Ecologically responsible policies are concerned only in part with pollution and resource depletion. There are deeper concerns which touch upon principles of diversity, complexity, autonomy, decentralization, symbiosis, egalitarianism, and classlessness.

Solving complex socio-technical problems, this paper claims, involves diverse knowledges (cognitive diversity), competing interests (social diversity), and pragmatism. To explain this view, this paper first explores two different cases: Canadian pulp and paper mill pollution and siting nuclear reactors in seismically sensitive areas of California. Solving such socio-technically complex problems involves cognitive diversity as well as social diversity and pragmatism. Cognitive diversity requires one to not only recognize relevant knowledges but also to assess their validity. Finally, it is suggested, integrating (...) the resultant set of diverse relevant and valid knowledges determines the parameters of the solution space for the problem. (shrink)

In February 2012, the Obama White House endorsed a Privacy Bill of Rights, comprising seven principles. The third, “Respect for Context,” is explained as the expectation that “companies will collect, use, and disclose personal data in ways that are consistent with the context in which consumers provide the data.” One can anticipate the contested interpretations of this principle as parties representing diverse interests vie to make theirs the authoritative one. In the paper I will discuss three possibilities and explain why (...) each does not take us far beyond the status quo, which, regulators in the United States, Europe, and beyond have found problematic. I will argue that contextual integrity offers the best way forward for protecting privacy in a world where information increasingly mediates our significant activities and relationships. Although an important goal is to influence policy, this paper aims less to stipulate explicit rules than to present an underlying justificatory, or normative rationale. Along the way, it will review key ideas in the theory of contextual integrity, its differences from existing approaches, and its harmony with basic intuition about information sharing practices and norms. (shrink)

What a long strange trip the Internet has had. From its inception and use by the American military to the billions of users world-wide who log on daily, the Internet is both the promise of access to information and the peril of surveillance and a means of curtailing intellectual freedom. This paper will review this continuum, paying close attention to recent developments in the United States that fuel the dichotomous debate surrounding intellectual freedom.

This inaugural handbook documents the distinctive research field that utilizes history and philosophy in investigation of theoretical, curricular and pedagogical issues in the teaching of science and mathematics. It is contributed to by 130 researchers from 30 countries; it provides a logically structured, fully referenced guide to the ways in which science and mathematics education is, informed by the history and philosophy of these disciplines, as well as by the philosophy of education more generally. The first handbook to cover the (...) field, it lays down a much-needed marker of progress to date and provides a platform for informed and coherent future analysis and research of the subject. -/- The publication comes at a time of heightened worldwide concern over the standard of science and mathematics education, attended by fierce debate over how best to reform curricula and enliven student engagement in the subjects There is a growing recognition among educators and policy makers that the learning of science must dovetail with learning about science; this handbook is uniquely positioned as a locus for the discussion. -/- The handbook features sections on pedagogical, theoretical, national, and biographical research, setting the literature of each tradition in its historical context. Each chapter engages in an assessment of the strengths and weakness of the research addressed, and suggests potentially fruitful avenues of future research. A key element of the handbook’s broader analytical framework is its identification and examination of unnoticed philosophical assumptions in science and mathematics research. It reminds readers at a crucial juncture that there has been a long and rich tradition of historical and philosophical engagements with science and mathematics teaching, and that lessons can be learnt from these engagements for the resolution of current theoretical, curricular and pedagogical questions that face teachers and administrators. (shrink)

Leading Frankfurt School theorist, Herbert Marcuse, possessed an intricate relationship with higher education. As a professor, Marcuse participated in the 1960s student movements, believing that college students had potential as revolutionary subjects. Additionally, Marcuse advocated for a college education empowered by a form of praxis that extended education outside the university into realms of critical thought and action. However, the more pessimistic facet of his theory, best represented in the canonical One Dimensional Man, now seems to be the dominant ideology (...) in the contemporary college experience. With the rise of the corporate university, knowledge is commodified and praxis is supplanted by rampant consumerism. Once a haven for critical theory, the college experience has been overtaken by capitalism, substantially limiting the revolutionary potential for college students in favour of an institutionalised, one dimensional university. (shrink)

