Download or read book Technology Pessimism and Postmodernism written by Yaron Ezrahi and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-07 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: HOWARD P. SEGAL, FOR THE EDITORS In November 1979 the Humanities Department of the University of Michi gan's College of Engineering sponsored a symposium on ''Technology and Pessimism. " The symposium included scholars from a variety of fields and carefully balanced critics and defenders of modern technology, broadly defined. Although by this point it was hardly revolutionary to suggest that technology was no longer automatically equated with optimism and in turn with unceasing social advance, the idea of linking technology so explicitly with pessimism was bound to attract attention. Among others, John Noble Wilford, a New York Times science and technology correspondent, not only covered the symposium but also wrote about it at length in the Times the following week. As Wilford observed, "Whatever their disagreements, the participants agreed that a mood of pessimism is overtaking and may have already displaced the old optimistic view of history as a steady and cumulative expansion of human power, the idea of inevitable progress born in the Scientific and Industrial Rev olutions and dominant in the 19th century and for at least the first half of this century. " Such pessimism, he continued, "is fed by growing doubts about soci ety's ability to rein in the seemingly runaway forces of technology, though the participants conceded that in many instances technology was more the symbol than the substance of the problem.
Download or read book Chinese Philosophy of Technology written by Qian Wang and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-02-20 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book gathers essays that introduce the ideological advances in the philosophy of engineering and technology in contemporary China. It particularly focuses on China’s distinctive concepts and methods, revealing different views and academic debates to offer readers a comprehensive overview of this important field. The contributors present unique perspectives based on practical problems and traditional philosophy, examining such issues and concepts as axiology and theories of process, the difference between engineering activities and technology activities, and the core of the relationship between “Dao” and “Technique.” Other essays cover the ethics of technology, practical wisdom (phronesis) and practical reasoning, as well as creative concepts and methods concerning the philosophical problems in high technology, architectural technology, and technological innovation. The authors also consider more general issues in the field. This book compiles the relevant research achievements of Chinese scholars in various time periods. Some authors have revised and translated into English papers published in Chinese, while others present their research in English specifically for this study. An annotated bibliography of the major publications in the field completes this collection.
Download or read book Discerning Prometheus written by Robert A. Wauzzinski and published by Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These are the central questions of this book, a work that analyzes four ways that technology is understood."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Digimodernism written by Alan Kirby and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2009-05-01 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold new challenge to postmodern theory The increasing irrelevance of postmodernism requires a new theory to underpin our current digital culture. Almost without anybody noticing, a new cultural paradigm has taken center stage, displacing an exhausted and increasingly marginalized postmodernism. Alan Kirby calls this cultural paradigm digimodernism, a name comprising both its central technical mode and the privileging of fingers and thumbs inherent in its use. Beginning with the Internet (digimodernism's most important locus), then taking into account television, cinema, computer games, music, radio, etc., Kirby analyzes the emergence and implications of these diverse media, coloring our cultural landscape with new ideas on texts and how they work. This new kind of text produces distinctive forms of author and reader/viewer, which, in turn, lead to altered notions of authority, 'truth' and legitimization. With users intervening physically in the creation of texts, our electronically-dependent society is becoming more involved in the grand narrative. To clarify these trends, Kirby compares them to the contrasting tendencies of the preceding postmodern era. In defining this new cultural age, the author avoids both facile euphoria and pessimistic fatalism, aiming instead to understand and thereby gain control of a cultural mode which seems, as though from nowhere, to have engulfed our society. With new technologies unfolding almost daily, this work will help to categorize and explain our new digital world and our place in it, as well as equip us with a better understanding of the digital technologies that have a massive impact on our culture.
