ArgumentThis paper examines some of the ways that machines, mechanisms, and the new mechanics were treated in post-World War I discourse. Spengler's 1919Decline of the Westand Hessen's 1931 study of Newton have usually been tied closely to Weimar culture in Germany, and Soviet politics. Linking them also to the writings of Rathenau, Simmel, Chase, Mumford, Hayek, and others, as well as to Dada and film studies of the city will indicate central features of a wide-ranging, international discourse on the machine (...) and mechanization. I argue that machines were so thoroughly integrated into social and economic experience that we can treat this as a distinctive new phase in the cultural history of mechanics, what some contemporaries called the “machine age”: a period in which rather than the hand mill or steam engine, the city stands as an appropriate realization (and sometimes symbol) of the significance but also ambiguities and tensions of mechanical life; and concepts of mechanization were extended to encompass the economy and market mechanisms. (shrink)

What is the role of the environment, and of the information it provides, in cognition? More specifically, may there be a role for certain artefacts to play in this context? These are questions that motivate "4E" theories of cognition (as being embodied, embedded, extended, enactive). In his take on that family of views, Hajo Greif first defends and refines a concept of information as primarily natural, environmentally embedded in character, which had been eclipsed by information-processing views of cognition. He continues (...) with an inquiry into the cognitive bearing of some artefacts that are sometimes referred to as 'intelligent environments'. Without necessarily having much to do with Artificial Intelligence, such artefacts may ultimately modify our informational environments. -/- With respect to human cognition, the most notable effect of digital computers is not that they might be able, or become able, to think but that they alter the way we perceive, think and act. (shrink)

The monograph presents the ideas about the main changes that occurred in the development of technologies from the emergence of Homo sapiens till present time and outlines the prospects of their development in the next 30–60 years and in some respect until the end of the twenty-first century. What determines the transition of a society from one level of development to another? One of the most fundamental causes is the global technological transformations. Among all major technological breakthroughs in history the (...) most important are three production revolutions: 1) the Agrarian Revolution; 2) the Industrial Revolution; and 3) the Cybernetic one. The book introduces the theory of production revolutions which is a new valuable explanatory paradigm that analyzes causes and trends of dramatic shifts in historical process. The authors describe the course of technological transformations in history and demonstrate a possible application of the theory to explain the present and forthcoming technological changes. They analyze the technological shifts which took place in the second half of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and forecast the main shifts in the next half a century. On this basis the authors present a detailed analysis of the latest production revolution which is denoted as ‘Сybernetic’. They make some predictions about its development in the nearest five decades and up to the end of the twenty-first century and show that the development of various self-regulating systems will be the main trend of this revolution. The authors argue that the transition to the starting final phase of the Cybernetic Revolution (in the 2030–2040s) will first occur in the field of medicine (in some its innovative branches). In future we will deal with the started convergence of innovative technologies which will form the system of MANBRIC-technologies (i.e. the technological paradigm based on medicine, additive, nano- and bio- technologies, robotics, IT and cognitive technologies). The monograph gives an outline of the future breakthroughs in medicine and some other technologies (between the 2010s and 2070s). (shrink)

“East” and “West” have long been prominent categories in the history of technology. The historical literature that claims to deal with comparisons or connections between East and West from a technological point of view is rich and fascinating. Yet, so far there has been no attempt to succinctly summarize or synthesize the main findings. This article takes a first step towards such a synthesis. It does so by addressing technological interaction between three broadly defined geographical regions: Western Europe and North (...) America; Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia; and the non-Russian Far East. The article suggests that East–West studies in the history of technology can be divided into three sets, which would benefit from greater interaction with each other: studies of East–West and West– East technology transfer; studies comparing the evolution of Eastern and Western technological levels and technological “styles”; and studies of large technical systems that materially interconnect East and West. (shrink)

The growth of self-tracking and personal surveillance has given rise to the Quantified Self movement. Members of this movement seek to enhance their personal well-being, productivity, and self-actualization through the tracking and gamification of personal data. The technologies that make this possible can also track and gamify aspects of our interpersonal, romantic relationships. Several authors have begun to challenge the ethical and normative implications of this development. In this article, we build upon this work to provide a detailed ethical analysis (...) of the Quantified Relationship. We identify eight core objections to the QR and subject them to critical scrutiny. We argue that although critics raise legitimate concerns, there are ways in which tracking technologies can be used to support and facilitate good relationships. We thus adopt a stance of cautious openness toward this technology and advocate the development of a research agenda for the positive use of QR technologies. (shrink)

