Crossing The Postmodern Divide

Download or read book Crossing the Postmodern Divide written by Albert Borgmann and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crossing the Postmodern Divide is a guide for all those perplexed by what it means to live at the edge of an era. Albert Borgmann writes for everyone seeking to understand the sprawling critique of modernity that informs virtually every aspect of life at the end of the twentieth century, from philosophy, social theory, and the arts to everyday worlds of work and family and community. In this eloquent guide to the meanings of the postmodern era, Borgmann charts the options before us as we seek alternatives to the joyless and artificial culture of consumption. With exceptional clarity, Borgmann connects the fundamental ideas driving his understanding of society's ills to every sphere of contemporary social life. We have lost faith in the modern project. Our society is disenchanted with a world in which science and technology have become tools for destruction; where rampant individualism is a mask for privilege and greed; and where the institutions of public life are emptied of meaning and purpose. In offering alternatives to modernity's exhausted traditions, alternatives already emerging in everyday life, Borgmann moves this critique to its next stage. Whether in the increasingly flexible organization of work, the enabling technologies of the personal computer, or the return to small-scale communities more in harmony with the demands of nature, he finds us beginning to reorder our social worlds. Crossing the Postmodern Divide also offers a powerfully articulated vision of what a postmodern culture has in store. This new era, at its best, would enable participation, acknowledge limits, and restore to human life the importance of the local, the sacred, and the communal. The critique of modernism Borgmann portrays goes beyond the empty language of postmodern discourse. It speaks to real dissatisfactions with the quality of our world and strives to provide us with a helpful view of the postmodern divide and what lies beyond it.

Download or read book Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life written by Albert Borgmann and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1984 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Table of Contents Acknowledgments Part One - The Problem of Technology 1. Technology and Theory 2. Theories of Technology 3. The Choice of a Theory 4. Scientific Theory 5. Scientific Explanation 6. The Scope of Scientific Explanation 7. Science and Technology Part Two - The Character of Technology 8. The Promise of Technology 9. The Device Paradigm 10. The Foreground of Technology 11. Devices, Means, and Machines 12. Paradigmatic Explanation 13. Technology and the Social Order 14. Technology and Democracy 15. The Rule of Technology 16. Political Engagement and Social Justice 17. Work and Labor 18. Leisure, Excellence, and Happiness 19. The Stability of Technology Part Three - The Reform of Technology 20. The Possibilities of Reform 21. Deictic Discourse 22. The Challenge of Nature 23. Focal Things and Practices 24. Wealth and the Good Life 25. Political Affirmation 26. The Recovery of the Promise of Technology Notes Index.

Download or read book New Worlds, New Technologies, New Issues written by Stephen H. Cutcliffe and published by Lehigh University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, fifteen scholars from the United States, Spain, Puerto Rico, and Colombia discuss the social implications of new technologies. Their essays address the cultural worlds that crystallize around technologies, the challenges to democracy that they pose, and the responsibility of modern technology for forcing a public response to new social and moral issues. Three themes define the three sections into which the volume is divided: "New Worlds," "New Technologies," and "New Issues." The essays in the section "New Worlds" range from optimism that new technologies will produce a better world than that of 1992, through a nonjudgmental discussion of the transformation of our "lifeworld" that new technologies are effecting, to deep concern for the viability of the world that modern technology has already created. In "New Technologies," the focus is on political responses to modern technologies. The authors in this section see the challenge to understanding and controlling our technological world in reshaping existing relations of social power and authority, and in creating new institutions more adequate to the sociopolitical realities of the process of technological innovation. While the contributors in the first two sections of the volume argue that broad changes in values and institutions are preconditions of a more beneficent relationship among people, nature, and technology, those in the section "New Issues" adopt narrower, more specific, viewpoints. Their essays address the political values underlying the Deep Ecology movement, the ethics of military technologies, the capacity of democratic institutions for a public role in setting technology policies, and science and technology literacy mechanisms. Collectively, these essays reflect the growing international concern with the role played by technological innovation in a rapidly changing world, and they point toward the formulation of concrete political platforms for informed social responses to the innovation process.

Download or read book Travels with Ernest written by Laurel Richardson and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2004 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Laurel Richardson and Ernest Lockridge-accomplished sociologist and published novelist-explore the fascinating interplay between literary and ethnographic writing. The exciting result is an intriguing experimental text that simultaneously delves into, reveals, simplifies, and complicates methodologies of writing and conveying experience. This boundary-crossing text will provide an ideal platform for students and professors interested in understanding and exploring the absorbing complexities and possibilities of ethnographic writing and creative nonfiction.

Download or read book Bridging the Divide written by Dr. Robert L. Millet and published by Monkfish Book Publishing. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meetings between Mormons and Evangelicals break new ground in interfaith dialogue.

Download or read book Technology and the Good Life? written by Eric Higgs and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2000-11-15 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can we use technology in the pursuit of a good life, or are we doomed to having our lives organized and our priorities set by the demands of machines and systems? How can philosophy help us to make technology a servant rather than a master? Technology and the Good Life? uses a careful collective analysis of Albert Borgmann's controversial and influential ideas as a jumping-off point from which to address questions such as these about the role and significance of technology in our lives. Contributors both sympathetic and critical examine Borgmann's work, especially his "device paradigm"; apply his theories to new areas such as film, agriculture, design, and ecological restoration; and consider the place of his thought within philosophy and technology studies more generally. Because this collection carefully investigates the issues at the heart of how we can take charge of life with technology, it will be a landmark work not just for philosophers of technology but for students and scholars in the many disciplines concerned with science and technology studies.

Download or read book Power Failure written by Albert Borgmann and published by Brazos Press. This book was released on 2003-06 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A call to redeem and restrain technology through everyday Christian practices and sacraments such as communal celebrations, shared meals, and daily Scripture reading.