Technology Transfer and Globalization: a New Wave for Philosophy of Technology?

Abstract

Despite the social, political ethical and epistemic importance of globalization and technology transfer, philosophers tend to be prioritizing other areas of inquiry. In order to clarify the strengths and weaknesses found in the dominant assessments of these topics, I begin this chapter with meta-philosophical analysis that reviews representative forms of inquiry. The remainder of the chapter clarifies a vision of how philosophers of technology can pursue a new wave of socially significant investigation. In order to exposit this vision in concrete terms, I turn to the example of the Village Phone Programme in Bangladesh. While advocates tout this endeavour as a new development paradigm that empowers impoverished and mistreated women by providing them with microcredit and mobile phones, detractors can find the programme’s implementation reproducing and augmenting insidious patriarchical forces.¹ By questioning what considerations economic and ethnographic analyses occlude, I not only hope to shed light on the Village Phone Programme and the underlying trends that drive it, but I further hope to clarify how philosophers of technology can enter into meaningful dialogue with a range of development theorists and practitioners.