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ABSTRACT
Paul Goodman’s argument that “whether or not it draws on new scientific research, technology is a branch of moral philosophy, not of science” is an earlier formulation of what emerged in the 1980s as the “precautionary principle.” It constitutes a new approach that shifts the burden of proof from those who a technological development has adversely affected (caveat emptor) to that development’s producers (caveat venditor), who must demonstrate prior to its undertaking that it does not imply damaging or irreversible risks. Its greatest success has come within the framework of the European Union, which, by seeking to integrate it into international treaties, has wished to make it the standard by which governments regulate technoscientific innovations. But acceptance of this principle is not universal, and a rift has grown in international governance, pertaining to grievances about “protectionism.” Exploring the intersection between media ecology and moral and political philosophy, I outline some of the potentially catastrophic threats we face ecologically as a result of our wanton application of technique. I maintain it is necessary in terms of long-term survival to alleviate the gravity of our present situation through universal adoption of the precautionary principle in matters related to both domestic and international governance.
Notes
1 Marshall McLuhan, “Culture without Literacy,” Explorations 1 (1953): 117–27.
2 Marshall McLuhan, “Living at the Speed of Light,” Maclean’s (January 7, 1980): 33.
3 Christine Nystrom, “Towards a Science of Media Ecology: The Formulation of Integrated Conceptual Paradigms for the Study of Human Communication Systems” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1973).
4 Ibid., 12.
5 Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (London: Routledge, 2003).
6 See Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London: Routledge, 1982).
7 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), 30.
8 On the topic of our present-mindedness and the pioneering work of Harold Innis, see Phil Rose, “Enemies of Time: Innisian Reflections on the Present,” Explorations in Media Ecology 6, no. 2 (2007): 115–34.
9 Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (New York: Vintage, 1993), 20.
10 Eric McLuhan, Electric Language: Understanding the Present (Toronto: Stoddart, 1998), 108.
11 See Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Penguin, 1985).
12 Paul Goodman, The New Reformation: Notes of a Neolithic Conservative (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2010), 40. Postman uses this quotation at the beginning of Technopoly, and previous scholars have likewise forcefully made the point. See Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society (New York: Vintage, 1964); Langdon Winner, Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1977).
13 Phil Rose, “A Conversation with René Girard,” Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture 18 (2011): 33.
14 We should acknowledge the similarity in spirit that exists between the precautionary principle and the Iroquois idea of the “7th generation rule”—that is, that we must consider the impacts of our contemporary actions on the seventh generation into the future.
15 Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).
16 Cass R. Sunstein, Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2005).
17 Jeremy Rifkin, The European Dream: How Europe’s Vision of the Future is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream (New York: Penguin, 2004).
18 See Anna Hobbs, Jill Hobbs, and William Kerr, “The Biosafety Protocol: Multilateral Agreement on Protecting the Environment or Protectionist Club?” Journal of World Trade 39, no. 2 (2005): 289.
19 This may prove most beneficial for the Europeans if results are borne out from a recent study determining that pigs fed a genetically modified diet experienced a significantly higher rate of stomach inflammation than those fed a conventional diet. See Judy Carman et al., “A Long-Term Toxicology Study on Pigs Fed a Combined Genetically Modified (GM) Soy and GM Maize Diet,” Journal of Organic Systems 8, no. 1 (2013): 38–54.
20 Cécile Philippe, “Risky Business,” Tech Central Station, March 9, 2005, http://www.techcentralstation.com/030905B.html.
21 Sunstein, Laws of Fear, 14–15.
22 Ibid., 5.
23 Jean-Pierre Dupuy, “The Precautionary Principle and Enlightened Doomsaying: Rational Choice Before the Apocalypse,” Occasion: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities 1, no. 1 (2009): 5.
24 In fact, with regard to economists, Jean-Pierre Dupuy writes, “It would do them a great honor if we were to credit them with responsibility for the absolute triumph of their profession. It is their job to chart the course of economic activity and to explain how the economy works; naturally, then, we look to them to help us make sense of what, on the face of it, is a senseless state of affairs. And yet they are the first ones to demonstrate that they understand nothing.” He adds, “if economic thought remains the monopoly of economists, it will go on being mired in feeble-mindedness” (Economy and the Future: A Crisis of Faith [East Lansing: Michigan State University, 2014], xi–xvii).
25 Dupuy, “The Precautionary Principle and Enlightened Doomsaying,” 5.
26 Sunstein, Laws of Fear, 6–7.
27 Ibid., 148.
28 Rena Steinzor, “The Case for Abolishing Centralized White House Regulatory Review,” Michigan Journal of Environmental and Administrative Law 1, no. 1 (2012): 209–84.
