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 1984 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Table of Contents Acknowledgments Part One - The Problem of Technology 1. Technology and Theory 2. Theories of Technology 3. The Choice of a Theory 4. Scientific Theory 5. Scientific Explanation 6. The Scope of Scientific Explanation 7. Science and Technology Part Two - The Character of Technology 8. The Promise of Technology 9. The Device Paradigm 10. The Foreground of Technology 11. Devices, Means, and Machines 12. Paradigmatic Explanation 13. Technology and the Social Order 14. Technology and Democracy 15. The Rule of Technology 16. Political Engagement and Social Justice 17. Work and Labor 18. Leisure, Excellence, and Happiness 19. The Stability of Technology Part Three - The Reform of Technology 20. The Possibilities of Reform 21. Deictic Discourse 22. The Challenge of Nature 23. Focal Things and Practices 24. Wealth and the Good Life 25. Political Affirmation 26. The Recovery of the Promise of Technology Notes Index.
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 1984-01-01 with total page 302 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 Technology and the Good Life written by Eric Higgs and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2000-11-15 with total page 416 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 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 Technology and the Virtues written by Shannon Vallor and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New technologies from artificial intelligence to drones, and biomedical enhancement make the future of the human family increasingly hard to predict and protect. This book explores how the philosophical tradition of virtue ethics can help us to cultivate the moral wisdom we need to live wisely and well with emerging technologies.
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 American Philosophy of Technology written by Hans Achterhuis and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 198 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 Social Acceleration written by Hartmut Rosa and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-14 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hartmut Rosa advances an account of the temporal structure of society from the perspective of critical theory. He identifies in particular three categories of change in the tempo of modern social life: technological acceleration, evident in transportation, communication, and production; the acceleration of social change, reflected in cultural knowledge, social institutions, and personal relationships; and acceleration in the pace of life, which happens despite the expectation that technological change should increase an individual's free time. According to Rosa, both the structural and cultural aspects of our institutions and practices are marked by the "shrinking of the present," a decreasing time period during which expectations based on past experience reliably match future results and events. When this phenomenon combines with technological acceleration and the increasing pace of life, time seems to flow ever faster, making our relationships to each other and the world fluid and problematic. It is as if we are standing on "slipping slopes," a steep social terrain that is itself in motion and in turn demands faster lives and technology. As Rosa deftly shows, this self-reinforcing feedback loop fundamentally determines the character of modern life.
Download or read book Everyday Technology written by David Arnold and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-06-07 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1909 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, on his way back to South Africa from London, wrote his now celebrated tract Hind Swaraj, laying out his vision for the future of India and famously rejecting the technological innovations of Western civilization. Despite his protestations, Western technology endured and helped to make India one of the leading economies in our globalized world. Few would question the dominant role that technology plays in modern life, but to fully understand how India first advanced into technological modernity, argues David Arnold, we must consider the technology of the everyday. Everyday Technology is a pioneering account of how small machines and consumer goods that originated in Europe and North America became objects of everyday use in India in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Rather than investigate “big” technologies such as railways and irrigation projects, Arnold examines the assimilation and appropriation of bicycles, rice mills, sewing machines, and typewriters in India, and follows their impact on the ways in which people worked and traveled, the clothes they wore, and the kind of food they ate. But the effects of these machines were not limited to the daily rituals of Indian society, and Arnold demonstrates how such small-scale technologies became integral to new ways of thinking about class, race, and gender, as well as about the politics of colonial rule and Indian nationhood. Arnold’s fascinating book offers new perspectives on the globalization of modern technologies and shows us that to truly understand what modernity became, we need to look at the everyday experiences of people in all walks of life, taking stock of how they repurposed small technologies to reinvent their world and themselves.
