There is good reason to be skeptical about the belief that scientific progress can fully address global issues of food insecurity and sustainability solely through technological growth and innovation. So-called “techno-fixes” are often understood by critics as short-sighted, morally deficient, and oftentimes dangerous because of the unforeseen harm they may cause. Still, some action must be taken presently to accommodate the needs of an ever-expanding human population, and technology has much to offer when human behaviour refuses to give way. This blog post will scrutinize both positions and argue for a middle ground that demonstrates there being no necessary conflict between the two.

            Techno-fixes attempt to “redefine, or ‘reframe,’ a problem that is fundamentally social in nature as a technological problem” (Scott 209), i.e., techno-fixes attempt to curb widespread social problems (such as food insecurity) by implementing technological solutions (such as genetically modifying crops to increase productivity and food supply). It is important to highlight that, though the term is often used by critics pejoratively, a techno-fix is not necessarily harmful or morally wrong, and technology can certainly be used as a pragmatic means of aiding, rather than undermining, the goal of collective survival. Techno-fixes are pernicious, however, when they attempt to reduce complex political, socioeconomic, and moral problems into solely scientific ones: hostile architecture (urban-design and architecture such as spiked surfaces designed to control human behavior in public spaces – often to deter the homeless) is a good example of a harmful techno-fix that treats a social problem (homelessness) as though it were simply a technological one, and not a multi-faceted issue caused by inequality. So, one must exercise healthy caution when science attempts to offer a solution that might only “address the symptoms and not the disease” (Scott 209), or when science believes it has solved a social problem it has only served to perpetuate.

            For these reasons, opponents of biotechnology tend to reject alleged techno-fixes such as genetically modified and genetically engineered food organisms as a proper solution to the problem of global food sustainability – accusing them as a harmful display of (primarily Western) human culture’s Promethean arrogance, in its goal to master the natural world, and as placing uncritical faith in the historical structure of Western scientific progress (Scott 210). Biotechnology is often criticized for presuming that humans are free to alter and shape non-human entities to satisfy primarily human interests. Some environmentalists like Mark Lynas have pushed back against anti-biotechnology movements by arguing that they are wrongfully prejudiced against genetic modification, based on unscientific claims of what is ‘natural’ (which, in the first place, as Lynas rightly points out, fallaciously conflate ‘natural’ with ‘right,’ ‘unnatural’ with ‘wrong’). Still, as discussed earlier, the concerns regarding techno-fixes cannot be reduced solely to whether they are natural or unnatural means of tackling a social problem. Insofar as techno-fixes can subtly undermine the need and call for social justice when they attempt to ‘repair’ a social issue through technology, much remains problematic. Certainly, even if genetic modification resulted in a vast increase in food supply by rendering crops more resistant to disease (granting these modifications to be morally permissible and there being no intrinsic wrong in artificially altering species), one still faces the problem of guaranteeing that these new gains can be distributed equitably among vulnerable populations, and that they do not, for example, fall largely into the hands of the privileged and the elite. This latter concern is a more profound reason why global hunger exists in the first place, and is primarily an economic, socio-political, and (as I would argue) moral problem that falls squarely outside the scope of genetic modification. There are certainly other worries as well in the potentially harmful cultural and scientific intervention of the West that needs to be imposed onto other territories to achieve this techno-fix. At best, it can only seem to buy us time.

            Still, global food insecurity and malnutrition will not wait for philosophers, politicians, and scientific authorities to dictate the best course of action, as these problems claim more and more lives every day. In this regard, opponents of biotechnology can appear to be idealistic purists — technological innovation can, at the very least, aid us in securing some success in reducing the amount of suffering while humans continue to prove themselves slow in conducting meaningful societal change. Part of the worry from opponents of biotechnological solutions seems to be that technological progress might be outpacing the rate at which humans develop their social and moral sensibilities, that technology will supersede the need to participate in social justice and instead foster a culture of moral mediocrity. The debate need not be reduced to this either/or. There is little reason to believe that the implementation of a techno-fix cannot instead magnify, rather than diminish, the need and collective call-to-action of addressing global problems like food insecurity through a moral and political lens. Rather, the presence of techno-fixes should constantly remind and expose us to there being deeper, underlying issues in these problems that need to be addressed, and that we cannot shirk responsibility through innovation. We can instead be more motivated to work toward building a better society because of the presence of these techno-fixes, and not despite of them.

Works Cited

Scott, Dane. “The Technological Fix Criticisms and the Agricultural Biotechnology Debate.” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, vol. 24, no. 3, 2011, pp. 207-206. DOI: 10.1007/s10806-010-9253-7

~ John