From: Rybczynski, W. 1983. The prosthetic god. In Taming the tiger: The struggle to control technology, 3-11. New York: Viking Press. Copyright t 1983 by Witold Rybczynski. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Viking Penguin Inc.

In: Miles, Thomas H. Critical Thinking and Writing for Science and Technology. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990, 224-228.

The Prosthetic God

Witold Rybczynski

Man has, as it were, become cat kind of prosthetic god. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs he is truly magnificent; but those organs hare not grown on to him and they still give him much trouble at times.

-Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

Consider man, the prosthetic god. Not being able to run very fast or for very long, he has grafted on to himself additional feet, until he can travel farther and faster than any other animal, and not only on land but also on and under water and in the air. He can reinforce his eyes with glasses, telescopes, and microscopes. Thanks to orbiting satellites, he can, without displacing himself, count wildebeest in the African veldt, or missile silos outside Novosibirsk. Lacking the dolphin's ability to communicate great distances, he amplifies his voice with the aid of radio waves. In addition to his genetic code, which he shares with all other living things, he has acquired a perpetually growing communal memory in the shape of the written word, the photograph, and the recording. Everything we know now, we know forever.

These auxiliary parts not only extend man's natural abilities but change them beyond recognition. The book extends not only our memory, but also, says Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges, our imagination. The brain is supercharged by the computer; perhaps, one day, the two may become indistinguishable. Thanks also to the computer, all the books of the world can be assembled into one great Alexandrian library-no bigger than a small bedroom-through which a person may stroll, so to speak, finding in five minutes the one book he previously could not have found in a lifetime's searching. What is more, these extensions are detachable. The prosthetic eyes and ears can be sent far into the solar system to look at the other side of the moon, or on a deep interior voyage to see something even more marvelous, the human embryo.

Technology, as Freud drolly observed, is really a set of artificial organs, extensions of our natural ones. He understood, as many still do not, that the relationship between ourselves and our tools is often blurred, and frequently intimate.

Tools are not unique to the human, a number of animals and birds use tools both in hunting and in nest building. Whether man thinks because he uses tools, or vice versa, the fact remains that from the beginning of recorded history tools and technology have been part and parcel of man's essence. The prehistoric men and women who killed with a club, instead of with bare hands, or who, lacking protective pelts, covered themselves with animal skins, may have been imitating the sea otter, which cracks clams on a stone it picks up from the seabed, or the squirrel, which burrows under a pile of leaves to hibernate. It is even possible that the first projectile may not have been thrown by a man but by an ape. Rut it is the evolution and invention of improved tools that distinguish men from animals. It is human logic that leads from the projectile to the slingshot, from the Roman catapult to the ancient ballista, and, with the invention of gunpowder, to the cannon, which is, after all, merely a device to throw a stone a still greater distance.

But using technology to overcome man's biological limitations has not been altogether a painless experience. The artificial limbs, to continue Freud's metaphor, itch. Sometimes the scar will not heal; inflammation and infection set in. Occasionally the body rejects the implanted organ, and, if it is not quickly removed, serious damage can result. The patient barely recovers before another assemblage is attempted. The surgeons-the scientists and engineers- frequently neglect to tell the patient what the new organ is for, which is sometimes unpleasant and sometimes terrifying. Unmentioned also, until too late, are the accompanying side effects of this hazardous prosthesis. And always that itch.

Little wonder that the patient sometimes rebels. Do the surgeons really know what they are doing? he asks. Will the new appurtenance by compatible with the rest of the anatomy? Is it really needed, or will it do more harm than good? It is easy to overextend a metaphor, but it is a fact that growing numbers of people are beginning to question the wisdom of continued technological progress. Perhaps it would be better to remain where we are, or even backtrack a little. Much of this growing distrust of technology is based on the belief that technological development is ungovernable and ultimately outside of human control.

If the invention of fire represents one of the first instances of man's control over the forces of nature, as Friedrich Engels claimed, then the first man-caused forest fire must surely be one of the earliest examples of technology out of control. One can imagine that even then in the murky shadows of prehistory, our ancestors must have had a lively discussion about the propriety of the continued use of this new discovery, so wonderful yet so awesome. The optimists obviously won out, as optimists usually do.

That technology has almost always had unintended side effects has often been cited by critics as a symptom of man's inability to control his inventions. Yet paradoxically, it is precisely the unpredictability of technology that has proved to be its most endearing characteristic. For instance, when John Gorrie, a Florida doctor, patented an ice making machine in 1851, he intended it as a device to cool the rooms of his yellow fever patients. Like many doctors at the time, Gorrie mistakenly believed that yellow fever was due to miasma, or "bad air." His ice-making machine thus had little effect on curing this disease, but it was a very important contribution to the development of quite another technology-refrigeration.