Download or read book Faith and Hope in Technology written by Egbert Schuurman and published by Clements Pub.. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Technology has advanced more in recent decades than in any other era in human history. As Christians, how should we approach science and technology? In Faith and Hope in Technology, Egbert Schuurman offers a responsible and biblical approach to working in the areas science and technology, shedding light on the nature, benefits and problems of Western technology from within his profound commitment to a biblical understanding of human life under God. "Dr. Schuurman's Faith and Hope in Technology . will be of significant help to those Christians who are struggling with issues raised by biotechnology, cybernetics, and the increasing technological character of contemporary life." -Charles C. Adams, Dordt College "Schuurman offers a much needed prophetic critique of the autonomous development of modern technology. Carefully documenting the pervasive character of the scientific technical quest for utility and control, he arrives at the inescapable conclusion that modern technology does not deliver the promised freedom of redemption, but instead enslaves us and degrades the society in which we live. Drawing on the best insights of the Reformational tradition, this fine exposition offers a viable alternative." -Hans Boersma, Trinity Western University EGBERT SCHUURMAN is Professor in Reformational Philosophy at the Technological Universities of Delft and Eindhoven and at the Agricultural University of Wageningen, Netherlands. He is also a member of the Senate of the Dutch Parliament. His other books include Technology and the Future: A Philosophical Challenge (1980); Christians in Babel (1987); The Future: Our Choice or Gods Gift? (1990).
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 Justice written by George Grant and published by House of Anansi. This book was released on 1991-09-01 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Six magnificent and stimulating essays examining the role of technology in shaping how we live, by one of Canada’s most influential philosophers, now reissued in a handsome A List edition. Originally published in 1986, the six essays that comprise Technology and Justice offer absorbing reflections on the extent to which technology has shaped the way we live now. George Grant explores the fate of traditional values in modern education, social behaviour, and religion, and offers his insights into some of the most contentious ethical deliberations of the past half-century. In essays ranging in content from classical philosophy to the morals of euthanasia, Technology and Justice showcases Grant’s stimulating commentary on the meaning of the North American experience.
Download or read book The Creative Computer written by Donald Michie and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
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 The Transhumanist Reader written by Max More and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-03-05 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first authoritative and comprehensive survey of the origins and current state of transhumanist thinking The rapid pace of emerging technologies is playing an increasingly important role in overcoming fundamental human limitations. Featuring core writings by seminal thinkers in the speculative possibilities of the posthuman condition, essays address key philosophical arguments for and against human enhancement, explore the inevitability of life extension, and consider possible solutions to the growing issues of social and ethical implications and concerns. Edited by the internationally acclaimed founders of the philosophy and social movement of transhumanism, The Transhumanist Reader is an indispensable guide to our current state of knowledge of the quest to expand the frontiers of human nature.
Download or read book Philosophy and Technology written by Carl Mitcham and published by New York : Free Press. This book was released on 1972 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophy and technology is a comprehensive collection of selected readings treating technology as a general philosophical problem. Theses essays, by such eminent philosophers as Lewis Mumford, Jacques Ellul, José Ortega y Gasset, and Friedrich Dessauer, are divided into five major categories: conceptus issues, ethical and political critiques, religious critiques, existential critiques, and metaphysical studies. Each of these essays present an in-depth analysis of major arguments and ideas relevant to the particular area and is designed to bring out opposing viewpoints. The essays span the period from 1927 to the present. Read chronologically, they trace the development of the philosophy of technology as a specific discipline....Philosophy and Technology will serve as excellent source material for undergraduate and graduate students interested in this field as well as in political philosophy, philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, epistemology, and metaphysics" --
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Technology written by Shannon Vallor and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 697 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Technology gives readers a view into this increasingly vital and urgently needed domain of philosophical understanding, offering an in-depth collection of leading and emerging voices in the philosophy of technology. The thirty-two contributions in this volume cut across and connect diverse philosophical traditions and methodologies. They reveal the often-neglected importance of technology for virtually every subfield of philosophy, including ethics, epistemology, philosophy of science, metaphysics, aesthetics, philosophy of language, and political theory. The Handbook also gives readers a new sense of what philosophy looks like when fully engaged with the disciplines and domains of knowledge that continue to transform the material and practical features and affordances of our world, including engineering, arts and design, computing, and the physical and social sciences. The chapters reveal enduring conceptual themes concerning technology's role in the shaping of human knowledge, identity, power, values, and freedom, while bringing a philosophical lens to the profound transformations of our existence brought by innovations ranging from biotechnology and nuclear engineering to artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and robotics. This new collection challenges the reader with provocative and original insights on the history, concepts, problems, and questions to be brought to bear upon humanity's complex and evolving relationship to technology.