This paper explores how the designed world could be better supportive of better communal ways of relating. In pursuit of this end, I put the philosophy of technology dealing with the role that technologies play in shaping, directing, mediating, and legislating human action in better communication with a diverse literature concerning community. I argue that community ought to viewed as composed of three interrelated dimensions: experience, structure, and practice. Specifically, it is a psychological sense evoked via a particular arrangement of (...) ties and constellation of social practices guided, at its best, by phronetic reasoning. It is a mode of social being that I set in opposition to networked individualism. I examine the existent and potential communitarian ergonomics of the design of contemporary urban spaces and network devices. However, I conclude that artifacts remain only one part of the picture. A communally ergonomic mode of being requires not only compatible artifacts and built spaces but also an institutional context supportive of community as an economic and political entity. (shrink)

Modern societies are shaped to a significant extent by socially rational institutions, arrangements, and technologies. A purely functional understanding of these rationalized structures eliminates the element of meaning from social life. Ellul, Heidegger and the Frankfurt School focused on this impoverishment and associate it with the spread of technology. But recent technology studies offer a different perspective which can be joined to the formulation of the social critique in the writings of Herbert Marcuse.

My research into Virtual Reality technology and its central property of immersion has indicated that immersion in Virtual Reality (VR) electronic systems is a significant key to the understanding of contemporary culture as well as considerable aspects of previous culture as detected in the histories of philosophy and the visual arts. The fundamental change in aesthetic perception engendered by immersion, a perception which is connected to the ideal of total-immersion in virtual space, identifies certain shifts in ontology which are relevant (...) to a better understanding of the human being. This understanding was achieved through a broad inquiry into the histories of Virtual Reality, philosophy, and the visual arts and has lead to the formulation of an aesthetic theory of immersive consciousness indicative of immersive culture. The primary subject of this discourse is immersion then: an experience which will be identified within the dissertation as the indispensable characteristic of Virtual Reality. The understanding of immersion arrived at here will be used to fashion a synchronous theory of art particularly informed by encounters and concepts of immersion into virtuality. To sufficiently address this subject in a scholarly fashion, I have researched, found and accumulated aesthetic and philosophic examples of immersive tendencies, as found within the histories of art and philosophy, which subsequently contributed towards the articulation of what I have come to call immersive consciousness. As a result of formulating such an immersive consciousness, a good deal of the basis for the questioning of the Western ontological tradition has been found in the Western tradition itself when we look with new eyes and ask new uncertain questions. Moreover, this immersive consciousness will be used to propose some abstract questions encircling today's electronic-based culture. Through the structuring of the argument within the thesis - and overtly within the conclusion - I have articulated a non-teleological creative strategy which provides the basis for an unconstraining integration of noologies (ways of semblancing the thinking process). This strategy provides a means of exemplifying - and for honoring - various methods of thinking. This structuring strategy is consistent with the 'hacker ethic' as defined by Steven Levy, as a demand that access to computers - and anything which might teach us something about the way the world works - should be unlimited and total. To follow this strategy, this dissertation has set out to understand how topical conceptions of virtual immersion connect to pre-existing systems of thought as revealed in art as they have extended out of antecedent ontological self-understandings, historical human self-understandings which have evidenced themselves in the elaboration of technological objectives. To do this I have forged a certain rhizomatic paternity/maternity for Virtual Reality within this dissertation by joining choice immersive examples of simulacra technology into mental connections with the relevant examples culled from the histories of art, architecture, information-technology, sex, myth, space, consciousness and philosophy. (shrink)

This essay argues that in constraining travel to specific motorized vehicles, the Interstate Highway System’s transportation hegemony alienates humans from both mythic and existential dimensions of lived experience. By separating humans from encountering the environment through their indigenous connection to the earth, their feet, the highway system alienates them from what it means to dwell intersubjectively in a place. This alienation includes the loss of cultural memory rooted in place: the emptying of meaning that mythic symbolism and rituals create in (...) habituating humans to dwelling in place. Freeway alienation severs human cooperation with the constituents of the environment that is necessary for creatively maintaining a healthy mutual habitat. (shrink)

Abstract.This article examines an orientation for thinking theologically and ethically about the cultural pattern of technology and a vision for living responsibly within it. Building upon and joining select insights of philosophers Hans Jonas and Albert Borgmann, I recommend the analytic and evaluative leverage to be gained through development of an integrative biocultural theological anthropology.

