Techno-progressivism or tech-progressivism is a stance of active support for the convergence of technological change and

social change Social change is the alteration of the social order of a society which may include changes in social institutions, social behaviours or social relations. Definition Social change may not refer to the notion of social progress or sociocult ...

. Techno-progressives argue that technological developments can be profoundly

empowering Empowerment is the degree of autonomy and self-determination in people and in communities. This enables them to represent their interests in a responsible and self-determined way, acting on their own authority. It is the process of becoming strong ...

and

emancipatory Emancipation generally means to free a person from a previous restraint or legal disability. More broadly, it is also used for efforts to procure economic and social rights, political rights or equality, often for a specifically disenfranchis ...

when they are regulated by legitimate democratic and accountable authorities to ensure that their

cost In production, research, retail, and accounting, a cost is the value of money that has been used up to produce something or deliver a service, and hence is not available for use anymore. In business, the cost may be one of acquisition, in which ...

risk In simple terms, risk is the possibility of something bad happening. Risk involves uncertainty about the effects/implications of an activity with respect to something that humans value (such as health, well-being, wealth, property or the environme ...

s and

benefits Benefit or benefits may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * ''Benefit'' (album), by Jethro Tull, 1970 * "Benefits" (''How I Met Your Mother''), a 2009 TV episode * '' The Benefit'', a 2012 Egyptian action film Businesses and organisatio ...

are all fairly shared by the actual stakeholders to those developments. One of the first mentions of techno-progressivism appeared within

extropian Extropianism, also referred to as the philosophy of extropy, is an "evolving framework of values and standards for continuously improving the human condition". Extropians believe that advances in science and technology will some day let people l ...

jargon in 1999 as the removal of "all political, cultural, biological, and psychological limits to self-actualization and self-realization".

Stance

Techno-progressivism maintains that accounts of progress should focus on scientific and

technical Technical may refer to: * Technical (vehicle), an improvised fighting vehicle * Technical analysis, a discipline for forecasting the future direction of prices through the study of past market data * Technical drawing, showing how something is co ...

dimensions, as well as ethical and

social Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not. Etymology The word "social" derives from ...

ones. For most techno-progressive perspectives, then, the growth of scientific knowledge or the accumulation of technological powers will not represent the achievement of proper progress unless and until it is accompanied by a just distribution of the costs, risks, and benefits of these new knowledges and capacities. At the same time, for most techno-progressive

critic A critic is a person who communicates an assessment and an opinion of various forms of creative works such as art, literature, music, cinema, theater, fashion, architecture, and food. Critics may also take as their subject social or governmen ...

s and advocates, the achievement of better democracy, greater fairness, less violence, and a wider rights culture are all desirable, but inadequate in themselves to confront the quandaries of contemporary technological societies unless and until they are accompanied by progress in science and technology to support and implement these values. Strong techno-progressive positions include support for the

civil right Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life o ...

of a

person A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, ...

to either maintain or

modify Modification may refer to: * Modifications of school work for students with special educational needs * Modifications (genetics), changes in appearance arising from changes in the environment * Posttranslational modifications, changes to protein ...

his or her own

mind The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various m ...

and

body Body may refer to: In science * Physical body, an object in physics that represents a large amount, has mass or takes up space * Body (biology), the physical material of an organism * Body plan, the physical features shared by a group of anima ...

, on his or her own terms, through informed, consensual recourse to, or refusal of, available therapeutic or enabling biomedical technology. During the November 2014 Transvision Conference, many of the leading transhumanist organizations signed the Technoprogressive Declaration. The Declaration stated the values of technoprogressivism.

Contrasting stance

Bioconservatism Bioconservatism (a portmanteau of the words ''biology'' and ''conservatism''), to Deakin University Lecturer in Health Ethics and Professionalism Tamara Kayali Browne and University of Oxford Senior Research Fellow Steve Clarke, is "a term that is ...

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordsbiology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...

" and "

conservatism Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilizati ...

") is a stance of hesitancy about technological development especially if it is perceived to threaten a given

social order The term social order can be used in two senses: In the first sense, it refers to a particular system of social structures and institutions. Examples are the ancient, the feudal, and the capitalist social order. In the second sense, social order ...

