OK, OK, I know we've done this one quite a lot already -- but take a look at a new analysis from Corporate Watch that's just been published
(http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=2067).
I didn't write it, but it seems like a fairly sensible take on the question -- although I might argue for a bit of a more total critique.
"This 'technological sceptic' approach argues that:
--Technological progress is a flawed concept
--The current direction of technological development, dictated by the existing structures of corporations and states, is wrong
--The balance between costs and benefits to society from a given technology is often neutral or negative
--The vision that there will always be technological solutions to social problems -- themselves often caused by earlier technological developments -- is a dangerous illusion: it is more important to address the political and social causes of"
"Corporations, by controlling research and development, automatically influence which of these technologies are to succeed. The dominance and structure of corporations, along with the search for profit, encourage particular forms of technological development. In order to reduce wages, companies push technologies which replace labour with machinery. A side-effect of this tendency is that technology comes to be identified, in the popular imagination, with machines or goods which do work previously done by humans. Innovations which work in the opposite direction -- such as those elements of organic agriculture which replace chemicals with labour -- fail to be identified as technologies at all and are seen as regressive."
Can comment on articles and discussions
Depends what you mean by that. If progress in this context is seen to be something external to society then it clearly is flawed, technology may become more complex and powerful but actually worsen social conditions. It is though meaningful to speak of technological progress if the term is tied to society - so you could say that technology has progressed if it has changed to be able to meet social demands more effectively.
True, but not an argument against technology being neutral, it is quite possible to see technology as a tool, so even if currently it's development often makes our lives worse it could be used to make our lives better.
Again this has no relationship to arguing about the nature of technology itself. I don't think you'll find anyone here disputing that, or even that individual technologies and even entire periods of technological development have been damaging to society. It is my view though that some technologies do help society, and that if socially controlled the general direction of technology could be one that increasing helped us. This is what I understand by technology being neutral (it is a tool - unlike say that state which, being a set of social relationships, promotes certain social relationships and could never not do this). There are clearly further issues related to the specialism required by technology, and indeed anything more complex than a hunter gatherer society, but again my view is that there being a body of people knowing more about a particular field that is the problem, it's the (social) way in which access to and use of that knowledge is controlled.
I hope it's an illusion that I'm not guilty of, I certainly don't percieve that view to an inevitable consequence of technology being neutral.