Technology and Gadgets

Critics of the technology is a theory that critical technology for alleged negative impact in terms of advanced technological development. Proponents of this theory argue that in all advanced industrial societies (whether capitalist or not) the technology is or becomes a means of domination, control and exploitation, or more generally something that threatens the survival of the humanity. In a broader sense a sceptical vis-à-vis the technology that is not necessarily fully developed theory may also be linked to criticism of the technology.

In Europe sceptical attitudes toward technology has become more important in the years 1970, for example in anti-nuclear movements. In the eyes of some critics, the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 seems to confirm the impossibility of controlling large-scale technology. The Internet euphoria of 1990's has encouraged more positive attitudes toward technology. But fears about rising possibilities of surveillance technology are still widespread.

The authors develop a critique of technology are, for example. Günther Anders, Jacques Ellul and Lewis Mumford. In a broader sense some writings of Martin Heidegger and the history of critical technology (David F. Noble) are also part of the critique of technology.

Criticism of the technology is a variant of the critical progress that goes back at least to Rousseau.

In the years 1970 to the USA, the critique of technology has become the basis of a new political perspective called anarcho-primitivism, which was passed by thinkers such as Fredy Perlman, John Zerzan, and George Bradford alias David Watson . All former Marxist, they have proposed various theories on how it was the industrial society, not capitalism as such, which was the source of contemporary social problems. This theory was developed in the newspaper Fifth Estate in the years 1970 and 1980, and was influenced by the Frankfurt School, Jacques Ellul and others.

Criticism of technology overlap with the philosophy of technology but that he tries to establish itself as an academic discipline criticism of the technology is fundamentally a political project, not only for universities. It figures prominently in Neomarxism (Herbert Marcuse), ecofeminism (Vandana Shiva) and postdevelopment (Ivan Illich)