. Strong bioconservative positions include opposition to

genetic modification Genetic engineering, also called genetic modification or genetic manipulation, is the modification and manipulation of an organism's genes using technology. It is a set of technologies used to change the genetic makeup of cells, including t ...

of food crops, the cloning and genetic engineering of

livestock Livestock are the domesticated animals raised in an agricultural setting to provide labor and produce diversified products for consumption such as meat, eggs, milk, fur, leather, and wool. The term is sometimes used to refer solely to animals ...

and pets, and, most prominently, rejection of the genetic, prosthetic, and cognitive modification of human beings to overcome what are broadly perceived as current human biological and cultural limitations. Bioconservatives range in political perspective from

right-leaning Right-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that view certain social orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position on the basis of natural law, economics, authori ...

religious and cultural conservatives to left-leaning environmentalists and technology critics. What unifies bioconservatives is skepticism about medical and other

biotechnological Biotechnology is the integration of natural sciences and engineering sciences in order to achieve the application of organisms, cells, parts thereof and molecular analogues for products and services. The term ''biotechnology'' was first used by ...

transformations of the living world. Typically less sweeping as a critique of technological society than

bioluddism Neo-Luddism or new Luddism is a philosophy opposing many forms of modern technology. The term Luddite is generally used as a pejorative applied to people showing technophobic leanings. The name is based on the historical legacy of the English Lud ...

, the bioconservative perspective is characterized by its defense of the

natural Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are p ...

, deployed as a

moral A moral (from Latin ''morālis'') is a message that is conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader, or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim. A ...

category. Although techno-progressivism is the stance which contrasts with bioconservatism in the biopolitical spectrum, both techno-progressivism and bioconservatism, in their more moderate expressions, share an opposition to unsafe, unfair, undemocratic forms of technological development, and both recognize that such developmental modes can facilitate unacceptable recklessness and

exploitation Exploitation may refer to: *Exploitation of natural resources *Exploitation of labour **Forced labour *Exploitation colonialism *Slavery **Sexual slavery and other forms *Oppression *Psychological manipulation In arts and entertainment *Exploita ...

, exacerbate injustice and incubate dangerous social discontent.

List of notable techno-progressive social critics

* Technocritic

Dale Carrico Dale Carrico (born 1965) is an American critical theorist and rhetorician. He is a critic of futurology and geoengineering.

with his accounts of techno-progressivism *Philosopher

Donna Haraway Donna J. Haraway is an American Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department and Feminist Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a prominent scholar in the field of science and technology studies. Sh ...

with her accounts of

cyborg theory "A Cyborg Manifesto" is an essay written by Donna Haraway and published in 1985 in the '' Socialist Review (US)''. In it, the concept of the cyborg represents a rejection of rigid boundaries, notably those separating "human" from "animal" and "hu ...

. *Media theorist

Douglas Rushkoff Douglas Mark Rushkoff (born February 18, 1961) is an American media theorist, writer, columnist, lecturer, graphic novelist, and documentarian. He is best known for his association with the early cyberpunk culture and his advocacy of open sourc ...

with his accounts of

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

. *Cultural critic

Mark Dery Mark Dery (born December 24, 1959)''Contemporary Authors Online'', s.v. "Mark Dery" (accessed February 12, 2008). is an American author, lecturer and cultural critic. An early observer and critic of online culture, he helped to popularize the ter ...

and his accounts of cyberculture. *Science journalist Chris Mooney with his account of the U.S. Republican Party's "war on science". *Futurist

Bruce Sterling Michael Bruce Sterling (born April 14, 1954) is an American science fiction author known for his novels and short fiction and editorship of the ''Mirrorshades'' anthology. In particular, he is linked to the cyberpunk subgenre. Sterling's first ...

with his

Viridian design movement The Viridian Design Movement was an aesthetic movement focused on concepts from bright green environmentalism. The name was chosen to refer to a shade of green that does not quite look natural, indicating that the movement was about innovative des ...

. *Futurist

Alex Steffen Alex Steffen (born 1968) is an American futurist who writes and speaks about sustainability and the future of the planet. He emphasizes the importance of imagining persuasive, positive possible futures: "It's literally true that we can't build ...

and his accounts of bright green environmentalism through the Worldchanging blog. *Science journalist

Annalee Newitz Annalee Newitz (born May 7, 1969) is an American journalist, editor, and author of both fiction and nonfiction, who has written for the periodicals ''Popular Science'' and ''Wired''. From 1999 to 2008 Newitz wrote a syndicated weekly column call ...

with her accounts of the Bio punk. *Bioethicist James Hughes of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies with his accounts of

democratic transhumanism Transhumanist politics constitutes a group of political ideologies that generally express the belief in improving human individuals through science and technology. History The term "transhumanism" with its present meaning was popularised by Ju ...

Controversy

Technocritic Dale Carrico, who has used "techno-progressive" as a shorthand to describe progressive politics that emphasize technoscientific issues, has expressed concern that some " transhumanists" are using the term to describe themselves, with the consequence of possibly misleading the public regarding their actual cultural, social and political views, which may or may not be compatible with

critical Critical or Critically may refer to: *Critical, or critical but stable, medical states **Critical, or intensive care medicine *Critical juncture, a discontinuous change studied in the social sciences. *Critical Software, a company specializing in ...

techno-progressivism.

References

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External links