The popular story of the absent-minded scientist who confusedly mixes two chemicals to produce an important discovery is not uncommon. The unpredictability of technological invention is illustrated by the case of Henri Moissan, a French chemist who was trying to manufaeure artificial diamonds. In the process, he discovered, quite accidentally, the compound calcium carbide. Calcium carbide did not make diamonds, but when combined with water it did produce a burnable gas--acetylene-which became the most common form of domestic lighting until the invention of the electric light bulb. The accidents continued. A German chemist, Fritz Klatte, took up Moissan's invention and tried to develop an aircraft dope using acetylene. In 1912, one of the many unsuccessful combinations he tried turned out to be the world's first plastic-vinyl chloride.

In 1886, an Atlanta pharmacist concocted a compound which he claimed would whiten teeth, cleanse the mouth, harden and beautify the gums and relieve mental and physical exhaustion. John Styth Pemberton was the unrenowned inventor of Globe of Flower Cough Syrup, Triplex Liver Pills, and Indian Queen Hair Dye, and his latest patent medicine was equally unsuccessful. He sold it to another druggist, who marketed the odd mixture of coca leaves and cola nuts as a soft drink, under the same name that Pemberton had given it- Coca-Cola. Thus are the foundations for multinational corporations laid.

Of course the negative unforeseen effects of technological innovation can be frightening. One of the most notorious contemporary examples concerns the Aswan High Dam in Egypt, the enormous Soviet-aided irrigation and hydroelectric project that was to be the linchpin of Egyptian rural development. Instead, it is turning out to have the opposite effect. The dam, which is located in the extreme south of the country, prevents nutrient rich silt from the Upper Nile from reaching the lower-river areas in the north. As a result, the seasonal cycle of fertilization, which has been the mainstay of Egyptian agriculture for centuries, has been interrupted. Although flooding still occurs, the level of nutrients in the otherwise sandy soil has dropped drastically, and the reduction in food production, coupled with Egypt's rising population, has created severe food shortages. Another ecological megadisaster may occur in Brazil, where, some scientists believe, the large-scale lumber industry could denude the jungle to the point that the reduction in vegetation, and hence in oxygen production, will affect the biosphere on a global scale.

These two examples give the impression that it is the scale of technology that is at fault; but even "small" technological innovations can have a large environmental impact. The innocuous flush toilet is a case in point. The first American urban sewerage system was built in Brooklyn in 18S7, and represented at the time a hygienic and effective solution to the unsanitary cesspools and drainage ditches that had come to characterize the urban environment in the nineteenth century. Today the city of New York dumps have million tons of sewage sludge about twelve miles offshore in the Atlantic Ocean. The liquid residue that is left after so-called sewage treatment contains vast quantities of bacteria and concentrations of various heavy metals, such as zinc, chromium, and lead In the last five years, New Jersey and Long island beaches have been periodically shut down as the "foreign substance" (actually very American) washes ashore. The effect on marine life will take longer to be felt but could be more serious than it is on human life.

It sometimes seems that every step forward in technological development is (potentially. at least) accompanied by one step backward in terms of environmental or personal safety. The aerosol, for instance, turns out to emit fluorocarbons whose increased presence in the atmosphere depletes the ozone layer and may have severe long-term effects on the quantity of ultraviolet rays that reach the surface of the earth. Similarly, asbestos, a life-saving, fireproof material, is also a vicious carcinogen. DDT, which was developed to control malarial mosquitoes, is turning Up in the food chain in dangerous concentrations, and as a result it has been banned in many countries.

It is technological "errors" such as these that give rise to the nagging feeling that the proud locomotive of progress is really an ominous juggernaut, and that our imminent demise, like that of the followers of the god Jagannath, who threw themselves beneath the wheels of his great ceremonial chariot, will be equally poignant for being self-inflicted.

Our fear of the machine is heightened by the feeling that the twentieth century is the first to experience the unintended side effects of technology. It may be a consolation to learn that humanity has experienced the impact of technological change no less mordantly in earlier times. The historian Lynn White, Jr., has documented in Medieval Religion and Technology how the adoption of the fireplace and chimney disturbed everyday life. Until the eleventh century, heating had been provided by open fireplaces. There were no mantels or even chimneys, and smoke was simply allowed to filter out through the Latch or shingles of the roof Thus the entire household-lord, freeman, and servant-lived, ate, and slept (in curtained compartments) in the great hall, gathering for warmth around the central open, cooking fire. With the development of the fireplace and chimney, it became possible to heat individual rooms on different floors throughout the house. As a result, the forced egalitarianism of the early Middle Ages began to give way to a more individual way of living. White quotes an eleventh-century observer, who wrote, "Now every rich man eats by himself in a private parlor to be rid of poor men, or in a chamber with a chimney, and leaves the great hall." Thus the chimney contributed in no small part. to the upstairs-downstairs stratification that would last into the twentieth century.

White also describes the origin of another invention of the Middle Ages the national flag. He traces it to the pennons that knights affixed to their lances. These heraldic colors, which in the case of the king became the national colors, had a utilitarian purpose quite apart front their symbolic function. They were intended to prevent the lance from transfixing a foe during a mounted charge, for if the lance became embedded too deeply in the body of one's unfortunate opponent, there was a danger that one might not be able to pull it out and would be left weaponless on the field of battle. The cloth pennon also had the advantage that, unlike a solid crosspiece, it could not get caught in the enemy's armor but could always be ripped free. These "grimly functional rags" were first used by the mounted soldiers of Central Asia, who simply tied a piece of cloth or horsehair to the ends of their spears. The barbarian invaders worried about piercing their opponents because they used a device unknown to the Europeans- the stirrup. The stirrup, which was quickly adopted by the Franks, transmitted the entire weight of both horse and rider to the lance point, giving the term "shock combat" its true meaning.

I should hasten to point out that White is no technological determinist. His point is that technology creates the opportunity for social change, not that it is always invented in response to specific problems. Indeed, sometimes innovation seems haphazard or simply accidental. The technology of artillery, for instance, was introduced into Europe in the thirteenth century. The first cannon were made out of bronze, and the expansion of their manufacture relied on a highly developed bronze-casting industry. This industry happened to he present in Europe at the time, although it had been perfected in producing a very dissimilar article-bronze church bells.

While technological developments have often pursued their own, sometimes random, logic, they have always been accompanied by overt attempts at exercising human control. In 1139, Pope Innocent II banned the crossbow as too cruel a weapon (though its use against the Moors infidels-was permitted). The ban was not successful, in part, one guesses, because its aim was as much political as humanitarian, since it attempted to redress the balance between the mounted aristocrat and the commoner crossbowman. In another vein, Edward III of England, in order to promote the use of the Welsh longbow (the most devastating weapon of its day), prohibited on pain of death the practice of all sports except archery.

There are many examples of technological control in the workplace. In 1559, Queen Elizabeth I of England refused to grant a royal patent for a knitting machine on the grounds that it would deprive too many of her subjects of employment. Charles II, acting in the same spirit, gave a charter to the hosiery guild which would protect them against mechanization until the nineteenth century.

Not all technological control was exercised by benign monarchs. Frequently workers who have felt themselves threatened by technical innovation have agitated for these innovations to be curtailed. Often this agitation has taken the form of violence directed against the guilty machine. In the nineteenth century, Belgian weavers took to "accidentally" dropping their heavy wooden clogs (or sabots) into the delicate mechanism of the loom, giving rise to the expression "sabotage." Probably the most well-known example of machine-wrecking in the workplace occurred during the Luddite rebellion in England.... Although Luddism was by no means unique, it has become a generic description for all violent reactions to mechanization.

It may seem surprising that the issue of technology control should lead to violence. On the one hand, the choice of a technology is the choice of a particular set of values, and thus the debate about nuclear energy, or small-scale industry, or chemical agriculture, is really a debate about human values masquerading as a discussion of technical options. On the other hand, as history shows us, technology frequently contains the seeds of disruptive and threatening change. Did the medieval homeowner realize what he was getting into when he started building fireplaces? Not that we have more foresight today, but we are probably more skeptical about the side effects of technological innovation.

What distinguishes the current debate about controlling technology is that the two sides are so far apart. It seems to be less a question of what to do, than of whether to do anything at all. Instead of a discussion of how to control technology there is polarization. On the one hand are the "Boosters," for whom all technological change represents progress, and who see any attempt to control the technical future as a loss of nerve. On the other hand are the "Obstructionists," for whom any technical innovation is a threat, and for whom controlling technology means gradually reducing it, or at least doing so whenever possible. While the Boosters reflect a nineteenth-century optimism about the machine, the Obstructionists represent a more recent, and more novel view.