Fumbling towards Beatitude

Albert Borgmann The German-American philosopher Albert Borgmann is professor at the University of Montana and author of several books on the effects of electronic media on the human person. He rejects both technological determinism -- the view that technology is a irresistible force that forces our hand as we shape our culture, and technological instrumentalism, which sees technology as a mere collective of neutral processes and structures that can be used either well or badly. Like Marshall McLuhan, Borgmann is aware that the medium “is” the message, highly transformative in and of itself, and requires critical analysis and understanding. For example, he writes: Using or not using the interstate highway system is not a matter of choice anymore for most of us, and neither are the moral consequences of long commutes and the neglect of family, neighborhood, and inner city. When we finally come home, late and exhausted, greeted by a well-stocked refrigerator, a preternaturally ...

For a long time I've wanted to read Martin Heidegger's essay "The Question Concerning Technology" as its topic concerns my thesis. I spent the greater part of today plowing through its nineteen pages, plus footnotes. It's not an easy text; he uses lots of original terms (which have been translated from the German). But it was worth the effort. What follows is the shortest possible summary of this essay that I can make. For Heidegger, truth is unveiling or revealing, in ways that are beyond mere knowledge, because human beings are more than mere knowers. We love, have goals, desires and personalities. Modern technology poses a problem because it views the world as a pure resource. The difference, he cites, between a windmill and a hydroelectric power plant -- the difference between technology and modern technology -- is that in the former there was greater harmonious relationship with nature, while in the latter, nature is seen as an object to be exploi...

In the course of my research on the question of human relationship to emerging digital technologies and their environments, I've read from two books by the Canadian nationalist and philosopher George Grant. Grant was once a fixture on the Canadian intellectual landscape, roaming alongside other giants like Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye in the 1970s heyday that put the University of Toronto on the radar screen of the world. It was an era, it seems, that produced a set of remarkably penetrating and prophetic thinkers. In his 1969 book Technology and Empire , Grant (incidentally, the uncle of erstwhile politician Michael Ignatieff), lamented that the idea of progress had lost its connection to moral development and had been co-opted into a utilitarian mastery of nature to satisfy human appetites. He was not blind to the multitude of benefits wrought by science and technology, and struggled to hold them in tension with his growing criticism of the emerging technologized man, ...