Our present relationship to technology can hardly be compared to the situation Thoreau faced in 1854, when Walden was first published. American attitudes toward nature began to shift in his lifetime, as steamboats and railroads appeared on the scene. The advent of such penetrating technologies meant that the ordering force of civilization had gained a powerful new advantage in Continue Reading …
Thoreau’s Unsupported Anti-Technology Sentiments and New Work
If you're new to PEL and don't know what "New Work" refers to, go listen to our episode interviewing Frithjof Bergmann, or my short precog on the topic, or check out the videos on the New Work channel I manage, or read one of the many articles I've written here about it (like this one). There's a "Worldwide Conference" coming up on New Work in Detroit on Oct. 18-20 that I'll Continue Reading …
Fate and Enframing: Some Thoughts on Technology
What is the fate of humanity as technology advances? This is a difficult question not least because we cannot anticipate the technological advances of the future. It is a very important philosophical question that Marx—as one example—took seriously. What we need to do is face this question with a realism that doesn't succumb to naive optimism about the power of technology. We Continue Reading …
Convenience, Thought and Technology
No-one could argue that technology does not make our lives easier, or that technology has not been one of the great liberators in the history of humankind; it certainly has been. Our lives would be more solitary, poorer, nastier, more brutish and shorter without technology, to steal a line from Hobbes. We should hope for continued advances in this liberating sort of technology, Continue Reading …
Technology and Individuality
There is a classic anxiety about technology: that it can lead to a lack of individuality and spiritual emptiness. Why might this be? The place to start is with the lack of control technology can bring about in our lives. This may seem counter-intuitive since it is normally thought that technology is what helps us attain more control in our lives. Of course it does. However, Continue Reading …