Miguel Ángel Quintanilla Fisac

Engaging Technologies: Criteria for an Alternative Model of Technological Development

At each stage of technological development, decisions are continuously taken that help shape the final result. However, the prevailing model of technological development in our society aspires only to maximise economic benefit, a state of affairs that determines the type of decisions taken. The result is technological alienation, i.e., the situation in which the users or operators of a technical system must abandon all hope of controlling the technology they are using if they wish to take full advantage of it. In contrast to the prevailing model of technological development leading to alienating technologies, a set of criteria is put forward here to assess technology projects that define an alternative model for development of engaging, non-alienating technologies.