The temporal orientations of any sociocultural grouping are major factors comprising its central identity. The manner in which the past (memories), the present (perception), and the future (anticipation/expectation) are commonly articulated also concern cultural identity. The identity of a cultural group is altered by developmental changes in time keeping and related objective, scientific temporalities.Three modes of temporality, objective, narrative, and transcendental, congruent with different kinds of brain processes, are common throughout our planet. Objective temporality tends to alter and replace traditional (...) narrative and transcendental (spiritual) time, timing, and tempos. Objective temporality is concerned with what is transitory, modern and “progressive”. Objective time is not a traditional form of cultural time; it is a derived Westernized scientific imposition, rather than any cultural formation. This essay develops a new conception of how semiosis occurs. All information is essentially rhythmic, transduced through sensory systems as signals in a space-time domain, but deposited for use into a spectral thermodynamic domain in the human cortex.A “chronemic” perspective, (temporality as it is based in semiotic processes related to human communication) is assumed throughout. Such a perspective appears to be somewhat novel in both communication and semiotic studies. (shrink)

Responding to long-standing warnings that robots and AI will enslave humans, I argue that the main problem we face is not that automation might turn us into slaves but, rather, that we remain masters. First I construct an argument concerning what I call ‘the tragedy of the master’: using the master–slave dialectic, I argue that automation technologies threaten to make us vulnerable, alienated, and automated masters. I elaborate the implications for power, knowledge, and experience. Then I critically discuss and question (...) this argument but also the very thinking in terms of masters and slaves, which fuels both arguments. I question the discourse about slavery and object to the assumptions made about human–technology relations. However, I also show that the discussion about masters and slaves attends us to issues with human–human relations, in particular to the social consequences of automation such as power issues and the problem of the relation between automation and (un)employment. Finally, I reflect on how we can respond to our predicament, to ‘the tragedy of the master’. (shrink)

Leonardo's fascination with Archimedes as well as with his mathematics is well known. There are three fairly extensive and eccentric comments in the surviving notebooks: on his military inventions; on his part in an Anglo-Spanish conflict and on his activities, death and burial at the siege of Syracuse. Reti has examined the first of the three, that about theArchitronitoor steam cannon, mainly considering the origin of the idea for the cannon and its attribution to Archimedes, but with comments on the (...) later influence of Leonardo's ideas. Marshall Clagett has produced the most comprehensive attempt to try to identify Leonardo's sources for the third. (shrink)

The ArgumentThis paper is divided into four parts. Part I is a conventional, if necessarily very brief description of the way in which military technology and armed force reinforced each other from about 1500 until 1945. Part II examines the period between 1945 and the present; it argues that what most people saw as unprece-dentedly rapid military-technological progress did in fact constitute the onset of overkill and degeneration. Part III explains how, obscured and in part protected by military-technological progress, low-intensity (...) warfare was allowed to develop from about 1660 on until it represented almost the only form of armed conflict still left on this planet. Finally, part IV pulls the threads together, pointing to the way in which war, and with it the military technology on which it depends, can be expected to go in the future. (shrink)

History of science is, we are told, an important subject for study. Its rise in recent years to become a ‘stand alone’ discipline has been mirrored by an expansion of popular history of science texts available in bookstores. Given this, it is perhaps surprising that little attention has been given to how history of science is written. This article attempts to do that through constructing a typology of histories of science based upon a consideration of audiences who read these texts (...) and writers who construct them. It identifies four ideal types of history of science which describe the opposite poles of two continua running from exoteric to esoteric. The article also examines the content of a sample of history of science texts and finds that often these texts, whether esoteric or exoteric, provide only a chronology of events (often incredibly detailed), avoiding discussion or even mention of wider social, economic and political contexts. Such histories serve to reinforce a ‘standard’ account of science as ‘separate’ from the rest of society, an account that is at odds with almost all contemporary sociology of science and science and technology studies. This prompts the question: why should I read histories of science? (shrink)

This paper identifies the founding project of traditional philosophy of language as an attempt to unify the diversity and individuality of spoken language in order to produce a transpersonal intelligibility. The supposed necessary truth that we cannot directly understand what others say which underlies such a project is exposed as a willful avoidance of the discourse of others typical of masculine styles of communication.

