Blending social analysis and philosophy, Albert Borgmann maintains that technology creates a controlling pattern in our lives. This pattern, discernible even in such an inconspicuous action as switching on a stereo, has global effects: it sharply divides life into labor and leisure, it sustains the industrial democracies, and it fosters the view that the earth itself is a technological device. He argues that technology has served us as well in conquering hunger and disease, but that when w...

In this eloquent guide to the meanings of the postmodern era, Albert Borgmann charts the options before us as we seek alternatives to the joyless and artificial culture of consumption. Borgmann connects the fundamental ideas driving his understanding of society's ills to every sphere of contemporary social life, and goes beyond the language of postmodern discourse to offer a powerfully articulated vision of what this new era, at its best, has in store."[This] thoughtful book is the ...

A moral cosmology was the ordinary background knowledge of prescientific peoples, who took the divinity and the moral rules of the heavenly bodies for granted. That unified world view was disrupted by the European Enlightenment, which divided moral cosmology into physics and ethics: physics tells us what is, ethics tells us what we ought to do. While knowledge of physics has become hard, and understanding ethics has become shifting and uncertain, nostalgia for a unified cosmic understandin...

We live in a culture shaped and fueled by technology. Usually we equate access to technology with opportunity and the chance to pursue "the good life." Power Failure raises some crucial, if disconcerting, questions about technology: If technology liberates us, what kind of liberation does it promise? Are we prospering, and by what definition?Albert Borgmann looks at the relationship between Christianity and technology by examining some of the "invisible" dangers of a technology-driv...

America is a wonderful and magnificent country that affords its citizens the broadest freedoms and the greatest prosperity in the world. But it also has its share of warts. It is embroiled in a war that many of its citizens consider unjust and even illegal. It continues to ravage the natural environment and ignore poverty both at home and abroad, and its culture is increasingly driven by materialism and consumerism. But America, for better or for worse, is still a nation that we h...

Postphenomenological Investigations: Essays on Human–Technology Relations provides an introduction to the school of thought called postphenomenology and showcases projects at the cutting edge of this perspective. Postphenomenology presents a unique blend of insights from the philosophical traditions of phenomenology and American pragmatism, and applies them to studies of user relations to technologies. These studies provide deep descriptions of the ways technologies transform our abilities...

Is the Internet the key to a reinvigorated public life? Or will it fragment society by enabling citizens to associate only with like-minded others? Online community has provided social researchers with insights into our evolving social life. As suburbanization and the breakdown of the extended family and neighborhood isolate individuals more and more, the Internet appears as a possible source for reconnection. Are virtual communities 'real' enough to support the kind of personal commitment...

Engineering the Climate: The Ethics of Solar Radiation Management discusses the ethical issues associated with deliberately engineering a cooler climate to combat global warming. Climate engineering (also known as geoengineering) has recently experienced a surge of interest given the growing likelihood that the global community will fail to limit the temperature increases associated with greenhouse gases to safe levels. Deliberate manipulation of solar radiation to combat climate change is...

Moral Soundings takes a fresh new approach to introducing students and general readers to contemporary ethics. Rather than surveying the standard fare in a typical anthology format, Furrow collects diversified essays around a structured theme: does Western culture face a moral crisis of values? Prominent voices in the humanities and social sciences provide a range of perspectives on a concentrated set of ethical questions dealing with such topics as family values, the morality of ...

How much of science is culturally constructed? How much depends on language and metaphor? How do our ideas about nature connect with reality? Can nature be "reinvented" through theme parks and malls, or through restoration?Reinventing Nature? is an interdisciplinary investigation of how perceptions and conceptions of nature affect both the individual experience and society's management of nature. Leading thinkers from a variety of fields -- philosophy, psychology, sociolog...