The decontextualization of technology has paved the way for an enormous dynamics of development. Modern technology, freed from restraining bonds to specific cultures, has undergone unprecedented extension and growth. The dynamics of technological development has sucked the whole of society and culture into a maelstrom of change. At the very moment during recent decades that the value of the world's varied cultures and societies was being discovered, modern technology was invading them on a global scale and assimilating them into a (...) comprehensive world system. This paper discusses the problem of development and underdevelopment in relation to the world?wide spread and inner dynamics of the technological society. It contributes to the discussion about development ethics and the need for societal transformation. (shrink)

The starting point of this work isthe artificial, as defined in a previous study by Massimo Negrotti and, more completely, in the essay presented here, as a machine which reproduces the essential performance of some natural subsystem that serves as an exemplar, at a chosen level of observation . I assume also Negrotti's distinction between the technology of the artificial and conventional technology. These theoretic assumptions, and the relevant terminology, represent here the starting point for a reflection upon the process (...) of imitating the natural exemplar and ofideating the technological object, and upon the interrelations between these two moments of inventiveness. (shrink)

Continental philosophies of science tend to exemplify holistic themes connecting order and contingency, questions and answers, writers and readers, speakers and hearers. Such philosophies of science also tend to feature a fundamental emphasis on the historical and cultural situatedness of discourse as significant; relevance of mutual attunement of speaker and hearer; necessity of pre-linguistic cognition based in human engagement with a common socio-cultural historical world; role of narrative and metaphor as explanatory; sustained emphasis on understanding questioning; truth seen as horizonal, (...) aletheic, or perspectival; and a tolerance for paradoxical and complex forms of expression. Continental philosophy of science is thus more comprehensive than philosophy of science in the analytic tradition, including (and as analytic philosophy of science does not tend to include) perspectives on the history of science as well as the social and practical dimensions of scientific discovery. Where analytic philosophy is about reducing or, indeed, eliminating the perennial problems of philosophy, Continental philosophy is all about thinking and that will mean, as both Heidegger and Nietzsche emphasize, making such problems more not less problematic. (shrink)

Technological determinism, as a position on the nature and effects of technology/technologies can be divided into optimistic and critical forms. The optimistic variety, of which contemporary cyber-utopianism is an instance, holds that the development of technology shapes or at least facilitates ameliorative alterations in society. The critical variety, on the other hand, tends to problematise or condemn the positive narrative of technological impact on human existence. Whilst the optimistic form still retains some academic credibility, especially concerning digital technologies, the critical (...) variety tends to be viewed as reductionist, essentialist and pessimistic. Furthermore, the fact that many of its leading proponents base their critiques on the analysis of industrial technology, reinforces the impression that critical technological determinism is outdated. I argue that focussing on the specific forms of technology analysed by classic technological determinists is to miss the key point of their arguments. Critical determinism warns that with the increasing integration of technology into everyday life, we run the risk of idealising technological organisation and making sociotechnical relations a model for all social relations. Drawing upon Rendueles’s (2017) analysis of the sociophobic tendencies of the online public sphere, I argue for the continuing relevance of so-called ‘Classic’ technological determinism. The danger posed by the ubiquity of the internet on this account is not that it possesses some innate quality that imposes a particular social pattern on humanity, but that the way in which we interact in cyberspace becomes the norm for social relations outside the cybersphere. (shrink)

Nanotechnology has been proclaimed as a new technology that could bridge the gap between the rich and the poor countries. Indeed many countries in Asia are fast developing their nanotechnological capabilities. However, one needs to take into consideration the role that culture and values play in adoption of nanotechnological policies, keeping in mind that technology and culture are deeply dependent on each other. I offer a criticism of the dependency theory in economic development, which says that there is an unbridgeable (...) divide that the poorer countries cannot cross. As with other powerful technologies, nanotechnology can create as many problems as solutions. I concentrate how insights from the Buddhist tradition, prevalent in Thailand, could illuminate how nanotechnology could be introduced into the lifeworld of a people. (shrink)

