Download or read book Technology Modernity and Democracy written by Eduardo Beira and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-05-29 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This important collection of essays by Andrew Feenberg presents his critical theory of technology, an innovative approach to philosophy and sociology of technology based on a synthesis of ideas drawn from STS and Frankfurt School Critical Theory. According to critical theory of technology, technologies are neither neutral nor deterministic, but are encoded with specific socio-economic values and interests. Feenberg explores how they can be developed and adapted to more or less democratic values and institutions, and how their future is subject to social action, negotiation and reinterpretation. Technologies bring with them a particular "rationality," sets of rules and implied ways of behaving and thinking which, despite their profound influence on institutions, ideas and actions, can be transformed in a process of democratic rationalization. Feenberg argues that the emergence of human communication on the Internet and the environmental movement offer abundant examples of public interventions that have reshaped technologies originally designed for different purposes. This volume includes chapters on citizenship and critical theory of technology, philosophy of technology and modernity, and Heidegger and Marcuse, two of the most prominent philosophers of technology.
Download or read book Democracy and Technology written by Richard Sclove and published by Guilford Press. This book was released on 1995-07-28 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intended for anyone interested in democracy and public policy, social justice and empowerment, political economy and business or the social consequences of technology and architecture.
Download or read book Technology in the Western Political Tradition written by Jerry Weinberger and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-15 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This well-integrated group of thirteen papers addresses the intriguing and perplexing issue of whether modern government can handle the problem of technology.
Download or read book Between Reason and Experience written by Andrew Feenberg and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2010-04-09 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading philosopher of technology calls for the democratic coordination of technical rationality with everyday experience. The technologies, markets, and administrations of today's knowledge society are in crisis. We face recurring disasters in every domain: climate change, energy shortages, economic meltdown. The system is broken, despite everything the technocrats claim to know about science, technology, and economics. These problems are exacerbated by the fact that today powerful technologies have unforeseen effects that disrupt everyday life; the new masters of technology are not restrained by the lessons of experience, and accelerate change to the point where society is in constant turmoil. In Between Reason and Experience, leading philosopher of technology Andrew Feenberg makes a case for the interdependence of reason—scientific knowledge, technical rationality—and experience. Feenberg examines different aspects of the tangled relationship between technology and society from the perspective of critical theory of technology, an approach he has pioneered over the past twenty years. Feenberg points to two examples of democratic interventions into technology: the Internet (in which user initiative has influenced design) and the environmental movement (in which science coordinates with protest and policy). He examines methodological applications of critical theory of technology to the case of the French Minitel computing network and to the relationship between national culture and technology in Japan. Finally, Feenberg considers the philosophies of technology of Heidegger, Habermas, Latour, and Marcuse. The gradual extension of democracy into the technical sphere, Feenberg argues, is one of the great political transformations of our time.
Download or read book Strong Democracy written by Benjamin Barber and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "One of the chosen few: an enduring contribution to democratic thought."—Bruce Ackerman, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science, Yale University
Download or read book Information and American Democracy written by Bruce Bimber and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-02-24 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book assesses the consequences of new information technologies for American democracy in a way that is theoretical and also historically grounded. The author argues that new technologies have produced the fourth in a series of 'information revolutions' in the US, stretching back to the founding. Each of these, he argues, led to important structural changes in politics. After re-interpreting historical American political development from the perspective of evolving characteristics of information and political communications, the author evaluates effects of the Internet and related new media. The analysis shows that the use of new technologies is contributing to 'post-bureaucratic' political organization and fundamental changes in the structure of political interests. The author's conclusions tie together scholarship on parties, interest groups, bureaucracy, collective action, and political behavior with new theory and evidence about politics in the information age.
Download or read book Democracy and Technology written by Richard Sclove and published by Garland Science. This book was released on 1995 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intended for anyone interested in democracy and public policy, social justice and empowerment, political economy and business or the social consequences of technology and architecture.
Download or read book Democracy in a Technological Society written by L. Winner and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-09 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ninth volume is one of the most arnbitious in the Philosophy and Technology series. Edited by technopolitical philosopher Langdon Winner, it assembles an impressive collection of philosophers and political theorists to discuss one of the most important topics of the end of the twentieth century - the bearing of technology, in all its rarnifica tions, on the practice of democratic politics in the developed world. When set beside the previous volume in the series - Europe, America, and Teehnology - the two together open a philosophical dialogue of great significance about the ways technology challenges democracy at its very roots. Some philosophers think the attack is fatal. Others are optimistic that democratic means can be discovered, or invented, for the control of technology. Still others object to an optimism-versus-pes simism formulation of the issue. But alI agree that the issue is highly significant, one that demands serious philosophical inquiry. The Society for Philosophy and Technology was fortunate in being able to draw this group of writers to Bordeaux, France, in 1989, along with a large number of others whose contributions to the debate could not be included here. It is equally fortunate to have chosen Langdon Winner as president when the time carne to select the best of the papers to fashion this volume. University of Delaware PAUL T.
Download or read book Liberation Technology written by Larry Diamond and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2012-07-30 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Liberation Technology brings together cutting-edge scholarship from scholars and practitioners at the forefront of this burgeoning field of study. An introductory section defines the debate with a foundational piece on liberation technology and is then followed by essays discussing the popular dichotomy of liberation'' versus "control" with regard to the Internet and the sociopolitical dimensions of such controls. Additional chapters delve into the cases of individual countries: China, Egypt, Iran, and Tunisia.
