Download or read book Living in the Labyrinth of Technology written by Willem H. Vanderburg and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2005-12-15 with total page 847 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the very beginnings of their existence, human beings have distinguished themselves from other animals by not taking immediate experience for granted. Everything was symbolized according to its meaning and value: a fallen branch from a tree became a lever; a tree trunk floating in the river became a canoe. Homo logos created communities based on cultures: humanity's first megaproject. Further symbolization of the human community and its relation to nature led to the possibility of creating societies and civilizations. Everything changed as these interposed themselves between the group and nature. Homo societas created ways of life able to give meaning, direction, and purpose to many groups by means of very different cultures: humanity's second megaproject. What Das Kapital did for the nineteenth century and La technique did for the twentieth, Willem H. Vanderburg's Living in the Labyrinth of Technology seeks to create for the twenty-first century: an attempt at understanding the world in a manner not shackled to overspecialized scientific knowing and technical doing. Western civilization may well be creating humanity's third megaproject, based not on symbolization for making sense of and living in the world, but on highly specialized desymbolized knowing stripped of all peripheral understanding. Vanderburg focuses on two interdependent forces in his narrative, namely, people changing technology and technology changing people. The latter aspect, although rarely considered, turns out to be the more critical one for understanding the spectacular successes and failures of contemporary ways of life. As technology continues to change the social and physical world, the experiences of this world 'grow' people's minds and society's cultures, thereby re-creating human life in the image of technology. Living in the Labyrinth of Technology argues that the twenty-first century will be dominated by this pattern unless society intervenes on human (as opposed to technical) terms.
Download or read book The Labyrinth of Technology written by Willem H. Vanderburg and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exposing the limitations of conventional approaches to the engineering and regulation of technology, Vanderburg suggests that the solution lies in a preventive strategy that situates technological growth in its human, societal, and biospheric contexts.
Download or read book Secular Nations under New Gods written by Willem H. Vanderburg and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ongoing political muscle-flexing of diverse Christian communities in North America raises some deeply troubling questions regarding their roles among us. Earlier analyses including Herberg's Protestant, Catholic, Jew showed that these three branches of the Judaeo-Christian tradition correspond to three forms of the American way of life; while Kruse's One Nation Under God showed how Christian America was shaped by corporate America. Willem H. Vanderburg's Secular Nations under New Gods proceeds based on a dialogue between Jacques Ellul's interpretation of the task of Christians in the world and Ellul's interpretation of the roles of technique and the nation-state in individual and collective human life. He then adds new insight into our being a symbolic species dealing with our finitude by living through the myths of our society and building new secular forms of moralities and religions. If everything is political and if everything is amenable to discipline-based scientific and technical approaches, we are perhaps treating these human creations the way earlier societies did their gods, as being omnipotent, without limits. Vanderburg argues that until organized Christianity becomes critically aware of sharing these commitments with their societies, it will remain entrapped in the service of false gods and thereby will continue to turn a message of freedom and love into one of morality and religion.
Download or read book Emerging from the Dark Age Ahead written by Charles Fensham and published by Clements Publishing Group. This book was released on 2011 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this fascinating presentation of faith, Charles Fensham argues cogently and passionately for a church that embraces hope in spite of the dark and destructive pressures all around it. Although a metaphoric dark time awaits Christianity, Fensham assures his readers that this darkness merely conceals the light for the future. "Emerging from the Dark Age Ahead " offers a prophetic and challenging call for contemporary Christians to ask where we have come from, where we are, and where we are going. "Professor Fensham borrows from Jane Jacobs the metaphor of 'the Dark Age ahead, ' bringing social and cultural analysis to bear upon a fresh theology of church and mission for our time and place. Drawing from deep roots in the trinitarian tradition, and borrowing insight from historic monasticism, he calls for a pilgrim, steward church that will speak and act constructively in the coming time of troubles. This is a creative, original work that will stimulate theological students and lay folk as well."-Harold Wells, Professor Emeritus, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto "Insightful, provocative, instructive-words that describe how this book helps the church navigate the deep cultural challenge it now faces of massive technique organized through digitalization. Grounding the church's life in a missional hermeneutic of reading Scripture and the church's identity in the social Trinity, Fensham boldly, yet carefully, charts a course for engaging the dark age ahead."- Craig Van Gelder, Ph.D., Professor of Congregational Mission, Luther Seminary Charles Fensham has a unique perspective on the emergent church. Born in apartheid South Africa and raised within the apartheid-tainted Reformed church, he is an immigrant to Canada with experiences of the church in France, Switzerland, the South Pacific and Africa. He teaches at Knox College at the University of Toronto.