In analogy with Rousseau's concept of ?civil religion? as a system of ?positive dogmas?, ?without which?, as he observed, ?a man cannot be a good citizen?, this paper advances the concept of ?civil epistemology? as the positive dogmas without which the agents of government actions cannot be held accountable by democratic citizens. The civil epistemology of democracy shapes the citizen's views on the nature of political reality, on how the facts of political reality can be known and by whom. Modern (...) liberal democratic politics assumes that the exercise of political power can be manifest in a visible domain of publicly accessible facts. It rests on the Enlightenment faith in the powers of light and visibility to demystify political power, render political actors more exposed and therefore more honestly accountable and enlist the sense of sight as a vehicle of universal political participation. It is, in this context, that technology has come to play such an important symbolic role in the construction of the particular democratic genre of public action as a political spectacle. Democratic civil epistemology, and technology ? in the widest sense of the word ? as the prototype of action which can be observed in the field of visual perception, uphold the democratic conception of politics as a view. Together they define political actors as visible performers, journalists as observers (who translate actual seeing into virtual seeing) and the citizens as witnesses. (shrink)

This paper argues, against technological and economic determinism, that the dominant model of industrial society is politically contingent. The idea that technical decisions are significantly constrained by ?rationality? ? either technical or economic ? is shown to be groundless. Constructivist and hermeneutic approaches to technology show that modern societies are inherently available for a different type of development in a different cultural framework. It is possible that, in the future, those who today are subordinated to technology's rhythms and demands will (...) be able to control it and to determine its evolution. I call the process of creating such a society ?subversive rationalization? because it requires technological advances that can only be made in opposition to the dominant hegemony. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article critiques contemporary applications of the computational metaphor, popular among Silicon Valley technologists, that views individuals and culture through the lens of computer and information systems. Taken literally, this metaphor has become entrenched as a quasi-religious ideology that obscures the moral and political-economic gatekeeping power of technology elites. Through an examination of algorithmic processing applications and life-logging devices, the authors highlight the inequitable consequences of the tendency, in popular media and marketing rhetoric, to collapse the distinctions between processing and (...) judgment, storage and memory. Such distinctions are necessary for an ethical development of more equitable digital environments. (shrink)

In this article, we argue that the animated TV-show Rick and Morty depicts several important and relevant themes about the impact of technology in contemporary societies. By using certain concepts and ideas from the philosophy of technology, especially from thinkers like Jacques Ellul, Jacques Derrida, Neil Postman, and George Ritzer, we investigate how this show brings to the fore certain ontological and ethical assumptions and problems that stem from the advance of technology. We shall use the term technopolitical thinking to (...) refer to these core assumptions and principles which are inherent in contemporary technological societies. By providing various examples from certain episodes and scenes of the show, we shall illustrate how this animated series can provide a basis for a more extensive discussion. (shrink)

This book argues for the need to put into practice a profound and comprehensive intellectual revolution, affecting to a greater or lesser extent all branches of scientific and technological research, scholarship and education. This intellectual revolution differs, however, from the now familiar kind of scientific revolution described by Kuhn. It does not primarily involve a radical change in what we take to be knowledge about some aspect of the world, a change of paradigm. Rather it involves a radical change in (...) the fundamental, overall intellectual aims and methods of inquiry. At present inquiry is devoted to the enhancement of knowledge. This needs to be transformed into a kind of rational inquiry having as its basic aim to enhance personal and social wisdom. This new kind of inquiry gives intellectual priority to the personal and social problems we encounter in our lives as we strive to realize what is desirable and of value – problems of knowledge and technology being intellectually subordinate and secondary. For this new kind of inquiry, it is what we do and what we are that ultimately matters: our knowledge is but an aspect of our life and being. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to investigate ethical aspects of technology through the moral term “paternalism”. The field of investigation is medicine. The reason for this is twofold. Firstly, “paternalism” has gained moral relevance through modern medicine, where physicians have been accused of behaving paternalistic and threatening patients’ autonomy. Secondly, medicine is a brilliant area to scrutinise the evaluative aspects of technology. It is argued that paternalism is a morally relevant term for the ethics of technology, but that its (...) traditional conception is not adequate to address the challenges of modern technology. A modification towards a “technological paternalism” is necessary. That is, “technological paternalism” is a fruitful term in the ethics of technology. Moreover, it is suited to point out the deficiencies of the traditional concept of paternalism and to reform and vitalise the conception of paternalism in ethics in order to handle the challenges of technology. (shrink)