This paper argues that the phenomenon of globalisation can be best understood as the secularisation and widespread extension of a particular type of life?conduct that originated in Western monasticism. This concerns not substantive content but modality and form, like the self?sustaining methodical regularisation of the everyday conduct of life in closed and partitioned space aiming at rationalisation and perfection. This type of inner?worldly asceticism was a successful response to the challenge of chaotic ?liminal periods of transition, following a wholesale dissolution (...) of order. However, the solution represents a generalisation of liminality into a permanent condition, explaining both the innovativeness and creativity of modern societies, but also their characteristic tempo of hectic change that disrupts stable human relationships and the coexistence with animals and plants, losing balance and measure. (shrink)

The current viewpoint on technology seems to derive from the optimistic idea of the existence of pre-established harmony that any technological progress leads to people's health, and welfare. But history has shown us that this is not always the case, and that we must select the proper direction which leads to health and welfare. For that purpose, this article presents the viewpoint of technology as a kind of human care service, along with the lessons from nursing theories. Five leading nursing (...) theories are introduced as well as their implications for technology. ‘The nursing model of technology’ is then presented. (shrink)

The author argues that the notion of wearable technology betrays a materialistic approach to design that constrains the construction of a means to fully facilitate the functionality of technology. It is argued that by taking the view that technology can be considered an extensive form of humanity a space can be opened for designers to explore how the body can be considered an architecture for facilitating consciousness and technology a means of distributing consciousness by means of an extended body. The (...) author—by sketching out a new design territory calling into question some current approaches to usability—intends to provoke thought rather than to provide answers. (shrink)

Continuing advances in human ability to manipulate matter at the atomic and molecular levels (i.e. nanoscale science and engineering) offer many previously unimagined possibilities for scientific discovery and technological development. Paralleling these advances in the various science and engineering subdisciplines is the increasing realization that a number of associated social, ethical, environmental, economic and legal dimensions also need to be explored. An important component of such exploration entails the identification and analysis of the ways in which current and prospective researchers (...) in these fields conceptualize these dimensions of their work. Within the context of a National Science Foundation funded Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program in nanomaterials processing and characterization at the University of Central Florida (2002–2004), here I present for discussion (i) details of a “nanotechnology ethics” seminar series developed specifically for students participating in the program, and (ii) an analysis of students’ and participating research faculty’s perspectives concerning social and ethical issues associated with nanotechnology research. I conclude with a brief discussion of implications presented by these issues for general scientific literacy and public science education policy. (shrink)

During the past few decades, engineering ethics has been oriented towards protecting the public from professional misconduct by engineers and from the harmful effects of technology. This “preventive ethics” project has been accomplished primarily by means of the promulgation of negative rules. However, some aspects of engineering professionalism, such as (1) sensitivity to risk (2) awareness of the social context of technology, (3) respect for nature, and (4) commitment to the public good, cannot be adequately accounted for in terms of (...) rules, certainly not negative rules. Virtue ethics is a more appropriate vehicle for expressing these aspects of engineering professionalism. Some of the unique features of virtue ethics are the greater place it gives for discretion and judgment and also for inner motivation and commitment. Four of the many professional virtues that are important for engineers correspond to the four aspects of engineering professionalism listed above. Finally, the importance of the humanities and social sciences in promoting these virtues suggests that these disciplines are crucial in the professional education of engineers. (shrink)

Arguably, every new technology creates hidden ejfects in its environment, rearranging the social order it penetrates. Many ofthese effects are inextricably linked to ethical issues. Some are eternal issues such as censorship andfree speech, but others have new names and dimensions, and may even be new issues. Forty of these issues pertaining to the new communication technologies of the 1990s and next millennium are catalogued here. The author argues that each new communication technology either retrieves, amplifies, transforms, obsolesces, or mixes (...) ethical issues from the past or creates new issues for the future. However, as in the Ross Hume Hall (1974) effect, it is also likely there are issues yet unknown due to untested eflects of combining new technologies. (shrink)