Download or read book Our Battle for the Human Spirit written by Willem H. Vanderburg and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2016-08-04 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Western society has become saturated with scientific and technological modes of thinking that impact our lives and our relationships. Expanding social inequality, the use of social media and the rise of mental illnesses such as anxiety and depression are manifestations of this shift in our civilization. Our Battle for the Human Spirit is a comprehensive probe into what is happening to human life in the beginning of the 21st century. It explores how culture, experience, and symbolization have been replaced by scientific, discipline-based, approaches. Willem H. Vanderburg argues that these approaches are inadequate in understanding the complexity of human lives and societies. In order to transcend these limits, Vanderburg calls for the reintegration of culture and symbolization into our daily lives.
Download or read book Rescuing Humanity written by Willem H. Vanderburg and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2023-05-26 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Rescuing Humanity, Willem H. Vanderburg reminds us that we have relied on discipline-based approaches for human knowing, doing, and organizing for less than a century. During this brief period, these approaches have become responsible for both our spectacular successes and most of our social and environmental crises. At their roots is a cultural mutation that includes secular religious attitudes that veil the limits of these approaches, leading to their overvaluation. Because their use, especially in science and technology, is primarily built up with mathematics, living entities and systems can be dealt with only as if their "architecture" or "design" is based on the principle of non-contradiction, which is true only for non-living entities. This distortion explains our many crises. Vanderburg begins to explore the limits of discipline-based approaches, which guides the way toward developing complementary ones capable of transcending these limits. It is no different from a carpenter going beyond the limits of his hammer by reaching for other tools. As we grapple with everything from the impacts of social media, the ongoing climate crisis, and divisive political ideologies, Rescuing Humanity reveals that our civilization must learn to do the equivalent if humans and other living things are to continue making earth a home.
Download or read book Our War on Ourselves written by Willem H. Vanderburg and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Willem H. Vanderburg's Our War on Ourselves explores the type of war we have unleashed on our lives by emphasizing discipline-based processes.
Download or read book Steps toward a Philosophy of Engineering written by Carl Mitcham and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-12-06 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rise of classic Euro-American philosophy of technology in the 1950s originally emphasized the importance of technologies as material entities and their mediating influence within human experience. Recent decades, however, have witnessed a subtle shift toward reflection on the activity from which these distinctly modern artifacts emerge and through which they are engaged and managed, that is, on engineering. What is engineering? What is the meaning of engineering? How is engineering related to other aspects of human existence? Such basic questions readily engage all major branches of philosophy --- ontology, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, and aesthetics --- although not always to the same degree. The historico-philosophical and critical reflections collected here record a series of halting steps to think through engineering and the engineered way of life that we all increasingly live in what has been called the Anthropocene. The aim is not to promote an ideology for engineering but to stimulate deeper reflection among engineers and non-engineers alike about some basic challenges of our engineered and engineering lifeworld.
Download or read book The End of Ethics in a Technological Society written by Lawrence E. Schmidt and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2008-02-06 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lawrence Schmidt and Scott Marratto challenge modern liberal ethics, arguing that there is no consistent ethical framework to deal with the long-range negative consequences of certain technological developments They examine established ethical approaches to such urgent contemporary concerns as environmental degradation, nuclear energy, high tech militarism, and fetal genetic testing, showing that the prevailing viewpoint valorizes autonomy above all other goods and considers technological advances as mere extensions of the range of human freedoms. Modern ethics thus fails to take into account the moral intuition that some possibilities in the realm of techno science simply ought not to be pursued. A comprehensive assessment of modern western society's commitment to technological progress, The End of Ethics in a Technological Society presents a convincing argument in favour of a post-liberal approach - one that rejects the ideology of progress, supports caution, and accepts limitation."
Download or read book Technoethics and the Evolving Knowledge Society Ethical Issues in Technological Design Research Development and Innovation written by Luppicini, Rocci and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2010-01-31 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book introduces the reader to the key concepts and issues that comprise the emerging field of Technoethics, the interdisciplinary field concerned with all ethical aspects of technology within a society shaped by technology"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Our War on Ourselves written by Willem H. Vanderburg and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2011-11-12 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our approach to knowing and doing is based on delegating physical phenomena to physicists, biological phenomena to biologists, social phenomena to sociologists, economic phenomena to economists, and so on. This approach to knowledge and practice works very well when one category of phenomena dominates (as in mechanical and technical systems), but does not work when many categories of phenomena make significant contributions (as in the biological and cultural spheres). As a result, our civilization succeeds in its scientific and technical endeavours yet fails in dealing with communities and ecosystems. Following his groundbreaking Labyrinth of Technology and Living in the Labyrinth of Technology, Willem H. Vanderburg's Our War on Ourselves explores the type of war we have unleashed on our lives by emphasizing discipline-based processes. The work also illuminates how we can achieve a more balanced, livable, and sustainable future by combining technical and cultural perspectives in our educational and institutional settings.
