Our daily technology

Just like the dichotomy established between culture and nature, there is also the even more evident opposition between nature and technology. In The Sixth Sense, ethologist Boris Cyrulnik dedicates a special chapter to the theme of technology. The book, in fact, is vast in all the subjects addressed by the theorist, who brings a biological perspective to human behavior, placing it on the exact same level as other animals since, after all, although we often forget it, we are also animals.

In this chapter on technology, Cyrulnik begins his discourse by reinforcing how a technical discovery, by altering the "perceptible ecology," is also capable of altering people's customs and their very sense of self. The author talks about the horse collar, an accessory that may seem rustic compared to more advanced technologies like robotics and artificial intelligence, but which is nonetheless a technology. When it was incorporated into the agrarian world, it was precisely this, the horse collar, that became responsible for the disappearance of slavery.

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The breast strap, or gorget, would choke horses under a load of sixty kilograms. It took dozens of men, and sometimes hundreds, to pull heavy loads through difficult passages. As soon as the horse collar, or shoulder collar, was created, the horse's motive power multiplied by ten. Man was no longer the engine. He was replaced by the horse, which would itself later be replaced by horsepower. (…)
Currently, a couple who buys a car, central heating, and a washing machine possesses, in the form of domestic robots, the equivalent of fifty slaves. If an economic catastrophe were to cause these robots to disappear, I am convinced that men and women would once again rent out their backs and hands to replace them.

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Thus, we can establish a connection between this last paragraph and the discussions surrounding the future of work. This anxiety and fear of becoming obsolete as activities once performed by human beings undergo a process of automation is nothing new. Since the emergence of "horsepower"—that is, since the First Industrial Revolution—steam engines and the process of modernizing the world have caused anguish in people who, at the time, even created a movement to break the machines, which became known as the Luddites.

However, this yearning in the face of novelty does not occur only in the technological sphere, but also when new cultural and social postures arise from technical innovations. Today, we use the dichotomy between the modern and the postmodern as a way to mark this transition from an era of certainties and mechanical practices to a moment of fluidity and understanding that reconnects us, once again, to Mother Earth.

InThe Consumed Consumer (1972), Vilém Flusser was already addressing exacerbated consumption, the massive and unreasonable production of waste, and a view of things and the world from a masculine perspective. Using the figures of the concave and the convex, respectively a representation of the feminine and masculine archetypes, the Czech-Brazilian philosopher was already addressing our fear of the void (horror vacui) and how we fill this void, this anguish, through the consumption of products that make no sense.

InThe Sixth Sense, Cyrulnik speaks precisely about how culture is born from this gap between affliction and affection, which is where we fill ourselves with consumer objects, but mainly with accounts, stories, communication, art, and culture. The ethologist talks about behaviors in the realm of eating, for example, where children and adults have the habit of ingesting things like concrete or sand to fill an emotional void rooted in early childhood, which unfolds, for instance, into a behavior of acceptance and passivity in the face of an abusive relationship during adulthood, since one does not want to return to the void. In the same way, Cyrulnik also talks about compulsions and eating disorders, such as anorexia and bulimia, in which patients are not based so much on the ingestion of food and the filling of this vacuum, but rather on the attempt to reach the ideal of an image—the images of consumer culture, for example.

On the other hand, Cyrulnik discusses how technology has made the farmer stop singing to the ox while working in the fields, because today he has machines that do this work. Or, furthermore, the author narrates how on public transport we use headphones that signal we do not want to talk to anyone, whereas in smaller cities with less access to technology, one notices customs that tend toward social interaction, as people share a piece of bread, tell stories about their lives, and even participate in a card game together.

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Technique, like democracy, while improving individual performance, isolates people: "It is easy to forget those who preceded us and those who will follow us […]. Thus, not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants from him and separates him from his contemporaries: it leads him, incessantly, toward himself alone, and threatens to finally enclose him entirely in the solitude of his own heart."

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Cyrulnik, however, does not aim to defend any particular point of view or opinion, but rather to maintain the ambiguity of the information he presents in his book by addressing different visions on the subject. The author comments, for example, on how, in the past, women menstruated at 12 and, over a lifetime of more or less 35 years, still went through an average of thirteen pregnancies. This means that there were few moments in which these women had the possibility of experiencing menstruation and ovulation, which is the same mechanism as the contraceptive pill, which uses hormones to "trick" the female body by faking a pregnancy.

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The contraceptive, therefore, caused the possibilities for a woman's life to expand beyond her maternal function. It was precisely a technology, therefore, that enabled this leap in behavioral mastery, but also as a new way of having a representation of oneself: women who can choose to work outside the home, to have children or not, and when the chosen moment arrives for them. That is, motherhood becomes a chapter and no longer the entire story of women's lives:

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A young girl, at the moment her sexual identity is being formed, no longer imagines herself as a passive woman in whom a man will plant the promise of thirteen children she must carry. She dreams of her future as the story of a person who will dedicate only one chapter to motherhood. Technical support surrounding birth, improved infant care in daycares and nurseries—which often foster growth more effectively than many homes—and social protections that ensure better opportunities for life outside the family, all enhance the individualization of mothers and decrease the necessity of a father. Good technology during the early years and a well-organized state can replace parents to great advantage. The man's role alongside the mother becomes that of an emotional companion with whom she shares a human adventure. It is no longer the authority of a father that saves the family by working; it is the State, whose laws he articulates and often uses as a vehicle for his own. Technical evolution and social improvement structure sensory and meaningful fields around children that shape them in entirely different ways. In one or two generations, the guardians of development have brought about a revolution.

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It is perhaps because of these macrocosmic changes that technology can awaken anxiety and distress in us, as it can precisely disrupt established cycles, routines we have grown accustomed to, and truths we have obeyed. But if a simple harness was once enough to free a portion of men and women from their condition of slavery, it is highly likely that robotics and new technologies will play a similar role by freeing us from the final remnants of mechanistic and repetitive professions.

And this is not limited only to "factory floor" jobs, but also extends to the realm of creativity, which is held back by quantitative metrics as a strategy of hollow, content-free monetization based on mechanical stimulation (clicks, views, visits, etc.). If culture, therefore, is established between the vacuum of anxiety and affection, our mission as communicators (and also as students of the future) is to engage and qualify our audience so they are aware of the transformation processes and the innovations occurring. These changes may lead to the transition from a model that moves away, for example, from the excessive consumption of the 90s and 2000s, and into a moment of greater awareness regarding what is truly necessary to own versus what is possible to access.

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