Philosophy of technology

 Philosophy of technology is a branch of philosophy that studies the "practice of designing and creating artifacts", and the "nature of the things so created." It emerged as a discipline over the past two centuries and has grown "considerably" since the 1970s. The humanities philosophy of technology is concerned with the "meaning of technology for, and its impact on, society and culture.

Initially, technology was seen as an extension of the human organism that replicated or amplified bodily and mental faculties. Marx framed it as a tool used by capitalists to oppress the proletariat but believed that technology would be a fundamentally liberating force once it was "freed from societal deformations". Second-wave philosophers like Ortega later shifted their focus from economics and politics to "daily life and living in a techno-material culture", arguing that technology could oppress "even the members of the bourgeoisie who were its ostensible masters and possessors." Third-stage philosophers like Don Ide and Albert Borgmann represent a turn toward de-generalization and empiricism and considered how humans can learn to live with technology.

Early scholarship on technology was split between two arguments: technological determinism, and social construction. Technological determinism is the idea that technologies cause unavoidable social changes. It usually encompasses a related argument, technological autonomy, which asserts that technological progress follows a natural progression and cannot be prevented. Social constructivists argue that technologies follow no natural progression, and are shaped by cultural values, laws, politics, and economic incentives. Modern scholarship has shifted towards an analysis of sociotechnical systems, "assemblages of things, people, practices, and meanings", looking at the value judgments that shape technology.

Cultural critic Neil Postman distinguished tool-using societies from technological societies and from what he called "technopoles", societies that are dominated by an ideology of technological and scientific progress to the detriment of other cultural practices, values, and world views. Herbert Marcuse and John Zarian suggest that technological society will inevitably deprive us of our freedom and psychological health.