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The Question Concerning Techno-Utopia



Author(s)

Szymon Wróbel

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DOI:10.17265/2159-5313/2019.07.002

The author, in this paper, asks the question, why is technology the key concept in shaping the utopian imagination. In previous times, starting from Thomas Morus, the foundation of utopian thinking was rather the state and socia organization, not the means of production. Surprisingly, it appears that, without technological support, both social and political utopias are nothing. Technology gives credibility to the utopian project. Jules Verne or Edward Bellamy only gives credibility to what is otherwise incredible. What, then, is the utopian feature of Utopia as regards to technology? The author claims that Utopia reverses the methodological maxim, whereby conclusions about possibilities can be drawn only from the real. Utopia does the opposite: Everything that exists operates within the technological organization and its capabilities. After all, Herbert George Wells’ time machine does not bring us to a politically-thought-out organization, benefiting everyone, but a sluggish race living in small groups and feeding on fruits. It is a humanity liberated from both work and thinking, humanity at its end, unemployed humanity. In the paper, the author, following the path laid by Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, and Bernard Stiegler, is trying to rethink the problematic “utopian perfection of technology” seeking universal automatism and generating a new organization of work.

automatization, technology, techno-utopia, the future of work