Today, mulling the difference between technological determinism (as a self-propagating system on its own immutable trajectory) and the reciprocal idea that human social systems selectively construct the systems of technology they ‘desire’ (subject to all the variability of the particular social system within which the technology is embedded). Then, within that selection process, thinking about the process of development and the general trend towards greater complexity. Do these processes ever trend generally to greater simplicity? Does desire ever, on a wide social scale, ever become directed to less material abundance? Is material security predicated with amassing more-than-sufficient material wealth? Or do society-wide technological systems collapse towards simplicity only in cases of ‘natural’ disaster.

[Complexity and simplicity are used here as general indicators of the depth and breadth of the techno-social system's process of provision and production that leads to services, situations, or products deemed necessary for participants. Metrics of complexity would include geographic proximity, ease of access, energy density, and the number of substantive steps required to produce a product or create a desired energy flow. The relative necessity of a product is highly subjective and varies widely between different systems. Necessity is a cultural construct. Complexity may be indicated by the number of discrete steps that can be described that a process passes through -- steps/degrees of flow alteration.]

When examining a production system, the primary question would have to be, “does this process end with a net gain of energy that can be utilized for the evolutionary advantage of the social system?” This question itself would suggest the inevitable rise of an elite subgroup when the wider population reaches certain environmental carrying thresholds — where that (evolutionarily optimal) subgroup is carried by the energy-providing activities of a wider group. But this is another issue to look at later).

The existence of (the) ‘natural disaster’ suggests that the state of a particular techno-social system may be seen essentially as the (ordered) organization of flows to keep back natural chaotic forces or to push those natural forces along certain (technologically-defined) pathways. Does this make the system merely at the affect of natural laws, and thus binding it into a materially deterministic framework? nah, that ignores quantum, with its statistical outcomes. Although obviously, any techno-social system is bound to thermodynamics and all other prescribed or yet unknown ‘natural laws.’

System collapse to simplicity is obviously a result of the ‘natural’ disaster precipitated by war (as an extension of human survival mechanisms?). War is the impingement of one techno-socially organized and directed expression of ordered energy onto another — with one set of system pathways disrupted to greater simplicity. Loss could be defined by the destruction of the internal structure for the directing of cumulative energy of participants in that social system. Winning is essentially acquiring access to the total (or partial) energy sources of the losing social system. This includes individuals, and all the pathways of energy flow that they have constructed — these are then directed, incorporated, into the winning system.

The whole deterministic model seems to focus on material interpretations — that is, metrics of ‘advance’ that will happen along an apparently calculable technological trajectory. Rather, as outlined here, there are conditions of technological advance and retreat that are framed by other factors which make the prediction of a trajectory highly inaccurate. The first being the level of complexity of the techno-social systems, the second, the efficiency of that system, and the third, the stability. All of these factors fluctuate over time and are deeply embedded in a milieu of human factors. The general trend, however, looking at the broad arc of the history of technology is to increasing complexity, variable-yet-generally-increasing control by social systems of a wider range of ‘natural’ energy flows. Is it deterministic to say that there will be an increase in complexity of any techno-social system unless interrupted by natural disaster? [Clearly, the complexity of a (the!) techno-social system is limited, as the energy basis for the system is not infinite: what does that imply?]

What motivates this evolution to increasing complexity? The short answer could be the drive to reproductive advantage — evolutionary motivations for life to not just continue, but continue with advantage over the competition. It is easy to see that the affect of this drive could be interpreted as having its own character and endless source of ‘forward’ motivation. But clearly the ultimate source for that is, again, the impelling force of life-systems to simply continue and continue with ever-greater complexity (creating an ever-widening ring of increasing entropy). So, the ‘explanation’ for technological change, as a social phenomena, ultimately rests, as do all social systems, on the fundamentals of living systems.

Vastly complex systems obscure the actual and perceived level of reproductive advantage — for example, while modern Western medical advances have increased overall abilities for successful propagation of the species, the wider technological system on which that (medical)sub-system depends generates substances (and situations) toxic to reproductive viability and life in general. One would then have to argue that the reproductive viability increase is for a limited number of the total population. Those remaining after the cull who benefit from technologically augmented survival, while the biologically and energetically compromised remainder are ‘used up’ in supporting the few. The increase of complexity may be directly correlated to the larger absolute number of people, combined with the drive to absolutely optimize reproductive capabilities of those in the positions of power at the same time as the elimination of all actual or potential competing life-forces.

David Brooks, columnist at the New York Times writes in his commentary on New Years Day:

Many people seem to be in the middle of a religious crisis of faith. All the gods they believe in — technology, technocracy, centralized government control — have failed them in this instance.

I have always enjoyed his pragmatism and basic awareness of a wider historical context. It frames the American Way as (merely another) expression of a global continuum of human presence on the planet. And he seems largely to avoid the hybridized reli(geo)-political Destiny’s Child(ish) mentality that so pervades the fragmentary remnants of mediated public discourse in this declining nation-state.

