Melzer’s essay, The Problem with “The Problem of Technology”, aimed to revisit and expand the discussion in The Problem of Technology.
Melzer began by reviewing the right’s hostility and the left’s optimistic view toward technology, confirming that “this is the age of the problem of technology.”
Melzer opened the body with an observation of how technology’s three qualities - automaticity, uniformity, disposability - are distancing men. Melzer then discussed briefly how nature is now under man’s mercy to exist, how technology evolved to influence men’s daily activities, and how the scientific basis shift altered the attitude toward nature from admiring to manipulate. Afterward, Melzer looked at how technology-lacking society functioned via tradition, communal consensus, and ancestry, leading to how the Enlightenment allowed technology to thrive and created more leftist: optimistic, fear not the ancient foundation but catching up with the latest technology, while rejecting optimal happiness.
Melzer finished the body with a brief thought on how technology and men’s master-slave relationship the irony of technology, how the technological reaction toward popular problem of technology lead to new technology, how the left’s optimistic view is a fear of humanity, and how the right’s conservative view could be a remedy.
Melzer closed with restating the problem’s characteristic, then suggested that having a break from technology like the right instead of railing against it like the left could allow men to comprehend the problem more thoroughly, and to free our mind.