In the reflection on organisations there is a tradition that focuses on the dimensions of power within organisations. Generally in that tradition, organisations are interpreted as complex unities of individuals and coalitions who try to influence the functioning of organisations with a view to their values and interests. This tradition presents itself in opposition to mainstream thinking about organisations in which they are interpreted as technical systems for making profits through efficient ways of production. This dichotomy of tradition reflects more (...) or less Habermas's dichotomy of communicative and instrumental reason. In this article I develop a perspective that goes beyond this dichotomy. I try to show by means of a critical analysis of organisations from a "technological" perspective that organisations are necessarily open to democratic actions. This can be considered as an unforeseen application or example of the Habermasian communicative reason. (shrink)

One goal of environmental ethics is to recommend changes to patterns of human life so as to bring inhabited landscapes into line with a vision of the good. However, the complex intertwining of nature and culture in inhabited landscapes makes this project much more difficult, complicating ethical judgment and limiting the efficacy of ethical action. Technological momentum, a model introduced by historian Thomas P. Hughes to describe the development of complex technological systems, can shed some light on these difficulties. The (...) process of metropolitan growth in the United States will serve to illustrate the consequences of technological momentum for environmental ethics and policy. (shrink)

This paper traces the intellectual development of the workplace privacy construct in the course of American thinking. The role of technological development in this process is examined, particularly in regard to the information gathering/dissemination dilemmas faced by employers and employees alike. The paper concludes with some preliminary considerations toward a theory of workplace privacy.

I will start my inaugural address by outlining the main argument of my lecture. First, I will identify the phenomenon that philosophers of technology research. This subject matter, in my view, consists not only of ethical issues that disruptive technologies raise but also of the disruption of the world in which we live and act by these technologies. I will illustrate this disruption by reflecting on the convergence of the physical and the virtual in the digital world, which is expected (...) to change the way we live together. I propose that philosophers of technology should research new disruptive technologies and the digital world in which they are embedded in an integrated manner. Subsequently, I will ask how the emergence of digital technologies disrupts the world’s design in the digital age. My hypothesis is that technological innovations themselves constitute the World in a non-anthropocentric and non-determinist manner. To make my case, I will first draw attention to the difference between technology and innovation and propose a philosophy of innovation. This will enable me to consider how innovation processes have an economic, social-political and ontological impact on the world. Based on historical and contemporary examples, I will illustrate the redesign of the world in the digital age. This broader understanding of the impact of digital technologies will subsequently enable me to articulate some of the critical questions I have regarding digitalisation, and how the philosophical tradition can be made fruitful to critically reflect on the elision between the physical and the virtual in the digital age. This criticism informs my engagement with ethical questions in ethics of technology, ELSA (Ethical, Legal and Social Aspects) and Responsible Innovation. As a final step, I open a progressive perspective on the emancipatory potential of disruptive innovations to set the world free. In times of climate change, we are urgently in need of an emancipation of the World. We need to move beyond the classical opposition between technophobia and technophilia and look for innovations that can set the World free and contribute to a sustainable future. I will illustrate the emancipatory potential of disruptive technological innovations by considering the shift from human-centred technology to bio-centred technology in biomimetic design. (shrink)