29 Cass Sunstein, “The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs: Myths and Realities,” Administrative and Regulatory Law News 38, no. 4 (2013): 8–10. http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/images/administrative_law/summer_2013.pdf.
30 Dupuy, “The Precautionary Principle and Enlightened Doomsaying,” 6.
31 Ibid.
32 Marshall McLuhan and Eric McLuhan, Laws of Media: The New Science (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988).
33 See Phil Rose, “Digital (A)literacy,” E-Learning and Digital Media 88, no. 3 (2011): 256–68.
34 For a sample of an extended application of tetradic analysis to an emerging technology, see Phil Rose and Ainsley Moore, “The Extended Pharmacist: Entering the Era of Remote Drug Dispensation and Pharmaceutical Counseling,” in Drugs and Media: Communication, Consumption, and Consciousness, ed. Robert C. MacDougall (New York: Continuum, 2012), 193–218.
35 Postman, Technopoly, 164–80.
36 Dupuy, “The Precautionary Principle and Enlightened Doomsaying,” 3.
37 Neil Postman, “The Humanism of Media Ecology,” in Perspectives on Culture, Technology and Communication, ed. Casey Man Kong Lum (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2006), 66.
38 Marshall McLuhan, “Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan—A Candid Conversation with the High Priest of Popcult and Metaphysician of Media,” in The Essential McLuhan, ed. Eric McLuhan and Frank Zingrone (Toronto: Anansi, 1995), 267.
39 Postman, “The Humanism of Media Ecology,” 63.
40 McLuhan, of course, was a Protestant convert to Roman Catholicism, and G. K. Chesterton exercised significant influence on him. In a letter from his Cambridge days he states to his mother that Chesterton “did not convince me of religious truth, but he prevented my despair from becoming a habit or hardening into misanthropy. He opened my eyes to European culture and encouraged me to know it more closely. He taught me the reasons for all that in me was simply blind anger and misery” (Marshall McLuhan, “‘The Great Difficulty of Truth’: Two Letters to Elsie McLuhan,” in The Medium and the Light: Reflections on Religion, ed. Eric McLuhan and Jacek Szklarek [Toronto: Stoddart, 1999], 16).
41 Arthur Kroker, Technology and the Canadian Mind: Innis/McLuhan/Grant (Montréal: New World Perspectives, 1984), 78.
42 Postman, Technopoly, xii.
43 Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (New York: Bantam, 1967), 42.
44 Sonja Van Renssen, “Nanotech Risks: U.K. Launches U.S.$8.5m Research Plan,” Science and Development Network, December 22, 2005, http://www.scidev.net/News/index.cfm?fuseaction=readNews&itemid=2523&language=1.
45 See Katherine Torres, “U.K. Criticized for Lack of Nanotech Risk Research,” EHS Today, April 1, 2007, http://ehstoday.com/health/ehs_imp_47223.
46 Associated Press, “Regulating Nano,” Technology Review, January 17, 2006, http://www.technologyreview.com/TR/wtr_16138,323,p1.html.
47 Robert Falkner and Nico Jaspers, “Regulating Nanotechnologies: Risk, Uncertainty, and the Global Governance Gap,” Global Environmental Politics 12, no. 1 (2012): 30–55.
48 Patrick Hennessy and James Langton, “Why Kyoto Will Never Succeed, By Blair,” The Telegraph, September 25, 2005, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1499147/Why-Kyoto-will-never-succeed-by-Blair.html.
49 Chris Morris, “International Report on History of Oceans Forewarns of Future Problems,” The Recorder, October 23, 2005, http://www.recorder.ca/cp/National/051023/n102331A.html.
50 Robert Diaz and Rutger Rosenberg, “Spreading Dead Zones and Consequences for Marine Ecosystems,” Science 321, no. 5891 (2008): 926–29.
51 IGBP, IOC, SCOR, Ocean Acidification Summary for Policy Makers: Third Symposium on the Ocean in a High-CO2 World (Stockholm, Sweden: International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, 2013).
52 Alister Doyle, “U.N. Urges World to Slow Extinctions: Three Each Hour,” Reuters, May 23, 2007, http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/052307EA.shtml.
53 Mikhail A. Beketov et al., “Pesticides Reduce Regional Biodiversity of Stream Invertebrates,” PNAS: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 110, no. 27 (2013): 11039–43. The researchers claim that diversity even decreased at concentrations of pesticide that European regulations deem environmentally protective.
54 Dave Goulson, “An Overview of the Environmental Risks Posed by Neonicotinoid Insecticides,” Journal of Applied Ecology 50, no. 4 (2013): 977–87.
55 Gwynne Dyer, Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats (Toronto: Random House, 2008).
56 See Clive Hamilton, Earthmasters: The Dawn of the Age of Climate Engineering (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013).