It seem as though the message that tech optimist media is sending is a lot like, "Hey! This is great! Believe in science!" You'd think, then, by contrast, that tech pessimist media would be more like, "Hey! This is scary! Don't trust science!" But it seems to be more nuanced than that. Instead of saying that science is a tool that is inherently biased by social and cultural contexts, apocalyptic rhetoric in particularly seems to just imply that science can sometimes be dangerous if one isn't careful... But it's more than that, isn't it? Technological advancement, like any action in society, is always-and-already grounded in some social/economic/political ideology, which in this case would primarily be capitalism.
I don't really know how I feel about that. Admittedly, I'm suuuuper biased--clearly I've got a problem with rapid advancement of technology. But I think I have good reason to be! A lot of technology is advanced not of the sake of basic research, but because it's applicable to something. We talk a lot about that in class. It's why replication studies aren't funded, it's why nonsensical studies are always being published, it's why science has become so politicized, which Sarewitz talks about in a couple of his articles. And if that's the case, then it also has to make money. And of course to offset the cost of R&D and advertising and all that jazz, things are going to be super expensive at first. And yeah I guess it's all supposed to eventually even out and these revolutionary technologies are supposed to be relatively affordable, but then it kinda just seems like a race between how fast all the rich people can access the New Thing and how fast the New Thing can drop in price. Even then, is it really accessible to "all people" or just "all First World people?" Will technological advancements predicated on capitalism just increase the wealth gap between the First and Third Worlds?
I don't know.
I'd say that I'm not too surprised about what I found for tech optimism. The effects of rhetoric of effortlessness make sense to me, and I've certainly fallen prey to it many a time. (To be completely honest, I may or may not have fallen for it a couple times while researching CRISPR...) It's fascinating to come across something that is so revolutionary, but was discovered so seemingly effortlessly. And this is my own personal opinion, but it's pretty rad that the scientists who discovered it were both women! It's not just some nebulous "scientist" that I typically assume is a man, but they're women whose pictures I've seen and whose voices I've heard! (Well, I've heard Duodena's voice, anyway. Charpentier didn't do a TED Talk.) Science can do some pretty rad things, and I have no qualms (sort of) about admitting that.
But I really thought I'd find more about cool results of tech pessimism. I mean, I sort of found what I was looking for. Apocalyptic rhetoric is so common because it's so sensational. And apocalyptic rhetoric is really extreme--the whole point is to make it seem like this new technological advancement could literally bring about the end of the world. So I can see how a lot of people could form such extreme, pessimistic opinions. But I guess I thought that the intensity of the rhetoric would also bring about a somewhat intense effect, like huge communities of Luddites just hanging out around the globe (not really, but you get the idea). Instead, it kinda seems like apocalyptic rhetoric is just a way to get people afraid of [some of the results of] the system without actually questioning or doing anything about the system itself... And that I'm not so cool with.
References (listed by order of reference)
Sarewitz, Daniel. "The Rightful Place Of Science." Issues In Science & Technology 25.4 (2009): 89-94. Academic Search Premier. Web.
Sarewitz, Daniel. "Science Should Keep Out Of Partisan Politics." Nature 516.7529 (2014): 9. Academic Search Premier. Web.
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