Actually, it's his moral ascriptions that I object to. I've always disliked the idea of anthropomophizing technology and ascribing the capability of social action to it. I'll admit that I far prefer to view technology as a series of interlocking "environments" that condition social action and perception. I've always been happier with the conception of technology as an "extension" of humans abilities, a la Harold Innis, Marshal McLuhan and George Grant (although McLuhan went more than a little wonky in his terminology).
LOLOL - Well, if it makes you feel any better, that's also the crowd that usually can't use a photocopier or make coffee. I remember taking a class from Heather Menzies during my MA. Given what she writes, she would normally be put into the "granola-crunching", virulently anti-technology category. In reality, she actually takes a "technology as environment" position and has little time for twits who take a "we should all go back to the way we were intended to live" ideology. Her stuff is worth reading, although the left wing rhetoric may be a turn off. One thing I'll say about Heather's stuff is that she is an excellent researcher who is totally unafraid of taking on any sacred cow.
You may want to also read some of George Grant's stuff, Technology and Empire comes to mind, and Harold Innis' The Bias of Communications. They are from the 1950's and are much more "philosophical" and scholarly than most of the stuff being produced now.
That's a good point, Goesh. A lot of the metaphysical underpinnings of our culture (i.e. the Anglo Culture Complex or ACC) revolve around "work as meaning". A lot of this was brought to the fore during the Industrial revolution which pretty much created a cultural polarization of "work" and "play"; note that the concept of "contemplation" is pretty much left out - thanks, Calvin!.
Try sitting still without thinking if you want something really hardtry sitting perfectly still with no distractions and minimal noise, doing nothing but thinking,!
One of the nastier effects of certain types of technologies is that they "externalize" or "exteriorize" part of our ability to think/contemplate. This was a point that Socrates made when he was talking about the effects of books and writing destroying individual memory.
Let me take this a step further - our culture (ACC) has exteriorized contemplation to a limited number of "professionals", e.g. "academic specialists" for "contemplation of the profane" and "religious specialists" for "contemplation of the sacred". By the 1960's, the "skill" of contemplation was so divorced from popular culture that we started to see open revolts against these specialists and specialties. This trend of revolt has been exacerbated by the spread of the Internet and the information and communications explosion (see McLuhan on the Global Village) but, because our culture has compartmentalized these contemplative areas, people have had to go to other cultures for contemplative skills.
Marc
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