Brian Martin - Technology for Nonviolent Struggle

It is quite possible to kill or incapacitate someone without technology. For example, a suitable blow from the hand at the back of the neck can do this. Mass killing can occur without technology, but it is much easier — and more tempting — if technology designed for killing is available. Spears, axes, bows and arrows, rifles and explosives make killing easier. Admittedly, they can be used for killing animals and other less lethal purposes, but in many cases they have been specially designed for battles.

The idea of biased technology obviously is incompatible with the idea of technology as good, bad or neutral. On the other hand, the idea of biased technology is quite compatible with the social shaping perspective. One would expect that when the military influences the development of an artefact — such as designing a radar system or grenade — it is likely to be selectively useful to the military. But there are no automatic connections. It is necessary to examine actual technologies, not just the social shaping process, to determine which groups can most easily use them. The Internet had military origins but has turned out to be highly useful for communication between antiwar activists.

Another way to describe this approach is to say that technologies embody social values or social interests. The idea of embodiment suggests that technologies take on the values of the interest groups crucial to their development and in turn are likely to be selectively useful to these same interest groups. For example, nuclear technology was developed by scientists and engineers working in the service of governments and militaries. Some of the key characteristics of nuclear weapons and nuclear power are high potential danger and large scale, both generating a need for high security and centralised control. These features make nuclear technology selectively useful to the military and the state.

The idea of biased technology is quite common among those who examine technological alternatives, such as appropriate technology. But it has never been the centre of popular or scholarly perceptions. The most common popular perceptions of technology seem to be that it is neutral, good or bad. The social study of technology has focussed on social shaping approaches; in the past couple of decades, social analysis of the impacts of technology has not been nearly as common as analysis of social influences on technology. There is not even a good name for the view of technology as biased. To talk of biased technology certainly counters the idea of neutral technology, but it suggests that there is something wrong with it: in a general sense, being biased is not seen as a good thing, even if it is biased in favour of harmony or biased against torture. Also, to talk of biased technology suggests that bias could be removed, which is not possible — the question is which way technology is biased, and in whose interests. The meanings of alternative terms such as embodiment or selective usefulness are not immediately obvious.

Whatever its name, though, this perspective is quite useful for analysing technology for nonviolent struggle. This appendix began with the assumption that it is worthwhile to analyse technologies, including yet-to-be-developed technologies, according to their value to a system for nonviolent struggle. Working backwards, it is possible to judge theories of technology to see how well they serve this purpose. Ideas that technology or technologies are inherently good, bad, neutral or inevitable are not helpful at all. Ideas of social shaping have more potential, but are not well adapted to looking at alternatives to what exists. Most useful is the idea that technologies embody social values and are selectively useful for certain purposes. It should not be surprising that this has been the framework implicitly used throughout this book!

Aldous Huxley, Science, Liberty and Peace (New York: Harper & Row, 1946; London: Chatto & Windus, 1947). It has been reprinted by the A. J. Muste Memorial Institute, 339 Lafayette Street, New York NY 10012, USA.

Since Huxley wrote this essay, several authors have written about the corruptions of power, including Alex Comfort, Authority and Deliquency in the Modern State: A Criminological Approach to the Problem of Power (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1950); David Kipnis, The Powerholders (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976); David Kipnis, Technology and Power (New York: Springer Verlag, 1990); Pitirim A. Sorokin and Walter A. Lunden, Power and Morality: Who Shall Guard the Guardians? (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1959). Kipnis’ work reports on psychological experiments that provide strong evidence for Lord Acton’s insight.

This point has also been made by Godfrey Boyle, Living on the Sun: Harnessing Renewable Energy for an Equitable Society (London: Calder & Boyars, 1975).

This point was also made most powerfully in the opening of Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964).

For further discussion, see chapter 9.

Some significant reviews are P. W. Bridgman, “Science and social evolution,” New York Times Book Review , 24 March 1946, pp. 3, 28; R. Brightman, “Science and peace,” Nature , Vol. 160, 29 November 1947, pp. 733-734; R. T. Cox, Science , 31 January 1947, pp. 134-135; Anne Fremantle, The Commonweal , 7 June 1946, pp. 197-198; Joseph Wood Krutch, “The condition of man,” The Nation , Vol. 162, No. 14, 6 April 1946, pp. 402-403. I thank Mary Cawte for tracking down these and other reviews, plus considerable commentary on Huxley.

It is favourably cited and quoted in Godfrey Boyle, “Energy,” in Godfrey Boyle, Peter Harper and the editors of Undercurrents (eds.), Radical Technology (London: Wildwood House, 1976), pp. 52-58, at p. 58.

See, for example, Frank Barnaby, The Automated Battlefield (New York: Free Press, 1986); Martin van Creveld, Technology and War: From 2000 B.C. to the Present (New York: Free Press, 1989); James F. Dunnigan, How to Make War: A Comprehensive Guide to Modern Warfare (New York: Quill, 1983); James F. Dunnigan, Digital Soldiers: The Evolution of High-Tech Weaponry and Tomorrow’s Brave New Battlefield (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996); Kenneth Macksey, Technology in War (New York: Prentice Hall, 1986); William H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D.1000 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983). On the continuing danger of nuclear war, see William E. Burrows and Robert Windrem, Critical Mass: The Dangerous Race for Superweapons in a Fragmenting World (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994).

Eric Prokosch, The Technology of Killing: A Military and Political History of Antipersonnel Weapons (London: Zed Books, 1995).

Arne Naess, “Why not science for anarchists too? A reply to Feyerabend,” Inquiry , Vol. 18, 1975, pp. 183-194, at p. 192.

Saul Mendlovitz and Rajni Kothari, “The perversion of science and technology: an indictment,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists , Vol. 35, No. 1, January 1979, pp. 57-59, at p. 57.

Even if armed liberation is possible, it may not be a promising road to a better society, since it involves killing, secrecy, centralisation of power and male domination. The armed liberators often become the new oppressors.