Download or read book Does Technology Drive History written by Merritt Roe Smith and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1994-06-02 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These thirteen essays explore a crucial historical questionthat has been notoriously hard to pin down: To what extent,and by what means, does a society's technology determine itspolitical, social, economic, and cultural forms? These thirteen essays explore a crucial historical question that has been notoriously hard to pin down: To what extent, and by what means, does a society's technology determine its political, social, economic, and cultural forms? Karl Marx launched the modern debate on determinism with his provocative remark that "the hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist," and a classic article by Robert Heilbroner (reprinted here) renewed the debate within the context of the history of technology. This book clarifies the debate and carries it forward.Marx's position has become embedded in our culture, in the form of constant reminders as to how our fast-changing technologies will alter our lives. Yet historians who have looked closely at where technologies really come from generally support the proposition that technologies are not autonomous but are social products, susceptible to democratic controls. The issue is crucial for democratic theory. These essays tackle it head-on, offering a deep look at all the shadings of determinism and assessing determinist models in a wide variety of historical contexts. Contributors Bruce Bimber, Richard W. Bulliet, Robert L. Heilbroner, Thomas P. Hughes, Leo Marx, Thomas J. Misa, Peter C. Perdue, Philip Scranton, Merritt Roe Smith, Michael L. Smith, John M. Staudenmaier, Rosalind Williams
Download or read book Everyday Culture written by David Trend and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-12-03 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everyday Culture examines the confluence of cultural and material possibility--the bringing together of thought and action in daily life. David Trend argues that an informed and invigorated citizenry can help reverse patterns of dehumanization and social control. The impetus for Everyday Culture can be described in the observation by Raymond Williams that the "culture is ordinary," and that the fabric of meanings that inform and organize everyday life often go undervalued and unexamined. Everyday Culture shares with thinkers like Williams the conviction that it is precisely the ordinariness of culture that makes it extraordinarily important. The ubiquity of everyday culture means that it affects all aspects of contemporary economic, social, and political life.
Download or read book The Illusory Boundary written by Martin Reuss and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2010-09-20 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The view of nature and technology inhabiting totally different, even opposite, spheres persists across time and cultures. Most people would consider an English countryside or a Louisiana bayou to be "natural," though each is to an extent the product of technology. Pollution, widely thought to be a purely man-made phenomenon, results partly from natural processes. All around us, things from the natural world are brought into the human world. At what point do we consider them part of culture rather than nature? And does such a distinction illuminate our world or obscure its workings? This compelling new book challenges the view that a clear and unwavering boundary exists between nature and technology. Rejecting this dichotomy, the contributors show how the history of each can be united in a constantly shifting panorama where definitions of "nature" and "technology" alter and overlap. In addition to recognizing the artificial divide between these two concepts, the essays in this book demonstrate how such thinking may affect societies’ ability to survive and prosper. The answers and ideas are as numerous as the landscapes they consider, for there is no single path toward a more harmonious vision of technology and nature. Technologies that work in one place may not in another. Nature that is preserved in one community might become the raw material of technological progress somewhere else. Add to this the fact that the natural world and technology are not passive players, but are profoundly involved in cultural construction. Understanding such dynamics not only reveals a new historical complexity; it prepares us for coping with many of the most difficult and pressing social issues facing us today. Contributors Peter Coates * Craig E. Colten * Stephen H. Cutcliffe * Hugh S. Gorman * Betsy Mendelsohn * Joy Parr * Peter C. Perdue * Sara B. Pritchard * Martin Reuss * William D. Rowley * Edmund Russell * Joel A. Tarr * Ann Vileisis * James C. Williams * Thomas Zeller
Download or read book Technology and Christianity written by Egbert Schuurman and published by WordBridge Publishing. This book was released on 2024-08-27 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Enlightenment of the 18th century ushered in a new order of the ages, one in which man displaced God as the central focus of both thought and practice. This has had consequences. For one thing, man has taken up the supposedly vacated role of Providence. How has he done it? Not least by gaining an increasing mastery over nature, a mastery enabled by technology. The tools provided by technology have undeniably brought great blessing, but they have also brought new and unprecedented problems. Such powerful tools have given mankind opportunities for good but also for evil, and he has taken advantage of both. In this series of articles written and published over a period of 50 years, Egbert Schuurman elucidates this complex and difficult relationship. Technology has generated a material culture capable of providing undreamed-of wealth and welfare but likewise has brought labor displacement, environmental damage, weaponry of devastating destructive capacity, and possibilities of societal control only dreamed of by history's tyrants. Schuurman expands on all of these consequences, and he does so from a unique perspective, that of the once-dominant but since-displaced perspective of Christianity. In doing so, he demonstrates not only that there are opportunities as well as difficulties involved in the ever-expanding dominance of technology, but also that Christianity can provide the framework for properly assessing and implementing the responsible application of technology. But for this to happen, the sorcerer's apprentice needs to recognize his utter dependence on his Creator and Redeemer.
