A Commonplace Book

[Leon R. Kass, professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago and former chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics] has stated that a commonly held view is that technology is "the sum total of human tools and methods, devised by human beings to control our environment for our own benefit." People who hold that view define technology as purely instrumental. The problems that can arise from technology, then, are problems of human practice and implementation that can be dealt with by regulation. Kass argues, however, that such an attitude "holds too narrow an understanding of the nature of technology, too shallow a view of the difficulties it produces, and too optimistic a view of our ability to deal with them."