general concerns nowadays.However,the current research on Neo-Luddism is only limited to the study field of philosophy of technology,defining it as a tech criticism which criticizes technology.The cultural purports and cultural pursuits behind tech criticism of Neo-Luddism are ignored.This dissertation aims to re-interpret technological philosophy of Neo-Luddism from a cultural criticism perspective,understanding its tech criticism as a cultural criticism of tech,which means to reflect the alien cultural power about technology from a cultural criticism approach.Four characteristics of the Neo-Luddism's cultural criticism of tech are found:cultural criticism from the experience level,appropriate technological pessimism,missing-traditional-culture romantic stance and defending-control-and-pursing-free cultural purport.The dissertation re-interprets the Neo-Luddism's cultural tech criticism from three themes:(1)the critique of technological culture;(2)the critique of technological reason;and(3)the cultural ideological critique of technology.The first theme is the critique of technological culture.Neo-Luddites explored the concrete forms of technological culture and criticized its negative consequences.The reason why they criticized the technological culture is because of their basic assumptions of traditional culture defense.On the one hand,they valued traditional culture,on the other hand,they dissatisfied technological culture.The contradiction between these two different cultures led them to criticize technologization,mechanization and de-experience of living life caused by technological culture based on traditional relationships between human,nature and society.Then,Neo-Luddites analyzed the mechanism of traditional culture transferring into technological culture,along with this process,humans autonomy was changed into obedience and been controlled.The second theme is the critique of technological reason.As understanding forms and ways of thinking,Neo-Luddites criticized the concrete forms of technological reason in everyday life,which shows itself as consumerism,mathematical thinking and efficiency thinking.After clearing the critical stance of technological reason,this dissertation then explored the stance they pursed,which is a humanism stance:pursing human being's free,valuing the power of irrational factors and focusing on the importance of human experience.Finally,this paper analyzed how the control purports of technological reason work in social practice:technological reason controls nature,scientism deprives of people's autonomy and consumerism defines purpose of human life.The third theme is the cultural ideological critique of technology.The connotation of cultural ideology in this paper comes from Terry Eagleton,who defined ideology as"articulation of discourse and power".From this connotation,this paper analyzes Neo-Luddism theory of cultural ideology.The main content of its theory is uncovering technological discourse as cultural ideology,namely,deconstructing the view of technological progress,demything the myth of information cult and uncovering the destruction of industrialism worldview.The reason why Neo-Luddites revealed falseness of technological discourse is because it's an outcome of seeing the reality from a social vision of technological democracy and literal naturalism.This dissertation makes the mechanism of Neo-Luddism cultural ideological critique of technology clear:technology has its inner political attribute and working class loses its own cultural ideology of technology.The Neo-Luddism cultural criticism of tech theory has its rationality,while exists apparent shortcomings and logical paradox.Neo-Luddism criticizing technological culture and missing traditional culture,is actually standing at the cultural conservatism position to oppose emerging culture,showing a tendency of cultural elitism.They over-highlighted the negative influences of technology to culture,and exaggerated potential effects of technology,implying an characteristic of technological determinism.When criticizing technological reason,compared to Frankfort School's critic from a philosophical speculative level,Neo-Luddism had the same feature of uncovering its control purport,however,the difference is they preferred to criticize from an experience level.Neo-Luddism objected the thinking way of technological reason and called for the humanism value,indicating a deeper seek for radical individualism worldview which needs more concerns.This dissertation proposes an appropriate position to technological reason,which admits the contributions of it to the progress of civilization,while alerts the potential alienation caused by it.About the cultural ideological critic of tech,Frankfort School had made a famous point of "science and technology as ideology",the same between these two schools are they both criticized the social function of ideology serving for the ruling class,and they both thought about the problems in developed industrialized countries,while the different is,compared to Horkheimer's science as ideology,Marcuse's technology as ideology as well as Habermas's technological reason as new ideology,Neo-Luddism proposed new study object-technological discourse.However,by over-highlighting the ideological function of technology,Neo-Luddism ignored its productivity function,which is another shortcoming.Meanwhile,its political ideal of technological democracy has problems,too.It's unrealistic to realize social democracy by realizing technological democracy solely.Though Neo-Luddism cultural criticism of tech theory is a reflection of technology development and culture retention in western countries,it's an inspiration for our country of possible paradox between technology and culture in developing a new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics.