Review of Talbott's "Devices of the Soul"

If you do not want to read a long review, and just want a quick "will it work for me or not?", skip to ***.

Given the positive editorial reviews on Amazon, and the fact that the book is published by O'Reilly, I was hoping it would be a sensible, well-researched, and balanced reflection on the role of technology in today's society. I was wrong. Of course, this is just my personal opinion and perception of this book.

The author sets out with a clearly defined agenda that will be obvious to any reader early on (despite the author’s insistent disclaimers): technology is evil, and it pretty much wrecks everything it touches. Without much information about actual technologies, so those who hope to learn something about them may be well advised too look elsewhere.

In book's four parts, the author focuses on specific areas where he thinks the disastrous consequences of encroaching technology manifest themselves with particular intensity.

The destructive force of technology on environment (part 1), for example, is visible in the Amazon, where indigenous people chose modern gadgets (e.g., a shotgun) over their traditional, skillfully developed methods of hunting (i.e., curare-poisoned dart pipes) and relating to the environment. The only interesting part of this section is the author's mention of what he calls "qualitative” (i.e., intuitive) vs. analytical knowledge;" but readers who have interest in this topic (How it it that experienced people can make good judgment calls on extremely complex issues in a blink of an eye) should check out Gladwell's by far a more articulate and balanced investigation titled "Blink."

In the second section, the focus is on technologies that aid people with disabilities (from implants that help people see or hear, to genetic engineering that hopes to eradicate debilitating genetic disorders). Here too, surprisingly, the author is against technology, and with even greater zeal. One chapter here recounts the life of a particularly gifted and accomplished blind man. But this unquestionably inspiring (and equally non-typical) biography, leads Talbott to conclude that bio-technologies that would alleviate blindness or deafness would prevent people from realizing their full human potential and developing sensibilities that non-handicapped individuals do not have (e.g., extraordinary hearing in blind people). I was, quite frankly, not just taken aback, but completely appalled by this chapter.

The following chapter describes the struggles of a woman who decides (against common sense and sensible advice) to give birth to a Down-syndrome child, followed by a chapter that describes a "wonderful village," where mentally disabled patients (euphemistically referred to as “villagers”) live and, with proper care, thrive. Again, an otherwise  inspiring (although bucolically idealized) example leads the author to conclude, that genetic engineering that would help us eliminate this, and other genetic disorders, is evil too, since it inevitably meddles with nature, driven by what Talbott sees as dangerously misguided pursuits of secularist geneticists who are unable to recognize and appreciate the "sanctity" of all life.

*** I do not know anything about the author beyond what I learned from the book. Still, many, if not most, of the views and moral underpinnings that inform his book largely coincide with the general anti-science stance of conservative religious denominations. This seems to find confirmation, if there was still any doubt at that point in the book, on p. 201: "I was raised a traditionalist conservative...". Any person deciding whether to read this book, should start there, in a 2-page mini-chapter titled "Evil," where the author says in a fervor of an almost-apocalyptic rant (p.202): "If we follow this path or arrogance, the destruction we call down upon the world may be unparalleled."  

Part three, focuses on education. I have personal interest and experience in this area, and will admit that finding a sound, practical balance between the uses of technology that enhances learning, and those that interfere with it, is a difficult and complex balancing act. Here too, my hopes for sensible, in-depth discussion, were quickly dashed. Talbott’s examples of egregiously incompetent uses of technology, are conflated with technology itself which takes the blame for most of the ills that affect contemporary American education. The author goes as far as to declare that American universities have become little more than workforce training ground appropriated by multinational corporations. It should be telling, that in a book that claims to focus on technology and its social impact, there is not a single convincingly positive example of technology used to enhance learning. The chapter’s essence is best summarized by the quote that points out "our society's systematic inability to engage the computer sensibly" and its "irrational obsessions with high tech solutions" (126; the second quote is from another book Talbot cites extensively).  

There is the fourth part, which, at this point I decided not to read, and just scanned through quickly, since further reading seemed to be counterproductive. It deals partly with the attempts to make "thinking machines" or “artificial intelligence.” Even here, author often mistakenly blames many societal ills to technology. Writing about a tracking bracelet, used to monitor Alzheimer's patients in a nursing home (p.203), Talbott says "the gains in safety and convenience from such an electronic system SEEM obvious" (emphasis mine), then follows with a consideration of possible risks of system failure, and immediately counters: "But what if the system continues to work as hoped? Might that possibility pose the greatest danger of all?" The use of such devices, he claims, may lead to convenient "abandonment" of the needs of such patients ("now that he [A. patient] is so well watched after by technology, do [his family and friends] increasingly forget him?” (203)

What Talbott ignores in the book (as is the case of education chapter) is that it is not faulty technology that is at work here, but economy. He fails to address the simple and sad fact that good medical care, just as good education, have become expensive commodities, Technology is often the imperfect but only affordable solution. A lab with 20 new iMacs (w/ average 3-year recycle time) that will keep 40 kids busy for hours - I did not say "teach" - is much cheaper than 3 years' salary of a highly qualified, educated and devoted teacher that can take a small group (10-12 kids) on a real, hands-on discovery trip through nature. A bracelet may be a life-saving godsend for patients who cannot afford 24-hour one-on-one attendant care.

Recommendations: Reading this book was not a good investment of time; for those interested in possibly adverse effects of technology, I'd recommend a new edition of Birkerts's “Gutenberg Elegies,” which is controversial (and now slightly aged), but superbly written; for those interested in exploring "qualitative" approach to knowledge as opposed to "analytical," Gladwell's excellent "Blink" will be by far more informative; ethical challenges and high-stakes risks of genetic engineering, have extensive non-fiction literature, but several fictional narratives actually excel at addressing such complex issue: movies such as “Gattaca,” or novels such as David Mitchell’s outstanding “Cloud Atlas,” and Ishiguros's “Never Let Me Go”; for unconventional, sympathetic, and perspective-altering look at people with mental disabilities, Haddon’s “The Curious Incident…” will provide better insight, no doubt.