: This paper goes beyond critiques of western philosophical notions of space as passive, feminine, and unintelligent by reconfiguring containment as an (inter-)active process. The author draws on work in the history of technology, on a cybernetic epistemology that emphasizes the interdependence of organism and environment, and on intersubjectivist psychoanalytic theories of the maternal provision. A more unexpected ally is found in Heidegger, whose writings on holding and supply are read in ways that contribute to the development of an urgently (...) required philosophy of container technologies. (shrink)

Problems and questions originally raised by Robert Nozick in his famous thought experiment ‘The Experience Machine’ are frequently invoked in the current discourse concerning virtual worlds. Having conceptualized his Gedankenexperiment in the early seventies, Nozick could not fully anticipate the numerous and profound ways in which the diffusion of computer simulations and video games came to affect the Western world. -/- This article does not articulate whether or not the virtual worlds of video games, digital simulations, and virtual technologies currently (...) actualize (or will actualize) Nozick’s thought experiment. Instead, it proposes a philosophical reflection that focuses on human experiences in the upcoming age of their ‘technical reproducibility’. -/- In pursuing that objective, this article integrates and supplements some of the interrogatives proposed in Robert Nozick’s thought experiment. More specifically, through the lenses of existentialism and philosophy of technology, this article tackles the technical and cultural heritage of virtual reality, and unpacks its potential to function as a tool for self-discovery and self-construction. Ultimately, it provides an interpretation of virtual technologies as novel existential domains. Virtual worlds will not be understood as the contexts where human beings can find completion and satisfaction, but rather as instruments that enable us to embrace ourselves and negotiate with various aspects of our (individual as well as collective) existence in previously-unexperienced guises. (shrink)

We argue that claims of racial progress rest upon untenable teleological assumptions founded in Enlightenment discourse. We examine the theoretical and methodological focus on progress and its historical roots. We argue research should examine the concrete mechanisms that produce racial stability and change, and we offer three alternative frameworks for interpreting longitudinal racial data and phenomena. The first sees racism as a “fundamental cause,” arguing that race remains a “master category” of social differentiation. The second builds on Glenn’s “settler colonialism (...) as structure” framework to describe race relations as a mutually constituted and place-based system of resource allocation. The third framework draws attention to racialized agency. (shrink)

This article presents an analysis of James Benning's film, BNSF (2013). It argues that the film comprises a landscape rendered in such a way that the temporal aspects of the processes, both cultural and natural, of which it is composed are brought forth. The article also asserts that, by relating a world that unfolds with a measure of contingency, the film not only manifests the inherent inadequacy of representation, but also it draws attention to the efficacy of the world in (...) the making of its moving image. Finally, the article demonstrates that the qualities of the world delimited by the film impel the viewer to attempt to envision facts of nature that greatly outsize the horizon of her human point of view. (shrink)

This dissertation explores energy transition from a philosophical perspective. It puts forward the thesis that energy production and consumption are so intimately intertwined with society that the transition towards a sustainable alternative will involve more than simply implementing novel technologies. Fossil energy sources and a growth-based economy have resulted in very specific energy practices, which will change in the future. Broader reflection is needed to understand how and in which direction such change is acceptable and desirable. This reflection is initiated (...) by articulating two pertinent problems with current energy practices that have thus far failed to receive appropriate attention in debates on energy transition: 1) the difficulty of dealing with intermittent sources in relation to the idea of cumulative accounting of energy consumption, and 2) the mismatch between expectations of ethical consumer behaviour in energy systems that discourage engagement. To move forward, instead of assuming that all consumption is equivalent and that more is better, we must develop a better informed and more nuanced idea of 'good' energy practices that actually contribute to our quality of life. One often overlooked aspect of this may be 'embodied engagement', which would suggest that automation of tasks through energy-consuming technologies may be convenient, but also tends to lead to a loss of appreciation for both the task and its result. Some things, like creating a cozy environment around a fireplace, or climbing a mountain, are better partly because they take effort. In such cases, the 'efficiency' of the technology (e.g. the heat-pump, or the automobile) is besides the point - the question is whether it gives us anything of value at all. (shrink)