This thesis studies the enabling properties of ICT and their effects and potential for social change, and prepares the ground for a sustainability-oriented ethico-political assessment of this technology. It primarily builds on interdisciplinary scholarship to describe and explain the multifaceted co-evolution between the global deployment of ICTs and the emergence of the Information Society, understood as a socioeconomic restructuring of capitalism. Beyond the role of ICTs in this regime transition, the thesis delivers other philosophical insights about crucial aspects of ICT (...) development, applications and management. These include arguments about how we should conceptualize ICTs on the basis of their different roles in extending human communication and in performing or facilitating the remote control of humans and animals, machines and systems operations; about the entanglement between telecommunications, transport networks, urban development and work and organization; and about the relations between ICTs, culture and human values. Examples are offered to illustrate the potential that these empirical and philosophical lessons may hold for the construction of a framework for the ethico-political assessment of ICTs. (shrink)

The cliché understanding of mass media is that they are tools and means to transmit news and expand communications whose function is to be informative, provide entertainment and promote ethical codes among people. This paper, mainly relying on the views and approaches of 'Heidegger' and 'Marx' about technology, aims to analyse the media and its relation with advertisement. This analysis has put under question the current common belief and shows that the advertisement industry implies a biased viewpoint toward the world, (...) which will bring about certain philosophical requirements and consequences. This analysis also shows that the media in the new world are structurally manufactured to operate under the influence of social relations and acts. (shrink)

The Fifth Element (1997) is a French science-fiction film in English, directed and co-written by Luc Besson. The title and the plot of the film refer to a central notion of Greek philosophy, that is, pemptousia, or quintessence. Pre-Socratic philosophers such as Thales, Anaxagoras, Anaximenes and others, were convinced that all natural beings – in fact, nature itself – consist in four primary imperishable elements or essences (ousiai), i.e., fire, earth, water, and air. To these four, Aristotle added aether, a (...) fifth essence (pemptousia). The introduction of aether gave birth to a great tradition in late Antique and Medieval philosophy, and eventually it came to signify not an additional primary element, but the core-essence of all beings, their fundamental ontological structure. Besson’s film draws its inspiration on this philosophical tradition but its cinematographic rendering of the concept of Quintessence is typical of the contemporaneous views on the core characteristics of matters. The modernity that stimulates the film is equally anti-transcendentalist and anti-essentialist. Thus, the fifth element of the film is existentially personified and genderized making the traditional philosophical significance of the term to be adjusted by modernity in an immanent and temporal context where in addition aesthetics plays a crucial role. (shrink)

De-extinction raises anew ontological and epistemological problems that have engaged environmental philosophers for decades. This essay re-examines these issues to provide a fuller understanding—and a critique—of de-extinction. One of my claims is that de-extinction as a philosophical problem merely recycles old issues and debates in the field (hence, “zombie” arguments). De-extinction is a project that arises out of the assertion of human domination of the natural world. Thus the acceptance of de-extinction as an environmental policy is an expression of a (...) human-nature relationship that disvalues the natural world and subjugates nature completely to the interests of humanity. (shrink)

Anarchism is by far the least broadly understood ideology and the least studied academically. Though highly influential, both historically and in terms of recent social movements, anarchism is regularly dismissed. Anarchism: A Conceptual Approach is a welcome addition to this growing field, which is widely debated but poorly understood. Occupying a distinctive position in the study of anarchist ideology, this volume, authored by a handpicked group of established and rising scholars, investigates how anarchists often seek to sharpen their message and (...) struggle to determine what ideas and actions are central to their identity. Moving beyond defining anarchism as simply an ideology or political theory, this book examines the meanings of its key concepts, which have been divided into three categories: Core, Adjacent, and Peripheral concepts. Each chapter focuses on one important concept, shows how anarchists have understood the concept, and highlights its relationships to other concepts. Although anarchism is often thought of as a political topic, the interdisciplinary nature of Anarchism: A Conceptual Approach makes it of interest to students and scholars across the social sciences, liberal arts, and the humanities. (shrink)