I heartily agree with his explicit suggestion that an issue central to the balance between the individual and the State lies in the strength of faith in centralized authority, and the concomitant surrender of personal autonomy, obligation, and responsibility. The question of larger or smaller (more-or-less pervasive) government is embedded in the larger question of the presence and operation of all (centralizing) social structures — ones which are making inexorable advances in dominating the fabric of the techno-social structure of the country and the globe. As has always been the case, there is no monumental State or any other structure of social organization that can be everything to all people all the time forever. He is very correct to suggest that the great moral issue relates to the taking of personal responsibility — as an expression of autonomy from, not dependence on, any wider social system, (and I emphasize here, not only the State — it is only one particular label for social organization).

The purveyors of technology market their goods to the participants of various techno-social systems as a means to instill control and thus order on the chaotic and threatening world ‘out there.’ The marketing plan, now in its 2.500010 millionth year, promises that if you surrender some of your life-energy to us, we will guarantee that you will live longer. The explicit reward for purchasing is a few extra moments to procreate successfully. There is no mention whether this extra length of life is more or less than the time surrendered to the system — you have to calculate that yourself. The system is hierarchical with many (dis)functional) layers, with some surrendering more time, others using more or less time to manage that time surrendered by thousands. The point is — the same that Brooks makes — that the surrendering process, the giving away of personal responsibility in the process of confronting the Unknown, is where maturity fails. All the complex protocols of the advanced techno-social system that we participate in will not alter the fundamental characteristic of the cosmos: in archaic lingo things happen, have happed, are happing. And, as I remind students and others whenever I have the chance, technology fails.

Maturity comes from facing what is not yet known, learning from it, that and the presumed development of wisdom that experience brings over time. Learning is a process that arises in the embodied interaction of the Self with the unknown (or the Unknown — it is an elemental feature of the (human-sensed) cosmos). This interaction may exhibit different levels of maturity. A mature being, having experienced numerous encounters with different aspects of this Unknown will realize that this is how it goes — there is little or no chance that a new encounter will be any different — so, a degree of stoicism, with a calculated strategy to do what is individually possible would seem best. Immature encounters with that Unknown give rise to the anger of being affronted, snubbed, or even snuffed by the cosmos itself. The effrontery of the Unknown knows no limit. And when the Unknown is conjugated with the infinite, human anger is shown to be what it is, a destructive and ultimately pointless diversion of life itself.

Learning is also a shared process, or can be. Where the autonomous individual connects with those others around and compares notes. Collective experience does sometimes (conditionally) improve on individual experience. Completely ignoring the wisdom garnered from others makes for a very unstable existence, one that is counter to any organized social system. It may be fun, but it is risky and a bit mad.

(Back to one of the core questions) — why does technology fail? It fails because humans, those who form technology do not have access to infinite amounts of energy with which they might control all the rest of the chaotic energy of the cosmos. It takes energy to impose order on chaotic flows. No matter the height of energy-tapping techno-hubris, there is always a bigger flow of energy out there, waiting to obliterate the set of carefully organized protocols of power of puny humans. Things happen, have happed, are happing. All the time. At all scales, every where. Statistics are for reductive hindsight rumination, not prediction, as prediction is merely part of that marketing strategy. Buy into this now and you will gain a procreative edge. Your technology will not fail. But keep in mind, things happen, have happed, are happing. Of course, more things will happen when there is more autonomy. Hmmm. This is the problem.

And anyway, is death really vanquished when it temporarily disappears from the artifice of this ultimately short-term effort to control the cosmos? Of course, length of life is correlated with improved ability to ensure that life goes on into a future: that basal of all paybacks, continuance. But is there a correlation between clock-timed length of life and quality?

He had a good life.
or
He had a long life.
or
He had a bad life.
or
He had a short life.

or a combination of the above…

We face a choice in every moment where to place our individual and collective lives on a sliding scale between a dulling surrender to the creations of human artifice as brought about at some level in any social structures and the high-intensity madness of pure autonomy.

In the contemporary framework of human encounter — dominated by instances of hyper-commerce and of tele-mediated presence — life changes to fit the mediation (it does not evolve in the same sense that Darwin’s idea of the process; instead it simply fits the technology), and the character of encounter with(in) life alters for each shift in the techno-social milieu that collectively generates the allowed pathways of exchange. Freedom is not a question in this situation. Nor is autonomy. Those are absolutes of the abstract: virginal conceptions not directly related to the contingencies of be-ing in and of the world. Absolutes and abstractions do not prepare the Self for the shifting potentialities of collective human encounter which proceed by degree and layered complexity. And indeed, when abstractions govern encounter, the full field of possibility of human encounter is quickly limited to a much-less-than-finite set of conditions, processes, and outcomes. There arises the alienation of emotive loss in this limitation, but that is another issue to raise elsewhere. Or perhaps this alienation is the reciprocal experience of the (unfulfilled) possibilities of creative encounter.

Or is all this just about losing or gaining procreative (evolutionary) advantage for the species (via technological augmentation), and nothing more?

The fact that the strongest, most beautiful, most intelligent are, overall, given social reward when compared to the least. (Recognizing this, the revolutionary community organizer, Jesus, said (as interpolated by Mathew) “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,” to invert the perception of this evolutionary order, and the alternative fact that following his lead will actually alter the order. Was this a miraculous strike at limited potentialities? Or mere agitprop for political expediency?