There are two ranges in the growth of tools: the range within which machines are used to extend human capability and the range in which they are used to contract, eliminate, or replace human functions. In the first, people as individuals can exercise authority on their own behalf and therefore assume responsibility. In the second, the machine takes over – first reducing the range of choice and motivation in both the operator and the client, and second imposing its own logic and demands on both. Survival depends on establishing procedures which permit ordinary people to recognize these ranges and to opt for survival in freedom, to evaluate the structure built into tools and institutions so they can exclude those which by their structure are destructive, and control those which are useful. Exclusion of the maligning tool and control of the expedient tool are the two major priorities for politics today.
If a just society is one in which liberty for one person is constrained only by the demands created by equal liberty for another, then we need to have institutions which promote a delicate balance between what people can do for themselves and what tools at the service of anonymous institutions can do for them. In order to achieve this, natural and social science need to be used to create tools, utilities and rules available to everyone, thus permitting individuals and transient associations to constantly recreate their mutual relationships and their environment with unenvisaged freedom and self-expression.
Quote provided by Jon Li
