Why Technological Progress Isn’t Making Us Free
Why Technological Progress Isn’t Making Us Free
Publish Date: 2026-06-27 06:58:00
Source Domain: www.thedailystar.net
Human civilisation is the story of transcending the limits that the activities of life face. Through their creative labour, human beings can change their surroundings, making them conducive to their sustenance and reproduction. They could grow staples, codify experience through language, build communities and then cities, roads, telephones, aeroplanes, shopping malls, and all that is required to make life easier. In this process, they not only change their environment but also change themselves, acquiring new skills, deploying inorganic extensions of their bodies in the form of ancient tools and modern machines, and becoming endowed with more complex social engagements.
Knowledge is the condensation of creative experience through which human beings can supersede the natural and social obstacles to progress. Knowledge has been passed to successive generations either in codified form, embodied in hymns, scripts, books, or digital signals, although some continue to remain uncodified or ‘tacit’, such as experiences, memories, and feelings that can hardly be expressed through language. Technologies refer to particular uses of knowledge that help solve problems we face in our daily lives. In the pre-modern stage, tools were created, and solutions were sought through trial and error, without understanding the science behind their functioning. Later, science became the driving force of technological progress.
Human intelligence is increasingly embedded in machines. Illustration: Zarif Faiaz
In capitalism, science and technological progress were largely conditioned by the imperatives of capital accumulation. In this phase, technology assumed spontaneous growth. For an entrepreneur, technological innovation became the means to outcompete rivals. Technologies help reduce production costs either through process innovation or by reducing circulation costs through improvements in transaction modes and transportation. They can also develop new products, creating new markets…
