Dale Carrico

From P2P Foundation
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Photo link: http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~dalec/Books.jpg

Dale Carrico is an advocate of techno-progressivism which is both opposed to bioconservatism and anarcho-capitalist rightwing pro-transhumanist libertarianism. Technoprogressivsts believe in the emancipatory potential of technology and in morphological freedom.

See Carrico's blog at http://amormundi.blogspot.com/

Explanations at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techno-progressivism

According to Dale Carrico, there are 3 basic political and human attitudes vs. technology. Technofilia is the unlimited belief in the goodness of technological progress as such, which must be totally free and not limited by political and social considerations. The Extropians are a good example of such an attitude. Technophobia takes the opposite view, seeing science and technology as problematic in themselves, and advocating a defense of 'life as we know it', today (or even yesterday). These are the bioconservatives who do not want to alter human nature. Finally, a third way is emerging, for which political and social progress is primary, but for whom technology is a necessary ingredient to deepen these trends. Below is an excerpt from Wikipedia but I recommend Dale's two essays listed below. Dale Carrico specifically links his views on a technology-supported 'social democracy' to peer to peer, and I will try to investigate this linkage further.

"Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All."

"For most technoprogressive 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. And at the same time, for most technoprogressive critics 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.

There are a number of contemporary figures who advocate what might be construed as technoprogressive stances, among them Donna Haraway with her accounts of socialist-feminist "cyborg theory," James Hughes with his accounts of democratic transhumanism, Jaron Lanier, Annalee Newitz, Bruce Sterling and the Viridian Greens.

Bioconservatism is the stance that contrasts with techno-progressivism." Some interesting concepts

- "Beyond this, many technoprogressives are also morphological freedom fighters at heart. Morphological freedom celebrates consensual practices of genetic, prosthetic, and cognitive modification as practices of self-creation rather than as the technological imposition of social conformity figured questionably as "health.""

- Many technoprogressives champion what might be called a Proportionate Precautionary Principle (or, "PPP"), a version which advocates that:

[1] We should always be cautious in the face of possible harm;

[2] As assessments of risk and harm grow more severe according to the consensus of relevant science, the burden of their justification rightly falls ever more conspicuously onto those who propose either to impose them or to refrain from ameliorating them; and

[3] The processes through which these justifications and their assessments properly take place must be open, evidence-based, and involve all the actual stakeholders to the question at issue. More information


More Information

Internal Links

External Links