Man and Techno-man. - Review - book review

National Review, Dec 4, 2000 by Leslie Lenkowsky

Since the new technology cannot supply its own moral values, D'Souza believes, absorbing the lessons of "good books" through traditional liberal education will be more important in the future than mastering the latest "high-tech" syllabi. So will persuading the public that modern capitalism depends on serving "the needs and desires of others," rather than "selfishness and greed," though this argument has been offered-with limited success-since long before the rise of "techno- affluence."

Above all, D'Souza suggests, we should stop trying to play God. Implicit (and in biotechnology, often explicit) in the ideas of what he calls the "techno-utopians" is a desire to do no less than to "remake other human beings and to redesign human nature." Yet such a notion is itself a rejection of human nature and a claim to power that is, D'Souza correctly notes, totalitarian. In her 1818 novel, Frankenstein, Mary Shelley warned against such a usurpation of the divine prerogative. Though it will not make as good a movie, D'Souza's book does so too.

Whether this message is likely to be heeded, however, might be clearer if D'Souza had devoted more time to explaining what has happened to the real God in the world of today's scientists and technological entrepreneurs. Explaining that the creation of the modern state required the privatization of religion in order to promote commerce and science (a project that succeeded most notably in the United States), D'Souza performs the difficult feat of "finding values in an age of techno-affluence" with astonishingly little reference to matters of faith. Perhaps most of the scientists and entrepreneurs he encountered were so thoroughly secularized that religion has no appeal for them. But in the past, no small number of innovators acted in part from religious conviction. (John D. Rockefeller believed he had been put on earth to transform God's gift of crude oil into useful products.) If today's innovators do not, then the likelihood they would forbear from usurping His role would seem small.

Nor did D'Souza seem to find out much about the impact of other value- shaping institutions besides religion. Although he repeats Adam Smith's famous observations about the role of conscience-the "impartial spectator"-in restraining self-interest, he gives short shrift to those groups, often known collectively as "civil society," which we have come to think play a crucial role in developing it. Are those at the forefront of the new economy essentially lone wolves, free from ties to families, friends, professional societies, and trade associations? Or are they embedded in a web of meaningful relationships that may act as a brake on their experimental zeal, telling them when they may be going too far?

As D'Souza reports, many of the new entrepreneurs and inventors are troubled by the riches they have obtained and are thinking about being philanthropic at an early stage in their lives. This suggests, at least, that conscience remains alive, even in a world of "techno- affluence," though just what it entails remains hazy.