IB Philosophy 10.7.4 Technology and Mass Civilization Notes

Technology as the Enabler of the Mass Man

1. As established in 10.7.1, Ortega y Gasset identifies the mass man as the defining social type of modern European civilization. In this topic, we examine the role that technology plays in both producing and sustaining the mass man's psychology.
2. For Ortega, technology is not merely a tool. It is a civilizational force (a power that shapes how entire societies think and live) that has fundamentally changed the relationship between human beings and the world around them.
3. Ortega argues that modern technology creates what he calls the "superabundance" of modern life. Nineteenth-century industrialization produced more goods, more comfort, and more opportunities than any previous civilization.
   1. This abundance is genuinely unprecedented, yet it generates a paradox: the more civilization provides, the less its beneficiaries feel obligated to understand or contribute to it.
4. The mass man's relationship to technology exemplifies the attitude of radical ingratitude discussed in 10.7.1. He uses electricity, medicine, transportation, and communication systems daily without any curiosity about the scientific principles that make them possible.
   1. Technology becomes invisible precisely because it works so well, and its invisibility fosters the illusion that comfort is the natural state of things.
5. Technology insulates the mass man from nature. In pre-modern societies, the struggle with natural limitations (disease, famine, distance) demanded constant effort and awareness of human vulnerability.
   1. Modern technology removes these constraints, creating an environment of artificial ease that Ortega believes corrodes the habits of discipline, effort, and self-demand that characterized the select individual (10.7.2).

Technology, Knowledge, and the Philosophy of Science

1. Ortega's analysis of technology connects to broader questions in philosophy of science (Unit 6) about the nature and role of technology (9.1.1). While Ortega does not oppose technology itself, he warns that a society which treats technical progress as its highest value risks losing the philosophical, moral, and aesthetic traditions that give human life its deeper meaning.
2. Technology deepens what Ortega calls the learned ignoramus problem (10.7.3): the specialist who is technically expert in one narrow field yet knows nothing of the broader cultural traditions that made that field possible. Mass civilization depends on such technicians: the engineer builds bridges without understanding the philosophical and mathematical culture that made engineering possible in the first place.
3. Ortega draws a crucial distinction between technicians and scientists. The scientist, properly understood, is driven by intellectual curiosity and the desire to understand nature.
   1. The technician applies scientific knowledge for practical purposes without necessarily sharing the scientist's theoretical motivation. Mass civilization, Ortega argues, produces many technicians but few genuine scientists, because the mass man values practical results over theoretical understanding.
4. This distinction has implications for the demarcation problem (the question of what separates genuine science from non-science, discussed in 6.1.2). Ortega suggests this is not just an abstract philosophical puzzle but a cultural issue: when society treats technical competence as the same thing as scientific understanding, it chips away at the intellectual conditions that make genuine scientific progress possible.
5. Martin Heidegger's philosophy of technology offers a complementary perspective. In The Question Concerning Technology (1954), Heidegger argues that modern technology is a mode of revealing (a particular way of seeing and relating to the world) he calls Gestell (or "enframing"). Under this lens, nature and human beings are seen only as resources to be calculated and exploited, what Heidegger calls standing reserves (everything available for use, nothing valued in itself).
   1. Both Heidegger and Ortega warn that technology transforms not just the external world but the human relationship to being itself (the very way we experience what it means to exist): we begin to see ourselves, and each other, as resources rather than as ends in themselves.

Mass Communication and the Homogenization of Culture

1. Mass communication technologies, including the press, radio, and cinema of Ortega's era, play a decisive role in creating mass civilization. These technologies do not merely transmit information; they create a shared environment of opinions, images, and desires that homogenizes culture across previously distinct communities and regions.