Download or read book Crossing the Postmodern Divide written by Albert Borgmann and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-11-22 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this eloquent guide to the meanings of the postmodern era, Albert Borgmann charts the options before us as we seek alternatives to the joyless and artificial culture of consumption. Borgmann connects the fundamental ideas driving his understanding of society's ills to every sphere of contemporary social life, and goes beyond the language of postmodern discourse to offer a powerfully articulated vision of what this new era, at its best, has in store. "[This] thoughtful book is the first remotely realistic map out of the post modern labyrinth."—Joseph Coates, The Chicago Tribune "Rather astoundingly large-minded vision of the nature of humanity, civilization and science."—Kirkus Reviews
Download or read book American Philosophy of Technology written by Hans Achterhuis and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2001-07-12 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduces contemporary American philosophy of technology through six of its leading figures. The six American philosophers of technology whose work is profiled in this clear and concise introduction to the field—Albert Borgmann, Hubert Dreyfus, Andrew Feenberg, Donna Haraway, Don Ihde, and Langdon Winner—represent a new, empirical direction in the philosophical study of technology that has developed mainly in North America. In place of the grand philosophical schemes of the classical generation of European philosophers of technology (including Martin Heidgger, Jacques Ellul, and Hans Jonas), the contemporary American generation addresses concrete technological practices and the co-evolution of technology and society in modern culture. Six Dutch philosophers associated with Twente University survey and critique the full scope and development of their American colleagues' work, often illustrating shifts from earlier to more recent interests. Individual chapters focus on Borgmann's engagement with technology and everyday life; Dreyfus's work on the limits of artificial intelligence; Feenberg's perspectives on the cultural and social possibilities opened by technologies; Haraway's conception of the cyborg and its attendant blurring of boundaries; Ihde's explorations of the place of technology in the lifeworld; and Winner's fascination with the moral and political implications of modern technologies. American Philosophy of Technology offers an insightful and readable introduction to this new and distinctly American philosophical turn. Contributors are Hans Achterhuis, Philip Brey, René Munnik, Martijntje Smits, Pieter Tijmes, and Peter-Paul Verbeek.
Download or read book Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life written by Albert Borgmann and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-08-14 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blending social analysis and philosophy, Albert Borgmann maintains that technology creates a controlling pattern in our lives. This pattern, discernible even in such an inconspicuous action as switching on a stereo, has global effects: it sharply divides life into labor and leisure, it sustains the industrial democracies, and it fosters the view that the earth itself is a technological device. He argues that technology has served us as well in conquering hunger and disease, but that when we turn to it for richer experiences, it leads instead to a life dominated by effortless and thoughtless consumption. Borgmann does not reject technology but calls for public conversation about the nature of the good life. He counsels us to make room in a technological age for matters of ultimate concern—things and practices that engage us in their own right.
Download or read book New Worlds New Technologies New Issues written by Stephen H. Cutcliffe and published by Lehigh University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, fifteen scholars from the United States, Spain, Puerto Rico, and Colombia discuss the social implications of new technologies. Their essays address the cultural worlds that crystallize around technologies, the challenges to democracy that they pose, and the responsibility of modern technology for forcing a public response to new social and moral issues. Three themes define the three sections into which the volume is divided: "New Worlds," "New Technologies," and "New Issues." The essays in the section "New Worlds" range from optimism that new technologies will produce a better world than that of 1992, through a nonjudgmental discussion of the transformation of our "lifeworld" that new technologies are effecting, to deep concern for the viability of the world that modern technology has already created. In "New Technologies," the focus is on political responses to modern technologies. The authors in this section see the challenge to understanding and controlling our technological world in reshaping existing relations of social power and authority, and in creating new institutions more adequate to the sociopolitical realities of the process of technological innovation. While the contributors in the first two sections of the volume argue that broad changes in values and institutions are preconditions of a more beneficent relationship among people, nature, and technology, those in the section "New Issues" adopt narrower, more specific, viewpoints. Their essays address the political values underlying the Deep Ecology movement, the ethics of military technologies, the capacity of democratic institutions for a public role in setting technology policies, and science and technology literacy mechanisms. Collectively, these essays reflect the growing international concern with the role played by technological innovation in a rapidly changing world, and they point toward the formulation of concrete political platforms for informed social responses to the innovation process.
Download or read book Travels with Ernest written by Laurel Richardson and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2004 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Laurel Richardson and Ernest Lockridge-accomplished sociologist and published novelist-explore the fascinating interplay between literary and ethnographic writing. The exciting result is an intriguing experimental text that simultaneously delves into, reveals, simplifies, and complicates methodologies of writing and conveying experience. This boundary-crossing text will provide an ideal platform for students and professors interested in understanding and exploring the absorbing complexities and possibilities of ethnographic writing and creative nonfiction.