During the second half of the twentieth century, several philosophers of technology argued that their predecessors had reflected too abstractly and pessimistically on technology. In the view of these critics, one should study technologies empirically in order to fully understand them. They developed several strategies to empirically inform the philosophy of technology and called their new approach the empirical turn. However, they provide insufficient indications of what exactly is meant by empirical study in their work. This leads to the critical (...) question of what counts as an empirically informed philosophy of technology in the empirical turn. In order to answer this question, we first elaborate on the problems that the empirical turn philosophers tried to address; secondly, we sketch their solutions, and, thirdly, we critically discuss their conceptions of empirical study. Our critical analysis of the empirical turn contributes to new efforts to engage in an empirically informed philosophy of technology. (shrink)

One of the great dangers of our time is that the cumulative long-term action of smart socio-technical environments engineered to control thought and behavior results in an excessive loss of freedom. In response to this challenge, that we shall call humanity’s socio-technical dilemma, we outline here some fundamental ideas of a political program to control these environments, which is similar to the one proposed by Brett Frischmann and Evan Selinger. It is similar insofar as we share their paternalistic and humanistic (...) approach. But it is different insofar as we claim, first, the duty to admit that it is a version of Sloterdijk’s controversial human zoo; second, the theoretical and practical convenience of identifying the human capabilities to be promoted by these environments with the capabilities necessary for the democratic electorate to comply with the competence principle; and third, the awareness of the probable long-term unsustainability of the program in a context of competition between countries and companies, in spite of which it must be implemented because of its moral superiority. (shrink)

In 1984 the author published From Knowledge to Wisdom, a book that argued that a revolution in academia is urgently needed, so that problems of living, including global problems, are put at the heart of the enterprise, and the basic aim becomes to seek and promote wisdom, and not just acquire knowledge. Every discipline and aspect of academia needs to change, and the whole way in which academia is related to the rest of the social world. Universities devoted to the (...) pursuit of knowledge and technological know-how betray reason and, as a result, betray humanity. As a result of becoming more intellectually rigorous, academic inquiry becomes of far greater benefit to humanity. If the revolution argued for all those years ago had been taken up and put into academic practice, we might now live in a much more hopeful world than the one that confronts us. Humanity might have begun to learn how to solve global problems; the Amazon rain forests might not face destruction; we might not be faced with mass extinction of species; Brexit might not have been voted for in the UK in 2016, and Trump might not have been elected President in the USA. An account is given of work published by the author during the years 1972 to 2021 that expounds and develops the argument. The conclusion is that we urgently need to create a high-profile campaign devoted to transforming universities in the way required so that humanity may learn how to make social progress towards a better, wiser, more civilized, enlightened world. (shrink)

In this article, I reflect on the nature of innovation to lay the groundwork for a philosophy of innovation. First, I contrast the contemporary techno-economic paradigm of innovation with the work of Joseph Schumpeter. It becomes clear that Schumpeter’s work provides good reasons to question the techno-economic paradigm of innovation. Second, I contrast ‘innovation’ with ‘technology’ and identify five differences between the two concepts. Third, I reflect on the process-outcome dimension and the ontic-ontological dimension of innovation to develop four characteristics (...) of the phenomenon of innovation. These four characteristics move beyond the techno-economic paradigm of innovation and highlight, first, the importance of its process dimension understood as ontogenesis, second, the outcome of innovation, and third, the importance of the ontological dimension of innovation, which is considered adjacent to its fourth characteristic, i.e., the ontic level of the outcome of innovation. After drawing conclusions, a research agenda for future research is provided. (shrink)

The twentieth-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger distinguished “meditative” and “calculative” modes of thinking as a way of highlighting the problematique of modern technology and the limits of modern science. In doing so he also was prescient to recognize, in 1955, that the most significant danger to the future of humanity are developments in molecular biology and biotechnology, in contrast to the post-World War global threat of thermonuclear weapons. These insights are engaged here in view of recent discussion of the need (...) for international regulation of heritable human genome editing and the announcement in 2018 of the birth of the world’s first gene-edited babies in China. Heidegger’s call for meditative thinking requires modern medicine and the life sciences to appropriate the phenomenological conception of the human “way to be” such that it is not restricted to the “present-at-hand” physiology and pathology of the human body. (shrink)

