Many of the investigations of information questions in the Information & Innovation unit of ToK begin with the address: “well, what do we cruel by innovation ?”. So, I thought it would be valuable to put together a web journal finance + write for us which outlines 4 fundamental approaches to how we can think of innovation in its relationship with knowledge.
These approaches are exceptionally much umbrella approaches – they are unpleasant perfect sorts to offer assistance us to investigate that relationship between tech and information, keep in mind the center is on information, not tech.
The “tech is a instrument” approach.
The contention here is very basically that innovation is a apparatus that we utilize to fathom human issues. This is self-evident when we see at present day advances such as the web, cars, the printing press etc. It at that point too gets to be clear when we consider advances from pre-industrial period such as refining metals, wattle and smear etc.
This approach rapidly takes us into non-physical advances such as arithmetic is a innovation which permitted us to fathom the issue of route through map-making, craftsmanship is a innovation which permits us to illuminate issues of expression and social cohesion etc. Apparently, dialect is the extreme innovation which permits for all other mechanical (& in this manner information) development. This approach has been well clarified in the books by Yuval Noah Harari (especially Sapiens: A brief Building Green Business history of Humankind).
Among the numerous scholars who have taken the “tech is apparatus” approach are Plato and Rousseau who both contended that innovation had a or maybe negative impact on information and humankind. In Phaedrus Plato contended that that the utilize of composing had a negative affect on people’s capacity to keep in mind and think basically. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, composed approximately the threats of mechanical advance in his work “Talk on Disparity.” He contended that the advancement of innovation had driven to the improvement of private property, which had in turn driven to social inequality.
On the other hand, Francis Bacon and Karl Marx, are scholars who, in taking the “tech is apparatus” approach see innovation as a positive advantage to the interest of information, and the improvement of humankind. Bacon saw science and innovation as being a single bound together substance. He contended that science was the best way to reveal all inclusive requested truths from the disarranged chaos of nature. Marx saw innovation as a implies by which ordinary work (& bourgeois extraction of it) is evaluated, and subsequently is a fundamental organize for the acknowledgment of communism. As such, Marx was positive around the impact of innovation on the interest of knowledge.
I think that this approach is inferred, and accepted, in the information questions included in the ToK Ponder Direct for Information and Innovation. This approach may be all that is required of the ToK learner. In any case,
However, there are a few concerns with this approach, concerns which are both common for us as learners, and particular to ToK:
Did these issues, which innovation clearly tackles, come some time recently the innovation or did innovation make these issues ? (the issue here is one of causation – what is the cause of an protest ?)
If the issues are predecessor to the innovation, and innovation is the arrangement to them, at that point are innovation and information really partitioned substances ?
If innovation and information are entwined at that point is there any non-technological information ?
Wider ontological issues emerging from the over – if information is a imperative for presence, at that point is innovation too a essential for our presence ? Are we characterized by understanding issues ? Is awareness basically a assignment focussed handle (Heidegger).
Concerns #1 & #2 helpfully segue into our moment approach.
The “A few information is tech” approach.
This approach contends that the information which gives rise to the innovation created to illuminate the issues that we confront is in itself innovation. Information such as dialect (incl. computerized coding dialects), religion, logical hypotheses, aesthetic course of action etc all grant rise to particular innovations which offer assistance us to illuminate a set of problems.
In this approach we begin to get it innovation as a set of hones or maybe than simply as a set of objects. Both the protest (artifact) and the hones (forms) are seen as being innovation. The protest itself might be named “instrumentally” as it was created to (instrumentals) alter the environment – ie to fathom a issue. The hones which brought the artifact into being might be named “efficiency” as they gave us an protest which, at a few point, gave us expanded control of our environment for a required reason. The impact of this categorisation on the securing and generation of information will be investigated in more noteworthy detail in consequent blogs.
This approach moreover opens the entryway to a thought of the social environment inside which needs emerge, and information creates in arrange to meet those needs. Of course, this brings a sharp center on what we characterize as ‘needs’, and who has the orderly control to fathom that which they characterize as ‘needs’ (a fast sub-question: a parcel of innovation serves ‘improvement’ – is enhancement satisfaction of a ‘need’ ?). And once more, we have noteworthy issues of causation here – what is the arrange of causation ? Is causation a essential, or simply, adequate prerequisite for the securing and generation of information ? etc
Overall, this approach moreover postures a number of challenges for our hypothesis of knowledge:
Is the innovation causal to the information or bad habit versa ? (think almost illustrations – this is more tricky than it to begin with appears).
Both information and innovation can be thought of as developmental (and some of the time progressive) – does information cause innovation to advance, or bad habit versa ? , and if so, how ?
Do we deliver a few information which is not to unravel issues ? , and if so what, and why ?
A run of ontological questions emerging from #3: are we exclusively a issue understanding being ? what approximately non-problem fathoming practices ? (do they indeed exist in this definition?). Is awareness unexpected on
Challenge #3 helpfully segues into our following approach.
