POLI3306 - Technical Language

Today's seminar was a discussion of Herbert Marcuse's opus work One-Dimensional Man. The covers a range of subjects but what it remains consistent in is its critic of what he calls "technological progress" which is present in all modern societies no matter what their political ideologies may consist of. In this telling narrative of the rise from feudal order, technology has been a way of man to relieve the suffering that is caused his subjugation to nature. Moreover, this has been a causal force of political organization and as such has led to an unbiased view of technology in a purely positivistic sense. What we deem as progress is a singularity of achieving technological means, for without this principle control over nature political organization would have remained as a localized feudal order (for without the mass production, transportation, and communication that depend on technology the modern society would cease to exist). Although technology provides a particular material means, this does not at all represent what lies at the origin of technological thinking.

Language plays a significant role in the way that we come to understand and orient ourselves within the world. Many early moderns had regarded language as contingent on a particular set of historical circumstances - alterable at any particular at any point without any said reason other than to serve a particular end. The classical conception of language is considered a reflection of archetypes, a reaching back into the past where origin reflected real world principles. These two conceptions of language show the contrast between classical and technical understanding. The former is based in essentialist principles and the other is an instrumental principles. With respect to how these two world views differ, the classical considers itself to be preformed while the other does not possess any particular substance.

What then does this mean about language and its orientation to the present? An instrumental use poses a significant risk against the non-practical use of language. But in posing this as a potential threat, I've become acutely aware that my proposition has little consequence within a technological context. The contradiction, which warrants this hasty dismissal, is that it lacks productive capacity. Indeed, we are subsumed within a culture of productive means but we must be careful to identify that it is the instrumental mode of production that is dominant.

To demonstrate the way technological language has been deployed, Marcuse points to the use of acronyms. On the one hand, acronyms are a fast an efficient way to relay information but they are also a means of exclusion that does not attempt to build understanding but to narrow discourse to a singular voice. Professor Koivukoski mentioned his own grudge with the technical language common in administration meetings and media. The term "moving forward" is often used to progress the conversation from a silence or disagreement. There is no specific direction the conversation, it is just simply an efficient phrase used to push forward another point. Another word "actually" is often used to suggest to the listener that what is to follow is not tentative but has a real consequence within the world. This emphasis on what is forms a particular movement within technological language to suggest solutions that then pacify the contingencies or signs of a present disagreement.

Technologies relation to nature is based in domination over the material obstacles of nature that afflict humanity. But technology can be applied to human nature and as such a means of control language has effectively taken the place of physical subversion. Control in this sense is not based on a silencing of nature, but rather a limiting of nature. When one thinks of a agriculture, technology is used to cut down a forest, till the land, and leave in its place the nature of our choosing. So too does technological language dilute the tensions and differences that are obstacles to a completely singular unity.