Thinking about Technology - by Gil Germain (Paperback)

About the Book

This book illustrates the centrality of technological thought and action to today's world and offers a critique of technology as its dominant organizing principle. Germain exposes the flaw in the technological vision while suggesting ways to inhabit the technological landscape...

Book Synopsis

The world we make reflects the way reality is perceived, and today the world is perceived primarily in technological terms. So argues Gil Germain in Thinking About Technology: How the Technological Mind Misreads Reality. Given the connection between perception and action, or thinking and doing, Germain first highlights the central features of technological worldview to better understand the contemporary drive to master the conditions of human existence. He then boldly proposes that the technological worldview seriously misreads the nature of the world it seeks mastery over, and shows how this misinterpretation invariably leads to the technologically-related challenges currently vexing the contemporary social order, from the drift toward a posthuman future to the anti-globalization backlash. Germain closes Thinking About Technology by articulating an alternative worldview to the technological perspective and illustrating how this re-reading of reality might help us inhabit the technological landscape in ways better attuned to the human condition.

Review Quotes

"Unlike many recent books about the impacts of technology, this monograph is not concerned with teasing out the implications of genetic engineering, nanomaterials, or other powerful new technologies. It does not rehearse familiar wholesale judgments of utopian or dystopian futures driven by technologies. Germain's concern is with the modern world view or mind-set. How might this mind-set skew our understanding of the world and what it is to be human? Germain's ambitious "goal is not to think within the parameters of technological thought but to situate oneself in a position where it is possible to ... assess [technology's] limits and possibilities." He draws from a rich array of writers, notably Plato and French cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard, in developing a critical perspective on the technological mind-set and its limits and unacknowledged assumptions. Germain (political thought, Univ. of Prince Edward Island, Canada) urges a "skeptical attitude," questioning or doubting the conviction that technology must determine our fate; instead, he embraces tension, yearning, and eros as replacements.... [T] he book ends with a list of concrete and plausible recommendations for acting in "a world with limits." Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers." --Choice Reviews

"Germain's examination of the effect of technology on modern man is certainly welcome. . . Thinking About Technology is at its best when discussing Saunders' "Jon". . . Germain analyzes the story with both style and substance, leading the reader to wish for a standalone piece situating "Jon" amongst the enduring debates of political philosophy." --VoegelinView

"The author both situates us within the context of the philosophical tradition and opens us up to questions concerning our destiny as humans. This book is both well-conceived and elegantly written, and although it will find much interest among political scientists, political philosophers and those interested in the philosophy of science and technology, it also will be found accessible by generally informed, curious and concerned readers." --Tom Darby, Carleton University

"Thinking About Technology: How the Technological Mind Misreads Reality is an engaging and finely argued assessment of our technological civilization. Germain's analysis dispenses with cant in order to examine the world we have created soberly and judiciously. His distinction between technology and technological thinking circumvents the tiresome charge of Luddite regarding the former while offering a sustained and principled argument as to why we should nonetheless have serious reservations about the latter. Germain explores the work of many classical and contemporary authors in order to make an argument that is nonetheless ultimately his own. There is an incisiveness and clarity in the book that comes only with genuine mastery of the subject. And as an added perk, he offers a fresh and original interpretation of a story by one of the world's most remarkable contemporary authors--George Sanders. Thinking About Technology: How the Technological Mind Misreads Reality is a must read for anyone who wishes to understand the nature and implications of modern technological civilization." --Ron Srigley, Laurentian University of Sudbury

About the Author

Gil Germain is professor of political thought at the University of Prince Edward Island.