Technology, society, and freedom in the Tower of Babel

This article extends the relationship between technology and society in three respects. First, it calls attention to the commonly overlooked subliminal sources of human motivation and conduct in dealing with both technical and nontechnical (or cultural) artifacts. Both enforce restraints that liberate human creativity and permit collective survival— hence the relevance of the issue of freedom. Second, it sets the relationship between technology and society into the full context of our contemporary anarchical world order, in which incompatible cultures clash with each other and with the common technologies and organizations that sustain the world's rapidly growing population. Finally, it assigns top priority to the social contexts into which all scientific and technical work is set; it contends that, if society breaks down, all else goes down, too. In this perspective the present world order demands vastly more individual and collective restraints if the new technologies are to live up to their promise. Unfortunately, we know yet too little about the social contexts of technology or the functioning of society in our multicultured, interdependent world.