Download or read book Technology and Cultural Values written by Peter D. Hershock and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2003-10-31 with total page 636 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent history makes clear that the quantum leaps being made in technology are the leading edge of a groundswell of paradigm shifts taking place in science, politics, economics, social institutions, and the expression of cultural values. Indeed it is the simultaneity and interdependence of these changes occurring in every dimension of human experience and endeavor that makes the present so historically distinctive. The essays gathered here give voice to perspectives on the always improvised relationship between technology and cultural values from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Pacific. Contributors: Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas, Roger T. Ames,Yoko Arisaka, Carl Becker, Francesca Bray, James Buchanan, Arindam Chakrabarti, Frank W. Derringh, Rolf Elberfeld, Charles Ess, Andrew Feenberg, Susantha Goonatilake, H. Jiuan Heng, Peter Hershock, Thomas P. Kasulis, George Khushf, David Farrell Krell, Joel J. Kupperman, William R. LaFleur, Lois Ann Lorentzen, David Loy, Joseph Margolis, Hans-Georg Möller, Robert Cummings Neville, Peimin Ni, Monica Atieno Opole, Kuruvilla Pandikattu SJ, Helen Petrovsky, Ramon Sentmartí, Kristin Shrader-Frechette, Vasanthi Srinivasan, Marietta Stepaniants, Vyacheslav S. Stiopin, Henk ten Have, Paul B.Thompson, Mary Tiles, David B.Wong.
Download or read book HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY Volume IV written by Pablo Lorenzano and published by EOLSS Publications. This book was released on 2010-09-27 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History and Philosophy of Science and Technology is a component of Encyclopedia of Physical Sciences, Engineering and Technology Resources in the global Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), which is an integrated compendium of twenty one Encyclopedias. The Theme on History and Philosophy of Science and Technology in four volumes covers several topics such as: Introduction to the Philosophy of Science; The Nature and Structure of Scientific Theories Natural Science; A Short History of Molecular Biology; The Structure of the Darwinian Argument In The Origin of Species; History of Measurement Theory; Episodes of XX Century Cosmology: A Historical Approach; Philosophy of Economics; Social Sciences: Historical And Philosophical Overview of Methods And Goals; Introduction to Ethics of Science and Technology; The Ethics of Science and Technology; The Control of Nature and the Origins of The Dichotomy Between Fact And Value; Science and Empires: The Geo-Epistemic Location of Knowledge; Science and Religion; Scientific Knowledge and Religious Knowledge - Significant Epistemological Reference Points; Thing Called Philosophy of Technology; Transitions from Function-Oriented To Effect-Oriented Technologies. Some Thought on the Nature of Modern Technology; Technical Agency and Sources of Technological Pessimism These four volumes are aimed at a broad spectrum of audiences: University and College Students, Educators and Research Personnel.
Download or read book Culture and Technology written by Andrew Murphie and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are 'going virtual' in more and more areas of our lives - from shopping to education, filing systems to love affairs. How can we assess the relationship between technology and culture when culture is so imbued with technology? This clear, concise and readable text aims to offer the student a one-stop guide through this complex and slippery terrain. Introducing a wealth of theoretical perspectives in a lucid and engaging style and covering a range of topical, challenging and intriguing examples - from cyborgs to digital art - it will be an essential text for everyone wanting to make sense of crucial forces of change on contemporary culture.
Download or read book Expanding Curriculum Theory written by William M. Reynolds and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-05-20 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together some of the newest work in curriculum studies to explore central questions that swirl inside (and out) of the field: What counts as curriculum research? What procedures are considered legitimate for the production of knowledge? What forms shape the making of explanations? What constitutes proof? It forefronts work by curriculum theorists who are interested in looking at educational problems from a vantage point that questions current models of research--one that suggests adopting "lines of flight" or multiplicities that offer promise to disentangle curriculum theory from traditional research hierarchies and methods-driven dependence on formalities. In Expanding Curriculum Theory: Dis/positions and Lines of Flight: *The essays are connected by their shared concern for combining alternative methodologies, such as textual analysis, discourse theory, hermeneutics, and post-structuralism with perspectives on race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. *Disciplinary boundaries are blurred as curriculum theory is interwoven with cultural studies, political theory, psychoanalysis, dance, technology, and other fields. *To assist readers in understanding the various essays, as well as comparing, contrasting, and connecting them with each other, each chapter opens with a "Thinking Beyond" section. The questions posed are designed to make the text engaging and pedagogically friendly. By doing all this within an overall poststructural framework that encourages and demonstrates creativity, multidisciplinarity, and new lines of flight, this volume makes a unique contribution to expanding curriculum theory. It is a stimulating text for students, faculty, and researchers in the field.
