Questions to ask that will engage critical thinking.

This list of questions is derived from author Stephanie Mills and Jacques Ellul, sourced by Andrew Sage.

Keep in mind that the questions should be used to ask about every technology. Technology can use scientific principles to advance industry or other human constructs. There may not be binary, straightforward, or objectively correct answers to all these questions. They are worth asking, because they can guide our efforts to find solutions.

Ecological

• What are the effects of the health of the planet and of the person?
• Does it preserve or reduce biodiversity and ecosystem integrity?
• What are its effects on the land and on wildlife?
• How much and what kind of waste does it generate?
• Does it incorporate the principles of ecological design?
• Does it break the bond of renewal between humans and nature?
• What is the totality of its effects, its “ecology”?

Social

• Does it serve the community?
• Does it empower community members?
• How does it affect our perception of our needs?
• Is it consistent with the creation of a communal, human economy?
• What are its effects on relationships?
• How does it affect our way of sensing and experiencing the world?
• Does it undermine conviviality?
• Does it Foster a diversity of forms of knowledge and community, including the traditional?
• To what extent does it redefine reality?
• Does it erase a sense of time and history?
• What is its potential to become addictive?

Moral

• What values does its use foster?
• What is gained and lost by its use?
• What are its effects beyond its utility to the individual?
• What are its effects on the least advantaged in the society?

Ethical

• What additional technologies does it require?
• What does it allow us to ignore?
• To what extent does it distance us from effect?
• Can we assume personal, or communal, responsibility for its effects?
• Can its effects be directly perceived?

Vocational

• What is its impact on craft?
• Does it reduce, deaden, or enhance human creativity?
• Is it the least imposing technology available for the task?
• Does it replace, or does it aid, human hands and human beings?
• Can it be responsive to organic circumstance?
• Does it depress or enhance the quality of goods?
• And does it depress or enhance the meaning of work?

Aesthetic

• What does XYZ have to say for itself?
• Is it ugly?
• Does it cause ugliness?
• What noise does it make?
• What pace does it set?

Practical

• What is its purpose?
• What does it make and who does it benefit?
• Where was it produced and where is it used?
• And where must it go when it’s broken or obsolete?
• How expensive it is?
• Can it be repaired, and if so by an ordinary person?

Political

• Does it concentrate or equalize power?
• Does it require, or institute, a knowledge elite?
• Is it totalitarian?
• Does it require a bureaucracy for its perpetuation?
• Legal empowerment?
• Military defense?
• Does it enhance, or serve, military purposes and how does it affect warfare?
• Is it fostering a mass thinking or behavior?
• Does it empower transnational corporations?
• What kind of capital does it require?

Metaphysical

• What aspect of the inner self does it reflect?
• Does it express love or rage?
• What aspect of our past does it reflect?</span>
• And does it reflect cyclical or linear thinking?