wrythings

Miguel Guhlin of Texas offered his reaction to my recent post on the Path towards Excellence.

First let’s highlight the quote he’s reacting to:

Digital is a word that often gets in the way: Strive first and always for human excellence and towards our higher individual and collective purposes. Excellence is a matter of character.

Miguel responds:

I fundamentally disagree with this approach. We need to strive towards digitally-enhanced human excellence from the beginning, not strive first and always for human excellence THEN consider something else. Although sometimes it’s helpful to start with traditional tools–like Emily’s approach to bookmarking in the video below, moving us from traditional bookmarks to “social bookmarking” online–when designing things from scratch, you have to start with technology first. Otherwise, it never happens.

My inner pragmatist senses that there is a confusion as to what constitutes excellence, and the nature of the hierarchy between technology and human purposes. I am confident that an extended dialogue on these questions would be instructive and I invite Miguel (and others) to explore the matter with me.

There appears to be a temporal division in Miguel’s interpretation of my view… as a sequential ordering he objects to striving first and always for human excellence then considering something else (in this case technology). he argues that we have to start with technology or it never happens… the “it” being “digitally-enhanced human excellence” I take it.

At the surface, it looks like we’re in disagreement. I’d like to dig deeper.

I’ve written extensively on digital excellence, but from a moral point of view, we must always put technology in service to human purposes – individual and collective. This is a moral and conceptual ordering. In planning and undertaking our journey towards excellence it is a matter of intention and commitment to higher purpose. We embody excellence in the striving for excellence, and that is the only way to get there (which is an unending journey, anyway).

Starting certainly implies a sequence will follow, but we always have to start where we are, and it’s good to gain clarity on what that means. From that view, starting has many aspects: intention, situation, vision.

Miguel asserts that “when designing things from scratch, you have to start with technology first.” However, design implies an intention, a purpose. We have to get clarity on our purpose. I argue elsewhere (on numerous occasions) for dropping the digital. Digital stands in for new technology generally. I’m not anti-technology by any means. But in standing in for technology, it largely implies “new and better” … and obscures critical reflection on the term it sets out to modify. Whether the second term is “divide” or “literacy” or “inclusion” or “excellence” (or any other term) we would do well to pay more attention to the second term. When speaking of the digital divide, it’s merely the latest iteration and manifestation of longstanding social inequalities. We speak of digital literacy, we cannot ignore the higher faculties of reasoning implied in literacy. When we speak of digital inclusion – do we make as strenuous an effort as require to promote a generally inclusive society? Shall we address digital excellence any differently?

(The same argument applies to novel formulations of “e” (and i) …. eGovernment, eChicago.)

Don’t get me wrong. I am not anti-technology. (Nor am I an uncritical booster of technology for it’s own sake.) I am not against deep technological design and deliberation or potentially substantial investments in technology when it makes sense. But what guides a technical decision if not purpose?

The character of our pursuit is essential to excellence. The distinction between human excellence and digitally-enhanced human excellence is lost on me. It’s not a matter of first the one, and then (maybe) the other. It’s not a hierarchy of needs. It’s a hierarchy of purpose and values. If our aims determine technical means we will not delay. We havent delayed. We’re embedded already in the technosphere. Our society and identity is infused with technology and has been since time immemorial. The digital epoch merely takes it to new levels or extremes. The sense of an extreme is a sign of the tension of our adjustment, but the question is how we (continually) humanize our institutions and our technological capacities. We won’t ignore technology, we’ll affirm our proper relation to technology. Technology is but a means. We must take care in choice of means, surely, but we must be more deliberate in determining our purposes.

Are we still in fundamental disagreement?