In this article, we draw upon ‘After-ANT’ scholarship to generate openings for a shift from purely deconstructive studies of object organization to a more straightforward generation of concrete and specific alternative trajectories towards the future by way of ontological experimentation. Through careful empirical investigation of a mine and a landfill, and how these are enacted in practice in different topological registers, we show how mines and landfills are intertwined; enacted sometimes as similar and in other cases as different types of (...) objects, thus shaping the paths of becoming for those bundles of relations that become enacted as either a ‘mine object’ or a ‘landfill object’. Mapping these practices generates openings for interventions suggesting how things could be made different in some specificity; in this case, for example, the appreciation of what constitutes ‘natural resources’. The overarching purpose of this article is to intervene in current debates regarding the potential merits of drawing upon Object-Oriented Philosophy as an inspiration in critical organizational studies. While we are highly sympathetic to calls for more experimental object studies, we are hesitant towards Object-Oriented Philosophy as a source of inspiration due to its specific metaphysical underpinnings. To clarify what we find to be at stake here, we conclude the article by situating After-ANT in a wider landscape of thought, discussing the contrast between broadly pragmatist research approaches, such as After-ANT, and Object-Oriented Philosophy. Finally, we try to spell out how we believe this contrast reverberates upon how we understand the purpose and potential of critical social science. (shrink)

This article, which introduces the special section on The Urban Problematic, takes as its starting point the ways in which categories associated with the ‘urban’ have broken down, such that the once singular and coherent concept ‘city’ has disintegrated in certain ways: the notion has been demythologized, so that representations of the city must now be regarded as partial and invested; and cities themselves have become opaque and unpredictable both to urban scholars and to governments, planners and various kinds of (...) welfare organizations. The indications of crisis, captured for instance by concerns about the slums, favelas and shanty towns of the world’s megacities, also indicate that much of what counts in modern urban life is in some way connected with the marginal, the unofficial, and the supplemental. The article takes a supplemental view of the current state of urban dwelling. This involves at the same time a longer, more patient, historical view in its attempt to understand the current state of the city as part of a shift in the play of heterogeneous forces. With reference to the articles contained in The Urban Problematic, this introductory article finally draws attention to some of the urgent and critical issues of contemporary urbanism. (shrink)

. ‘Moving at the speed of life?’ A cultural kinematics of telematic times and corporate values. Cultural Values: Vol. 2, No. 2-3, pp. 320-339.

Literature in the area of innovation systems (IS) has been growing in importance and the IS approach has become well established. It is widely used in North America, Western Europe and Scandinavia, both in academic contexts and also as a framework or tool for policymaking. This paper examines work by sociologists, historians and others who have attempted to provide new insights into the nature of technology, in order to determine how the new sociology of technology literature—particularly social construction of technology (...) methodologies—can contribute to, and unpack the study of innovation system. (shrink)

The goals of public education, as well as conceptions of human intelligence and learning, are undergoing a transformation through the application of military-sponsored information technologies and information processing models of human thought. Recent emphases in education on thinking skills, learning strategies, and computer-based technologies are the latest episodes in the postwar military agenda to engineer intelligent components, human and artificial, for the optimal performance of complex technological systems. Public education serves increasingly as a “human factors” laboratory and production site for (...) this military enterprise, whose high performance technologies and command and control paradigms have also played central roles in the emergence of the information economy. (shrink)

Technology and terminology often detract from a reasoned appraisal of the euthanasia option, especially in those discussions that argue for euthanasia's incorporation into a beneficence-based medical model. “Beneficent euthanasia,” assuming there is such a thing, poses special challenges to the traditional provider-patient relationship. These challenges argue for well-defined limits of beneficence and a more equitable distribution of responsibility between participants. We should not allow technology and terminology to generate an unrealistic portrayal of patient death and its ramifications. Participants need to (...) acknowledge their roles in the decision to kill and the obligations that those roles entail. Perhaps we can reach ethical consensus concerning euthanasia by first reasserting our span of control over the technology that can extend the near-death period and by openly discussing euthanasia's implications. (shrink)

