ICT and Human Progress

Abstract Information and communication technology (ICT) has changed the lives of people at the operative level; it is less clear in what ways and to what extent it has changed the way people feel and develop as human beings. We create excellent means, but are we feeling better and getting better, and by what criteria should we evaluate our progress? Operative power is needed for the human progress, but it is not enough. In this article we consider the traditional values of knowledge, goodness (ethics), and beauty (aesthetics) as the criteria of human progress, and how our embrace of ICT has affected our advance toward these values. We round up our discussion with reflections on aspects of human nature that lead people along the ways of knowledge, goodness, and beauty, and also those that hinder such advancement. Keywords: aestheticethicshuman natureICTknowledgeoperative powerpublic discourse Acknowledgments © Mario Radovan Notes 1. Hamilton and Cairns (1996) contains all Plato's works. 2. A great threat that ICT brings to humanity is data gathering and surveillance. The countries of the free world used to blame communist countries for spying over their citizens, but present-day data gathering, which includes recording of private communication and of virtually everything else, is a far more intense spying than the past regimes were able to imagine. The loss of privacy understood as the secrecy of personal facts is a minor problem here; the essential problem is that power-holders have developed an infrastructure for data gathering, which facilitates the development of a totalitarian society and of a perfect tyranny. Such system can be imposed upon people gradually, without them being aware of when that has happened. A surveillance society is not a free society, but society pervaded by the sense of fear and impotence. Citizens have no real possibility to resist the power-holders in such society, because the latter possess sufficient data and means to destroy in advance everybody who might challenge their power. ICT is getting ever more efficient and less visible; it could soon facilitate a distant scanning of brains and checking whether a person has some inappropriate thoughts or feelings, which could then be corrected on the spot. Orwell's crimethink could soon be technically eliminable and preventable. Intense use of drones for domestic purposes can become quite normal. In any case, intense data gathering and surveillance reduce people to rats in a maze, with which the proverbial mad scientists play their games. To make people and the world better, it is necessary to develop a socioeconomic system that promotes constructive cooperation and social justice; without such structural changes, no advance of technology and data gathering can make people and the world better. 3. History of the university and a variety of attitudes toward higher education can be found in Delanty (Citation2001) and Bhattacharya (Citation2012). 4. Kaufmann (Citation1976) and Kaufmann (Citation1992) contain Nietzsche's main works and a selection from his entire opus. 5. Gay (Citation1995) contains main Freud's work and a selection from his entire opus.