IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2018 - 53

The focus on outcomes also identifies the link
between technological fixes and utilitarian ethics, in
which the goal is to maximize positive consequences
("the greatest good"). This ethical framework works
well for purely engineering problems, but can disfavor
groups or environments that are not identified as the
intended beneficiaries ("the greatest number"). There
are other ethical alternatives for judging responsible
innovation: notably duty-based ethics (deontology) and
virtue ethics, which instead focus on rights and on personal behaviors, respectively.
The narrowing of analytical dimensions (reductionism) is particularly dangerous when problem-solving
relies on technological fixes: how can we adequately
assess whether a solution satisfies the unvoiced or inexpressible wishes of all those affected? The problem
becomes acute when we consider communities, species
and environments without a voice.
Philosopher Arne Naess criticized such ethical implications of relying on technological solutions. He
argued that popular enthusiasm for such fixes tended
to prioritize the status quo, i.e., the interests of current
ways of life, and particularly current socio-economic
conditions and interests. Naess argued that technological fixes carried cultural presuppositions about what
was "reasonable," and consequently framed problems
narrowly. They generally underestimate the scale and
nature of socio-technical problems and the potency
and side effects that engineering solutions can offer.
Naess called short-term environmental attentions and
technologically-oriented solutions shallow ecology,
and offered his own deep ecology approach in its
place. Naess's alternative analysis sought to consider
social, cultural, and technological solutions in tandem,
and identified technological fixes as simplistic and
inadequate [43].
Along the same lines, economist Ernst Schumacher defined appropriate technology as morally responsible innovation that takes equal account of local
social needs, resources, labor, and skills in ways
that most technological fixes do not. He argued that
popular engineering criteria such as efficiency, elegance, and versatility could work against creating a
genuinely sustainable sociotechnical system. Schumacher sometimes referred to his approach as "Buddhist economics," in the sense of incorporating moral
and social values into modern systematic problemsolving in much the way that some eastern theologies
did [44].
For an even wider range of theorists, the technological fix was portrayed as hubris, or excessive confidence, regarding human abilities to adequately
understand and manage society and nature through
rational means. As a "band-aid" solution to problems
march 2018

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Alongside unreflective acceptance
of clever technological solutions for
urgent problems, there is evidence
of growing societal concerns about
some aspects of technological fixes.

involving sophisticated systems, technological fixes
were argued to both underestimate and inadequately
solve complex problems. Philosopher Alan Drengson,
for example, explored the moral values and religious
underpinnings of these wider critical perspectives [45],
[46]. He argued that technological fixes were too often
short-term and incomplete, and consequently could
camouflage the ultimate sources of larger problems
and the nature of genuinely satisfactory solutions.

The Role of Engineers in Democratic Society
The faint voices of the beneficiaries - and potentially
victims - of technological fixes are of some concern.
For Howard Scott's technocrats, engineers were expected
to replace inexpert policy-makers, politicians, and
economists by a "technate," or technological government. For Weinberg, government-assigned teams of
engineers would assume responsibility for addressing social problems for the national good. For Meier,
the process of directing technical solutions was
envisaged as cooperation between engineers and
communities, but ultimately guided by those with expert knowledge.
Such management by elites might be assessed and
even voted upon by wider audiences, but this consultative process to some extent undermines the special role
of technological competence in such a rational society.
The effects of public participation in engineering solutions raised mixed feelings for Alvin Weinberg, who
observed that some of his technological solutions were
unlikely to succeed in a liberal democracy, and that
"nuclear energy seems to do best where the underlying
political structure is elitist" [47].
The same issues may disempower communities or
individual consumers who opt for technological fixes.
They may fail to identify how the "problem" and "solution" have been framed by the designers, companies,
governments, or media sources who promote them.
As a result, the "solutions" they are offered may be
shallow or off-target, and reproduce undiscerning cultural values.

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