Download or read book Mortgaging the Earth written by Bruce Rich and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This critique of World Bank operations examines the effects of this organization on the societies in which it operates. Highly critical of the Bank's practices in its 50 years of operation, the author demonstrates how the Bank has become virtually unaccountable and a law unto itself. He describes how the Bank has supported oppressive regimes and loaned money to support large projects which have displaced local populations. He argues further that the Bank's current policies of structural adjustment are arresting the development of Third World countries.
Download or read book Real American Ethics written by Albert Borgmann and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-10-19 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America is a wonderful and magnificent country that affords its citizens the broadest freedoms and the greatest prosperity in the world. But it also has its share of warts. It is embroiled in a war that many of its citizens consider unjust and even illegal. It continues to ravage the natural environment and ignore poverty both at home and abroad...
Download or read book Technology and the Philosophy of Religion written by David Lewin and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2010-09-13 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last one hundred years has seen unimaginable technological progress transforming every aspect of human life. Yet we seem unable to shake a profound unease with the direction of modern technology and its ideological siblings, global capitalism and massive consumption. Philosophers such as Marcuse, Borgmann and especially Heidegger, have developed important analyses of technological society, however in this book David Lewin argues that their ideas have remained limited either by their secular context, or by the narrow conception of religion that they do allow. This study guides the reader along the newly formed paths of the philosophy of technology, arguing that where those paths come to an abrupt end, a religious discourse is needed to articulate the ultimate concerns that drive technological action. It calls for a meditation on the central insight of many religious traditions that, in an ultimate sense, we ‘know not what we do.’ To acknowledge that we know not what we do is the first step towards a theology of technology that draws upon insights from the mystical theological tradition, as well as from recent developments in the continental philosophy of religion.
Download or read book Holding On to Reality written by Albert Borgmann and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Holding On to Reality is a brilliant history of information, from its inception in the natural world to its role in the transformation of culture to the current Internet mania and is attendant assets and liabilities. Drawing on the history of ideas, the details of information technology, and the boundaries of the human condition, Borgmann illuminates the relationship between things and signs, between reality and information. "[Borgmann] has offered a stunningly clear definition of information in Holding On to Reality. . . . He leaves room for little argument, unless one wants to pose the now vogue objection: I guess it depends on what you mean by nothing."—Paul Bennett, Wired "A superb anecdotal analysis of information for a hype-addled age."—New Scientist "This insightful and poetic reflection on the changing nature of information is a wonderful antidote to much of the current hype about the 'information revolution.' Borgmann reminds us that whatever the reality of our time, we need 'a balance of signs and things' in our lives."—Margaret Wertheim, LA Weekly
Download or read book Technology and the Good Life written by Eric Higgs and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-12-15 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can we use technology in the pursuit of a good life, or are we doomed to having our lives organized and our priorities set by the demands of machines and systems? How can philosophy help us to make technology a servant rather than a master? Technology and the Good Life? uses a careful collective analysis of Albert Borgmann's controversial and influential ideas as a jumping-off point from which to address questions such as these about the role and significance of technology in our lives. Contributors both sympathetic and critical examine Borgmann's work, especially his "device paradigm"; apply his theories to new areas such as film, agriculture, design, and ecological restoration; and consider the place of his thought within philosophy and technology studies more generally. Because this collection carefully investigates the issues at the heart of how we can take charge of life with technology, it will be a landmark work not just for philosophers of technology but for students and scholars in the many disciplines concerned with science and technology studies.
Download or read book The Engineering Project written by Gene Moriarty and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-11-05 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We all live our daily lives surrounded by the products of technology that make what we do simpler, faster, and more efficient. These are benefits we often just take for granted. But at the same time, as these products disburden us of unwanted tasks that consumed much time and effort in earlier eras, many of them also leave us more disengaged from our natural and even human surroundings. It is the task of what Gene Moriarty calls focal engineering to create products that will achieve a balance between disburdenment and engagement: “How much disburdenment will be appropriate while still permitting an engagement that enriches one’s life, elevates the spirit, and calls forth a good life in a convivial society?” One of his examples of a focally engineered structure is the Golden Gate Bridge, which “draws people to it, enlivens and elevates the human spirit, and resonates with the world of its congenial setting. Humans, bridge, and world are in tune.” These values of engagement, enlivenment, and resonance are key to the normative approach Moriarty brings to the profession of engineering, which traditionally has focused mainly on technical measures of evaluation such as efficiency, productivity, objectivity, and precision. These measures, while important, look at the engineered product in a local and limited sense. But “from a broader perspective, what is locally benign may present serious moral problems,” undermining “social justice, environmental sustainability, and health and safety of affected parties.” It is this broader perspective that is championed by focal engineering, the subject of Part III of the book, which Moriarty contrasts with “modern” engineering in Part I and “pre-modern” engineering in Part II.
