Технологиялық утопия: болашаққа үміт және сын көзқарас

Any ideology based on the premise that advances in technology could bring a utopia

Technological utopianism (often called techno utopianism or technoutopianism) is any ideology based on the premise that advances in science and technology could and should bring about a utopia, or at least help to fulfill one or another utopian ideal. A techno utopia is therefore an ideal society, in which laws, government, and social conditions are solely operating for the benefit and well being of all its citizens, set in the near or far future, as advanced science and technology will allow these ideal living standards to exist; for example, post scarcity, transformations in human nature, the avoidance or prevention of suffering and even the end of death. Technological utopianism is often connected with other discourses presenting technologies as agents of social and cultural change, such as technological determinism or media imaginaries. A tech utopia does not disregard any problems that technology may cause, but strongly believes that technology allows mankind to make social, economic, political, and cultural advancements. Overall, Technological Utopianism views technology's impacts as extremely positive. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, several ideologies and movements, such as the cyberdelic counterculture, the Californian Ideology, cyber utopianism, transhumanism, and singularitarianism, have emerged promoting a form of techno utopia as a reachable goal. The movement known as effective accelerationism (e/acc) even advocates for "progress at all costs". Cultural critic Imre Szeman argues technological utopianism is an irrational social narrative because there is no evidence to support it. He concludes that it shows the extent to which modern societies place faith in narratives of progress and technology overcoming things, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Karl Marx believed that science and democracy were the right and left hands of what he called the move from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom. He argued that advances in science helped delegitimize the rule of kings and the power of the Christian Church. 19th century liberals, socialists, and republicans often embraced techno utopianism. Radicals like Joseph Priestley pursued scientific investigation while advocating democracy. Robert Owen, Charles Fourier and Henri de Saint Simon in the early 19th century inspired communalists with their visions of a future scientific and technological evolution of humanity using reason. Radicals seized on Darwinian evolution to validate the idea of social progress. Edward Bellamy’s socialist utopia in Looking Backward, which inspired hundreds of socialist clubs in the late 19th century United States and a national political party, was as highly technological as Bellamy’s imagination. For Bellamy and the Fabian Socialists, socialism was to be brought about as a painless corollary of industrial development. H. G. Wells in works such as The Shape of Things to Come promoted technological utopianism. The horrors of the 20th century – namely Fascist and Communist dictatorships and the world wars – caused many to abandon optimism. The Holocaust, as Theodor Adorno underlined, seemed to shatter the ideal of Condorcet and other thinkers of the Enlightenment, which commonly equated scientific progress with social progress.

A movement of techno utopianism began to flourish again in the dot com culture of the 1990s, particularly in the West Coast of the United States, especially based around Silicon Valley. The Californian Ideology was a set of beliefs combining bohemian and anti authoritarian attitudes from the counterculture of the 1960s with techno utopianism and support for libertarian economic policies. It was reflected in, reported on, and even actively promoted in the pages of Wired magazine, which was founded in San Francisco in 1993 and served for a number years as the "bible" of its adherents. This form of techno utopianism reflected a belief that technological change revolutionizes human affairs, and that digital technology in particular – of which the Internet was but a modest harbinger – would increase personal freedom by freeing the individual from the rigid embrace of bureaucratic big government. "Self empowered knowledge workers" would render traditional hierarchies redundant; digital communications would allow them to escape the modern city, an "obsolete remnant of the industrial age". Its adherents claim it transcended conventional "right/left" distinctions in politics by rendering politics obsolete. However, techno utopianism disproportionately attracted adherents from the libertarian right end of the political spectrum. Therefore, techno utopians often have a hostility toward government regulation and a belief in the superiority of the free market system. Prominent "oracles" of techno utopianism included George Gilder and Kevin Kelly, an editor of Wired who also published several books. In the late 1990s and especially during the first decade of the 21st century, technorealism and techno progressivism are stances that have risen among advocates of technological change as critical alternatives to techno utopianism. However, technological utopianism persists in the 21st century as a result of new technological developments and their impact on society. For example, several technical journalists and social commentators, such as Mark Pesce, have interpreted the WikiLeaks phenomenon and the United States diplomatic cables leak in early December 2010 as a precursor to, or an incentive for, the creation of a techno utopian transparent society. Cyber utopianism, first coined by Evgeny Morozov, is another manifestation of this, in particular in relation to the Internet and social networking. Nick Bostrom contends that the rise of machine superintelligence carries both existential risks and an extreme potential to improve the future, which might be realized quickly in the event of an intelligence explosion. In Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World, he further explored ideal scenarios where human civilization reaches technological maturity and solves its diverse coordination problems. He listed some technologies that are theoretically achievable, such as cognitive enhancement, reversal of aging, self replicating spacecrafts, arbitrary sensory inputs (taste, sound ), or the precise control of motivation, mood, well being and personality.