Description: This original, timely, and accessible work will be of interest to readers seeking a deeper understanding of the meanings and consequences of technology in today's world.
Review Quotes:
"Hickman offers a refinement of his earlier John Dewey's Pragmatic Technology (CH, Jun'90), with nine essays inviting consideration of some of the pivotal problems and prospects of our technological culture. The essays are concerned with the paradoxical fact that the techniques and technologies ostensibly developed as means of control are now viewed by many individuals as spinning out of control, or at the very least, as operating beyond their personal control. The author argues that not only is technology as culture the legitimate concern of philosophers, but that they can be cultural critics and reformers in the process. One of the most interesting chapters is devoted to ways in which a techno-scientific education might serve to confront antiscientific elements in modern society, including religious fundamentalism (Islamic as well as Christian) and the splintering effects of contemporary specialism. The author contrasts Dewey's own critique of technological culture with those of Jacques Ellul and Martin Heidegger. In the closing chapter he also provides his own program for the effective reform of technological culture. He puts philosophy to work so that productive pragmatism may transform technocracy to improve the present and enhance the potential for future growth of individuals and communities alike. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals; two--year technical program students.November 2001"--J. W. Dauben, CUNY Herbert H. Lehman College