Abstract
In the context of evolving global production systems amid the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), technology has emerged as a defining challenge of our era. Apropos the future of humanity, key theoretical questions have dominated scholarly debates. Specifically, does technology as a ‘universal’ science offer the potential for societal advancement and human flourishing? Or should technology be understood epistemologically as an autonomous force, independently shaping human development across the globe?
In addressing these critical questions, this research enriches contemporary philosophical debates at the intersection of technology, power structures, and economic systems. It does so by reconceptualizing technology as a socio-historical process and a arena of competing interests, situating it within the dynamics of global production networks and institutional frameworks. Through an in-depth political-economic study of technology in the Middle East—from telegram, steam engine, and radio to electricity, satellite communications, digital platforms, and Artificial Intelligence—it examines technology’s role in economic development, geopolitical power relations, resource allocation, market dynamics, and social stratification. As such, it reveals technology as an inherent site of opportunities, tensions, and contradictions between established economic centers, state institutions, and mechanisms of wealth accumulation; and conversely, the developing regions, historically marginalized populations, and global labor forces
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