Download or read book Technology Development and Democracy written by Juliann Emmons Allison and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Technology, Development, and Democracy examines the growing role of the Internet in international affairs, from a source of mostly officially sanctioned information, to a venue where knowledge is often merged with political propaganda, rhetoric and innuendo. The Internet not only provides surfers with up-to-the-minute stories, including sound and visual images, and opportunities to interact with one another and experts on international issues, but also enables anyone with access to a computer, modem, and telephone line to influence international affairs directly. What does this portend for the future of international politics? The contributors respond by providing theoretical perspectives and empirical analyses for understanding the impact of the communications revolution on international security, the world political economy, human rights, and gender relations. Internet technologies are evaluated as sources of change or continuity, and as contributors to either conflict or cooperation among nations. While the Internet and its related technologies hold no greater, certain prospect for positive change than previous technological advances, they arguably do herald significant advances for democracy, the democratization process, and international peace.
Download or read book Digital Technology and Democratic Theory written by Lucy Bernholz and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-02-17 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most far-reaching transformations in our era is the wave of digital technologies rolling over—and upending—nearly every aspect of life. Work and leisure, family and friendship, community and citizenship have all been modified by now-ubiquitous digital tools and platforms. Digital Technology and Democratic Theory looks closely at one significant facet of our rapidly evolving digital lives: how technology is radically changing our lives as citizens and participants in democratic governments. To understand these transformations, this book brings together contributions by scholars from multiple disciplines to wrestle with the question of how digital technologies shape, reshape, and affect fundamental questions about democracy and democratic theory. As expectations have whiplashed—from Twitter optimism in the wake of the Arab Spring to Facebook pessimism in the wake of the 2016 US election—the time is ripe for a more sober and long-term assessment. How should we take stock of digital technologies and their promise and peril for reshaping democratic societies and institutions? To answer, this volume broaches the most pressing technological changes and issues facing democracy as a philosophy and an institution.
Download or read book Politics and Technology written by John Street and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides a broad-ranging acount of the relationship between politics and technology in the modern world. It shows how political processes and values shape the developmentof technology and, in turn, how new technologies influence the conduct of politics. The core concern of the book is how democratic control can be exercised in all aspects of technological decision- making and how technology can be used to extend demmocracy. Street shows that much publicized 'natural' disasters from the explosions at Chernobyl and Bhopal to the erosion of the ozone layer have politicalas well as technologicalcauses and examines the way in which telecomunications, biotechnology and other technologies are used both to serve and subvert politcal aspirations.
Download or read book Technosystem written by Andrew Feenberg and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-02 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in a world of technical systems designed in accordance with technical disciplines and operated by technically trained personnel—a unique social organization that largely determines our way of life. Andrew Feenberg’s theory of social rationality represents both the threats of technocratic modernity and the potential for democratic change.
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 Future Politics written by Jamie Susskind and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Politics in the Twentieth Century was dominated by a single question: how much of our collective life should be determined by the state, and what should be left to the market and civil society? Now the debate is different: to what extent should our lives be directed and controlled by powerful digital systems - and on what terms? Digital technologies - from artificial intelligence to blockchain, from robotics to virtual reality - are transforming the way we live together. Those who control the most powerful technologies are increasingly able to control the rest of us. As time goes on, these powerful entities - usually big tech firms and the state - will set the limits of our liberty, decreeing what may be done and what is forbidden. Their algorithms will determine vital questions of social justice. In their hands, democracy will flourish or decay. A landmark work of political theory, Future Politics challenges readers to rethink what it means to be free or equal, what it means to have power or property, and what it means for a political system to be just or democratic. In a time of rapid and relentless changes, it is a book about how we can - and must - regain control. Winner of the Estoril Global Issues Distinguished Book Prize.
Download or read book Transforming Technology written by Andrew Feenberg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2002-02-06 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thoroughly revised, this new edition of Critical Theory of Technology rethinks the relationships between technology, rationality, and democracy, arguing that the degradation of labor--as well as of many environmental, educational, and political systems--is rooted in the social values that preside over technological development. It contains materials on political theory, but the emphasis has shifted to reflect a growing interest in the fields of technology and cultural studies.
Download or read book Dreamscapes of Modernity written by Sheila Jasanoff and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-09-02 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dreamscapes of Modernity offers the first book-length treatment of sociotechnical imaginaries, a concept originated by Sheila Jasanoff and developed in close collaboration with Sang-Hyun Kim to describe how visions of scientific and technological progress carry with them implicit ideas about public purposes, collective futures, and the common good. The book presents a mix of case studies—including nuclear power in Austria, Chinese rice biotechnology, Korean stem cell research, the Indonesian Internet, US bioethics, global health, and more—to illustrate how the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries can lead to more sophisticated understandings of the national and transnational politics of science and technology. A theoretical introduction sets the stage for the contributors’ wide-ranging analyses, and a conclusion gathers and synthesizes their collective findings. The book marks a major theoretical advance for a concept that has been rapidly taken up across the social sciences and promises to become central to scholarship in science and technology studies.