Download or read book The Humanities in Transition from Postmodernism into the Digital Age written by Nigel A. Raab and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-31 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Humanities in Transition explores how the basic components of the digital age will have an impact on the most trusted theories of humanists. Over the past two generations, humanists have come to take basic postmodern theories for granted whether on language, knowledge or time. Yet Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and similar philosophers developed their ideas when the impact of this digital world could barely be imagined. The digital world, built on algorithms and massive amounts of data, operates on radically different principles. This volume analyzes these differences, demonstrating where an aging postmodernism cannot keep pace with today’s technologies. The book first introduces the major influence postmodern had on global thought before turning to algorithms, digital space, digital time, data visuals and the concept to digital forgeries. By taking a closer look at these themes, it establishes a platform to create more robust humanist theories for the third millennium. This book will appeal to graduate students and established scholars in the Digital Humanities who are looking for diverse and energetic theoretical approaches that can truly come to terms with the digital world.
Download or read book Technology and the Trajectory of Myth written by David Grant and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2017-12-29 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents an entirely new way of understanding technology, as the successor to the dominant ideologies that have underpinned the thought and practices of the Western world. Like the preceding ideologies of Deity, State and Market, technology displays the features of a modern myth, promising to deal with our existential concerns on condition of our subjection to them. Utilising robust empirical evidence, Lyria Bennett Moses and David Grant argue that the pathway out of this mythological maze is the production of means to establish a new sense of political, corporate and personal self-responsibility.
Download or read book Technology Matters written by David E. Nye and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2007-08-24 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses in nontechnical language ten central questions about technology that illuminate what technology is and why it matters. Technology matters, writes David Nye, because it is inseparable from being human. We have used tools for more than 100,000 years, and their central purpose has not always been to provide necessities. People excel at using old tools to solve new problems and at inventing new tools for more elegant solutions to old tasks. Perhaps this is because we are intimate with devices and machines from an early age—as children, we play with technological toys: trucks, cars, stoves, telephones, model railroads, Playstations. Through these machines we imagine ourselves into a creative relationship with the world. As adults, we retain this technological playfulness with gadgets and appliances—Blackberries, cell phones, GPS navigation systems in our cars. We use technology to shape our world, yet we think little about the choices we are making. In Technology Matters, Nye tackles ten central questions about our relationship to technology, integrating a half-century of ideas about technology into ten cogent and concise chapters, with wide-ranging historical examples from many societies. He asks: Can we define technology? Does technology shape us, or do we shape it? Is technology inevitable or unpredictable? (Why do experts often fail to get it right?)? How do historians understand it? Are we using modern technology to create cultural uniformity, or diversity? To create abundance, or an ecological crisis? To destroy jobs or create new opportunities? Should "the market" choose our technologies? Do advanced technologies make us more secure, or escalate dangers? Does ubiquitous technology expand our mental horizons, or encapsulate us in artifice? These large questions may have no final answers yet, but we need to wrestle with them—to live them, so that we may, as Rilke puts it, "live along some distant day into the answers."
Download or read book A Companion to American Technology written by Carroll Pursell and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-30 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Companion to American Technology is a groundbreaking collection of original essays that analyze the hard-to-define phenomenon of “technology” in America. 22 original essays by expert scholars cover the most important features of American technology, including developments in automobiles, television, and computing Analyzes the ways in which technologies are organized, such as in the engineering profession, government, medicine and agriculture Includes discussions of how technologies interact with race, gender, class, and other organizing structures in American society
Download or read book Against Technology written by Steven E. Jones and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses the question of what it might mean today to be a Luddite--that is, to take a stand against technology. Steven Jones here explains the history of the Luddites, British textile works who, from around 1811, proclaimed themselves followers of "Ned Ludd" and smashed machinery they saw as threatening their trade. Against Technology is not a history of the Luddites, but a history of an idea: how the activities of a group of British workers in Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire came to stand for a global anti-technology philosophy, and how an anonymous collective movement came to be identified with an individualistic personal conviction. Angry textile workers in the early nineteenth century became romantic symbols of a desire for a simple life--certainly not the original goal of the actions for which they became famous. Against Technology is, in other words, a book about representations, about the image and the myth of the Luddites and how that myth was transformed over time into modern neo-Luddism.