The paper connects two of the concerns of this special issue: the way to transcend the ‘bipolar tendency’ of the market culture and to ‘deal with the swings between prophesies of doom that serve only to paralyse us further, and the unbridled consumerism that makes things worse’, and how to remain human when being mediated by technology in contrast to how we are in the presence of others. Our contribution is based on an extensive conception of human beings (HBs). HBs (...) cannot be considered only as cognitive subjects but also in their anthropological integrity. What we mean by this that they think and feel, they share concepts and emotions, they plan and desire. It implies that any attempt at reducing this complexity is a way to diminish human beings and their capabilities. HBs need meaningful course of actions to manage complexity and to tackle alternatives. Meanings come from purposeful activities, and people’s purposes are based not only on utilitarian or rational enquiries but also on what they consider right and good, according to their vision of the world. This is also the key to overcome the ‘bipolar tendency’. (shrink)

This article compares two different bodies of theories concerning the role of the genome in life processes. The first group of theories can be indicated as referring to the gene-centric paradigm. Dominated by an informational myth and a mechanistic Cartesian body/mind and form/substance dualism, this considers the genome as an ensemble of discrete units of information governing human body and behavior, and remains hegemonic in life sciences and in the public imagination. The second body of theories employs the principle of (...) the extraordinary plasticity of the (body-)organism and emphasizes the value of the (body-)organism-environment mutual interchange, known as ‘the epigenetic approach’. This approach is outlined, showing a gradual, paradigmatic shift from the genecentric towards an epigenetic approach can be observed in the ‘scientific landscape’ over the last 20 years. The article concludes by formulating the argument that this ‘epigenetic turn’ in life sciences has some important implication for renewing epistemological basis of social sciences. (shrink)

Human Progress is often understood to be a rather natural and obvious truth of human existence. That this is not necessarily so, is indicative of the pervasive social, psychological, and educational inculcation that sustains its ubiquitous acceptance. Moreover, the uncritical and ill‐informed understanding of Progress as an unquestioned expression of human beneficence has serious consequences for those concerned with the health and welfare of people. It is argued in this paper that, much of what we might consider deleterious in the (...) socio‐political milieu that now confronts us is, to a significant extent, a matter of progressive ideological epistemology and its ensuing manner of human institutionalization. Part one contends that the current socio‐political structure of the current postmodern affairs is in reality that of a pervasive postmodern economic ideology. Part two provides a brief overview of the historical and philosophical development of Progress as an idea, including some of the profound effects wrought by it on human affairs in the contemporary world. Finally, Part three presents a discussion of the influential effects of the philosophy of Progress on the epistemology of human health and welfare intervention, specifically that of nursing and its claim to a holistic ethic of Caring. (shrink)

Since Magellan's round-the-world voyage (1521), international issues have been embroiled in universalist claims. This paper investigates the controversial nature of a new economic universalism in the light of the social deficiencies and the limits of the available resources. The model of a global consumerism turns out to be inaccessible for billions of people. The market conceals a social dimension which ethics, equity, governance and identity are attempting to reintroduce. Consumerist universalism is faltering. The search for an alternative development model is (...) crucial. It will need to be technically sustainable, socially more equitable, culturally more diverse and politically more participative. (shrink)

This paper outlines the background and significance of philosophy of technology as a focus of inquiry emerging within nursing scholarship and research. The thesis of the paper is that philosophy of technology and nursing is fundamental to discipline development and our role in enhancing health care. It is argued that we must further our responsibility and interest in critiquing current and future health care systems through philosophical inquiry into the experience, meaning and implications of technology. This paper locates nurses as (...) important contributors to the use and integration of health care technology and identifies nursing as a discipline that can provide specific insights into the health experience of individuals, cultures and societies. Nurses are encouraged to undertake further examination of epistemological, ontological and ethical challenges to arise from technology as a focus of philosophical inquiry. The advancement of philosophy of technology and nursing will make a profound contribution to inquiry into the experience of technology, the needs of humanity and the development of appropriate health care. (shrink)

Stemming from the term aisthesis, Aesthetics is born. As Heidegger notes at the beginning of Being and Time aisthesis, for the pre-Socratic Greeks was related to the process of revealing and concealing. Physical sensory perception was trusted as knowledge. However, the history of Aesthetics has covered over this sense of the term. From Antiquity on, a history of philosophy and Aesthetic Theory alike begin a grand metaphysical project to separate sense perception from reason and logos. This project culminates in the (...) Age of Reason, with the final subordination of all aesthetics to the categories of representation. Post-Kantian philosophy and Aesthetic Theory has attempted to invert this hierarchy, forcing representation into a subset of aesthetics. These efforts take the form of re-partition, re-integration, and re-turn. In this article I will trace these two trajectories and then conclude by arguing that Deleuze’s aesthetic theory ultimately undermines both of these projects, rejecting the “re” as the re- investment in abstract thought. By overturning metaphysical binaries, Deleuze presents us with a practice of art and philosophy that is grounded in radical difference, not the re-production of the same. (shrink)