Download or read book The American Crisis in Physical Activity Education written by F. Zeigler Earle F. Zeigler and published by Trafford Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American Crisis in Physical Activity Education was written because the author is terribly upset about what is happening to physical activity education and so-called educational sport within the education system. He lives in North America as a dual citizen, and he feels sad that we appear to be a large part of the world's problem! He thought that the world would be a better place for all people by the year 2000. Because now it definitely doesn't seem to be heading in that direction, he is forced to conclude: (1) that in many ways we are confused about what our values are at the present, (2) that we need to reconsider them and then re-state exactly what we believe they are in light of the changing times, and (3) finally that we will then need to assess more carefully, on a regular basis, whether we are living up to those values we have chosen and so often glibly espouse. Physical activity education, including what is called educational sport, is a field that in the 21st century is facing one more crossroad in its torturous historical development.
Download or read book Through the Eyes of a Concerned Liberal written by Earle F. Zeigler and published by Trafford Publishing. This book was released on 2004-09-23 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through the Eyes of a Concerned Liberal argues that the socio-political position of liberalism is the only one that can get us back on course toward the now-vanishing "enlightenment ideal". This was the vision of the "founding fathers," looking to a time when all of the conditions of life--social, political, moral, and intellectual, as well as material--would be realized for everyone--the "American dream." Taking a hard look at the present social-political situation in North America, Dr. Zeigler offers a self-evaluation test for the reader to determine his/her socio-political=political stance on a spectrum (from far right to far left). (Other "tests" serve to evaluate, respectively, both one's philosophy of life and/or religion and recreational quotient "RQ".) The United States, the author asserts, simply does not appreciate that its current "imperial" status will be sorely tried in the 21st century. The U.S.A. must now prove that its brand of capitalism and democracy, one that purports to offer a maximum of individual freedom within a democratic political system, is the best approach for the entire world to emulate. However, capitalism and ecology have become social forces on a collision course in this evolving cultural matrix. The individual citizen in this setting must be fully informed and must serve actively and responsibly to implement a liberal agenda. The author offers 49 short essays, columns, and self evaluation devices that reflect his position. In the final analysis, each person should choose a life purpose based on (1) a comprehensive philosophy of life, (2) a concurring, socio-political stance, and (3) a search for "the good life" in a hopefully free society.
Download or read book The Big Three s Takeover of Sport written by EARLE F. ZEIGLER Ph.D. LL.D. D.Sc. and published by Trafford Publishing. This book was released on 2011-06-10 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the The BigThrees Takeover of Sport, Dr. Zeigler argues that such a take-over of competitive sport by capitalism, nationalism, and democracy has become a very serious problem that gradually became a crisis as the twentieth century wore on. The main purpose of this bookto show that the commandeering, or take-over, of sport by the conglomerate of three, enumeratedhas created a situation where competitive sport has been increasingly degraded to a destructive professional morality espousing a mentality that screams: Winning is now not the most important thing in sport; it is the only thing! If indeed such is the case, this means that we must move now to assess the evolving situation more carefully than ever before
Download or read book Power Failure written by Albert Borgmann and published by Brazos Press. This book was released on 2003-06 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A call to redeem and restrain technology through everyday Christian practices and sacraments such as communal celebrations, shared meals, and daily Scripture reading.
Download or read book Background Practices written by Hubert L. Dreyfus and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-16 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents a selection of Hubert Dreyfus's pioneering work in bringing phenomenology and existentialism to bear on the philosophical and scientific study of the mind. Each of the thirteen essays interprets, develops, and extends the insights of his predecessors working in the European philosophical tradition. One of Dreyfus' central contributions to reading the historical canon of philosophy comes from his recognition that great philosophers help us to understand the "background practices" of a culture - the practices that shape and embody our most basic understanding of ourselves and the things and situations we encounter in our world. Background practices are all too often overlooked completely, or else their importance is misunderstood. Each chapter in this volume shows in one way or another how a broad range of philosophical topics can only be properly understood when we recognize how they are grounded in the background practices that shape our lives and give meaning to our activities, our tasks, our normative commitments, our aims and our goals.
Download or read book Law Without Values written by Albert W. Alschuler and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2000-12 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Albert Alschuler's study of Holmes is very different from other books about him, in that it is an exercise in debunking him.
