Labour and the Lifeworld

Abstract

In many respects, we are what we can do. Technological innovation transforms human agency, it shapes our present and future possibilities, and embodies and transforms the ideals and values of society. The operation of the technological imperative upon the organisation of all plans and activity is directed to take us nearer to the realisation of the success of the societal gamble, the removal of the evils of the natural world, and the achievement of a paradise on Earth. The drive to innovate, bringing novel inventions and new transformative powers, is inherently a moral drive within the technological society to improve and perfect it. When modern philosophy attempts to articulate and judge these ideals and values in a critique of technology, it should attempt to articulate and judge the ideals and values of society, critically examining our assumptions and presuppositions, to prepare a way for the rational evaluation of the vision for society, in relation to alternative visions of our future possibilities, capacity for rational understanding, happiness, and wellbeing. It should attempt to present a different sort of critical rationality from the dominant instrumentalist conception of technical rationality, not only to disrupt or escape from the autonomy of the technological, but also to clarify whether technical rationality is rational in a broader, philosophical sense.