Technology and Artificial Intelligence, both today and in the near future, are dominated by automated algorithms that combine optimization with models based on the human brain to learn, predict, and even influence the large-scale behavior of human users. Such applications can be understood to be outgrowths of historical trends in industry and academia, yet have far-reaching and even unintended consequences for social and political life around the world. Countries in different parts of the world take different regulatory views for the (...) role and protection of user data, and this will in turn determine the course of development for technology and AI in the near future. (shrink)

This essay considers the analysis Jacques Ellul carried out about the devaluation of language. This investigation also explores the consequences of that devaluation (or humiliation as Ellul called it) wrought by our orientation to technology. Our existence in technology transforms language and our use of it, shifting emphasis as well to the visual image. The technological mindset encourages a disregard for language. It entails as well the disuse and misuse of what is perhaps most human about us, language. As language (...) conforms to the technological order, our thought processes, narratives, relationships, freedom, even being human are altered and threatened. (shrink)

In this article, the idea of technological transpar ency refers to the setting of computer artifacts to make them invisible. Transparency is treated as a mythology because it hides the tremendous social impact that computer-mediated communication has in contempo rary societies. This argument is supported by Ellul's assertion that technology has a systemic, rather than an instrumental, relation with society; therefore, it has to be explored as La Technique. La Technique is a systemic connection of human-artifacts-knowledge that reconstitutes society according (...) to autonomous technological aims, disintegrating anything that cannot be converted into technology. This article discusses how computers mediate communication as a major universal source of La Technique and alters language structure, social relationships, space, time, and identities. Some clues are given to reconceptualize pedagogical notions, such as technological transpar ency, to overcome the reproduction of mythologies and to find better signifiers for understanding the impact of virtual education in society and culture. (shrink)

Max Weber is seen by mainstream social scientists as a sociologist, social theorist, and theorist of bureaucracy. In this reassessment of Weber’s social science and its methodology, it is suggested that Weber can also be seen as a compelling early 20th-century critic of science and technology. The theme of technology, and Weber’s ambivalence about it, is approached through a discussion of his notion of disenchantment. In the modern, disenchanted world, social scientists are compelled to choose the values that guide research, (...) but research is constrained by the technocratic requirements of large, bureaucratic institutions that sponsor and fund it. The article asks whether Weber’s notion of individual values is still applicable in the context of social science in the early 21st century. In a line of thought that can be traced to Postman and Ellul, it is asked whether the choices social scientists make can puncture the dense web of bureaucratic-technological rationality of which Weber was critical. (shrink)

The article proceeds from the argument that war is a social institution and not a historical inevitability of human interaction, that is, war can be “unlearned.” This process involves deconstructing/dismantling war as an institution in society. An important step in this process is to understand the philosophical and cultural bases on which technology is employed as “tools” of war. The article focuses on such questions as, Is technology just viewed as instruments in the hand of its human masters in war? (...) Does technology take on an autonomous role in war? How should we assess the impact of context (political, economic, and cultural) of technology when employed in war? By exploring these points, the article hopes to provide input into the discussion on the control of war technologies and ultimately the dismantling of war as an institution in society. (shrink)

This article builds on conclusions drawn in the article “Eyeless in America,” by the same author and considers how 50 American films about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan intended to function as what Jacques Ellul called “integration propaganda,” fared. This article considers and rejects a number of theories about why most feature war films failed between 2002 and 2012 and proposes what war films might look like in the near future.

Over the years, many movies have presented on-screen a struggle between machines and human beings. Typically, the machines have come to rule and threaten the existence of humanity. They must be conquered to ensure the survival of and to secure the freedom of the human race. Although these movies appear to expose the dangers of an autonomous and hegemonic technology and to champion the human being, they do not. Humans do not in the end triumph over technology but merge with (...) the machine. Instead of liberation from technological domination, the movies in question depict as inevitable the total surrender and absorption of humanity to and into technology. These movies lead to a denial of the true conditions of our existence in technology. Many films could serve to illustrate the problem, but this study focuses on two representative film trilogies: The Terminator and The Matrix. (shrink)