Historians, philosophers, and physicists portray the 1920s and 1930s as a period of major theoretical breakthrough in physics, quantum mechanics, which led to the expansion of physics into the core of the atom and the growth and strengthening of the discipline. These important developments in scientific inquiry into the micro-world and light have turned historical attention away from other significant historical processes and from other equally important causes for the expansion of physics. World War II, on the other hand, is (...) often seen as the watershed moment when physics achieved new levels of social and technical engagement at a truly industrial scale. Historians have shown that military interests and government funding have shaped physics to unprecedented degree, and according to some, to the extent of discontinuity with earlier practices of research (Forman 1987; Kevles 1990; Kaiser 2002). In this vein, Stuart Leslie wrote, “Nothing in the prewar experience fully prepared academic scientists and their institutions for the scale and scope of a wartime mobilization that would transform the university, industry, and the federal government and their mutual interrelationships” (Leslie 1993, 6). While one can never befullyready for novelties, the contributors to this issue show that developments in interwar physics did prepare participants for their cold war interactions with industry and government. (shrink)

Abstract.Biotechnology deals not only with new types of therapies for preventing and curing diseases but also with the creation of new technologies for the production of human flesh. Its ultimate aim is to create a new human body, a new person. Biotechnology wears the cloak not only of a new scientific paradigm but also of a kind of messianic religion. To develop new therapies, to destroy illnesses, to transform the human body into a nonmortal one—these are some of the promises (...) it makes. In time, many of these promises will undoubtedly prove to be illusory, but they will nevertheless continue to have a significant impact on the way people think. Through a process that I call biotechnotheological analysis I show that biotechnology could eventually become not only a type of secular religion but even a type of mythic para‐Christian religion, one that incorporates the two most significant processes at work in every mythical religion: the process of mimesis and the ritual of the scapegoat. The essay is an attempt to understand biotechnological achievements, especially in stem‐cell research, in this new biotechnotheological way. (shrink)

This paper is a review of words and their meanings in the field of technology studies, and an analysis the semantics of an idealistic international technology-related social movement that flourished briefly during the second half of the twentieth century. Sloppy nomenclature employed by proponents and observers of the movement led to people with opposite views appearing to agree (and vice versa), with the consequence that the movement’s valuable policy insights exerted only marginal influence on mainstream technology policy. I conclude that (...) poor technological semantics may undermine effective technological practice. Suggestions for a constructive technological nomenclature are presented. (shrink)

Every day half a million passengers, 1.5 million e-mails and 1.5 trillion dollars cross international borders. In his Jihad versus McWorld — How the planet is both falling apart and coming together Benjamin Barber2 argues vividly that our modern world is torn apart by two opposite tendencies: On one hand is the globalization into enormous economic structures with one global marketplace for gigantic ‘global players’ like McDonald’s and Microsoft, accompanied by a shallow, universal, mass culture and the consumerist and materialistic (...) life-style of pop idols, video clips, soap series and popular brand names. And on the other hand is a flourishing fanatic nationalism claiming splintering independence of small ethnic communities and resulting in numerous bloody local wars: Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, Timor. The refugees, that as a consequence of these conflicts flood the West, create there a multi-cultural, pluralistic society and consequently societal tension. (shrink)

We only regard a system or a process as being “scientific” if it displays the three predominant characteristics of the natural sciences: predictability, repeatability and quantifiability. This by definition precludes intuition, subjective judgement, tacit knowledge, heuristics, dreams, etc. in other words, those attributes which are peculiarly human. Furthermore, this is resulting in a shift from judgment to calculation giving rise, in some cases, to an abject dependency on the machine and an inability to disagree with the outcome or even question (...) it. To tolerate such a situation could be seen as an abdication of professional responsibility. In complex technological and scientific environments, it is sometimes said that those who make best use of computers already know what the answer is (in ball park terms) before the calculation. (shrink)