Download or read book Voices in the Labyrinth written by Erwin Chargaff and published by Harper San Francisco. This book was released on 1977 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Keepers of the Labyrinth written by Erin E. Moulton and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-08-25 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Courage is tested, myths come to life, and long-held secrets are revealed Lilith Bennette runs at midnight. She scales walls in the dark and climbs without a harness. She hopes that if she follows exactly in the steps of her strong air force pilot mother, she’ll somehow figure out the mystery of her mother’s death—and the reason why her necklace of Greek symbols has been missing ever since. So when Lil is invited to Crete for a Future Leaders International conference, the same conference her mom attended years ago, she jumps at the chance to find some answers. But things in Melios Manor are not what they seem. Lil finds herself ensnared in an adventure of mythological proportions that leads her and her friends through the very labyrinth in which the real Minotaur was imprisoned. And they’re not in there alone. What secrets does the labyrinth hold, and will they help Lil find the truth about her mother? This book is perfect for older fans of Percy Jackson and the Olympians and the Heroes of Olympus--and anyone who wants to find out the true story behind the magic of the Greek gods. Praise for KEEPERS OF THE LABYRINTH: "Secret societies, mythology, and puzzles worthy of a Dan Brown novel all figure prominently in this thriller....There is much to recommend this book: all the protagonists are empowered female characters, it explores the idea that behind the stories of classical Greek mythology is a history of real people, and it is filled with exciting action."--VOYA "Secret societies, Greek mythology, and a group of strong female characters are all wrapped up in a mystery which will hit the mark with readers who have finished Rick Riordan’s “Percy Jackson” series."--School Library Journal "Greek mythology provides the frame for this exciting amalgam of action, friendship, and girl-detective fiction."--Booklist
Download or read book Labyrinth written by Burhan Sönmez and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2019-11-19 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Notable International Crime Novel of the Year – Crime Reads / Lit Hub From a prize-winning Turkish novelist, a heady, political tale of one man’s search for identity and meaning in Istanbul after the loss of his memory. A blues singer, Boratin, attempts suicide by jumping off the Bosphorus Bridge, but opens his eyes in the hospital. He has lost his memory, and can't recall why he wished to end his life. He remembers only things that are unrelated to himself, but confuses their timing. He knows that the Ottoman Empire fell, and that the last sultan died, but has no idea when. His mind falters when remembering civilizations, while life, like a labyrinth, leads him down different paths. From the confusion of his social and individual memory, he is faced with two questions. Does physical recognition provide a sense of identity? Which is more liberating for a man, or a society: knowing the past, or forgetting it? Embroidered with Borgesian micro-stories, Labyrinth flows smoothly on the surface while traversing sharp bends beneath the current.
Download or read book Life in Code written by Ellen Ullman and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2017-08-08 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The never-more-necessary return of one of our most vital and eloquent voices on technology and culture, the author of the seminal Close to the Machine The last twenty years have brought us the rise of the internet, the development of artificial intelligence, the ubiquity of once unimaginably powerful computers, and the thorough transformation of our economy and society. Through it all, Ellen Ullman lived and worked inside that rising culture of technology, and in Life in Code she tells the continuing story of the changes it wrought with a unique, expert perspective. When Ellen Ullman moved to San Francisco in the early 1970s and went on to become a computer programmer, she was joining a small, idealistic, and almost exclusively male cadre that aspired to genuinely change the world. In 1997 Ullman wrote Close to the Machine, the now classic and still definitive account of life as a coder at the birth of what would be a sweeping technological, cultural, and financial revolution. Twenty years later, the story Ullman recounts is neither one of unbridled triumph nor a nostalgic denial of progress. It is necessarily the story of digital technology’s loss of innocence as it entered the cultural mainstream, and it is a personal reckoning with all that has changed, and so much that hasn’t. Life in Code is an essential text toward our understanding of the last twenty years—and the next twenty.
Download or read book Choice written by and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 618 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The New Age Labyrinth Conquering the Paths of Darkness Conquering the Paths of Light written by James Findlay and published by James Findlay. This book was released on 2005-11 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do you know which path you are on? Do you feel divinely connected and linked to all things? Do you feel at home with your spiritual knowledge? Have you changed your chakras and become karma less
