Technological Myopia
Origin: Richard Susskind, reinterpreted and broadened
Definition
Technological myopia refers to the situation in which one projects the flaws of a technology without factoring in future corrective factors, whether technical or political. It can take two opposing forms:
Pessimistic myopia: one assumes that the current flaws of a technology will not be corrected, and condemns the tool on the basis of its present imperfections. This is a technophobic stance that ignores the capacity for evolution of technical systems.
Optimistic myopia: one assumes that all flaws will be corrected in the future, and adopts the tool without reservation. This is a technophilic stance that ignores the structural risks that will not disappear with technical improvements alone.
In my writings
I reinterpret this concept in a broader sense than Susskind. Myopia is not merely a one-off technical assessment error — it is a cognitive stance that prevents thinking through the ongoing transformation in its complexity and duration.
Pessimistic myopia leads to rejecting the tool on the pretext of its current imperfections (LLM hallucinations, for example) without seeing that these limitations are partly circumstantial and that uses evolve. Optimistic myopia leads to ignoring the effects of dispossession and cognitive proletarianization that will not be resolved by technical improvements.
The pharmakon is precisely what allows us to move beyond both forms of myopia: by recognizing the constitutive ambivalence of technology, we avoid freezing it in a definitive assessment (positive or negative) and keep open the question of the conditions of use.