ABOUT THIS BOOK

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

List of Contributors

Introduction - Eric Higgs, Andrew Light, David Strong
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226333885.003.0001
[technology, good life, Albert Borgmann, philosophy of technology, everyday life, things, devices]
This book focuses on a philosophical discussion of technology and what constitutes the good life. The point of access to this discussion is Albert Borgmann's important distinction between “things” and “devices.” The term “device,” uniquely Borgmann's idea, refers very generally to the mass-produced artifacts that shape so much of contemporary life. In contrast, “things” are referred to as older, traditional technologies that reflect their surrounding natural and communal context and require developed skill and attention in use. The set of questions a philosophy of technology should address in order to fulfill its promise are often at the intersection of it and other fields. This chapter states that philosophy of technology at its best should appeal to a very wide audience partly because it illuminates our shared, ordinary everyday life, such as with things and devices, and partly because the issues it probes cut across the full range of disciplines. (pages 1 - 16)
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I. Philosophy of Technology Today

Borgmann's Philosophy of Technology - David Strong, Eric Higgs
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226333885.003.0002
[Albert Borgmann, philosophy of technology, things and devices, forms of technology, philosophical conversation, technological change]
The twofold task of philosophy is to engage philosophy with issues that matter and to involve the public in a philosophical conversation about these matters. For Borgmann, the task of philosophy is to engage “the things that matter’ quite literally. The distinction between “focal things” and “devices” has proven to be valuable to philosophers and laypeople alike: Borgmann's account of the difference between things and devices is easy to grasp intuitively. Moreover, it helps people to become aware of the otherwise invisible water we are immersed in, Borgmann believes, by making them conscious of the significance of technological change as it impinges on important centers of their lives. In his view, it helps people to identify and guard these centers against corrosive forms of technology. To see these latter advantages, one needs to understand the distinction itself first. Thus this chapter describes the public character of Borgmann's philosophy of technology and presents an overview of the device paradigm. (pages 19 - 37)
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Philosophy of Technology: Retrospective and Prospective Views - Paul T. Durbin
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226333885.003.0003
[philosophy of technology, North America, technosocial disasters, technological culture, Borgmann's work, technosocial problems]
This chapter takes up the twofold task of philosophy by first reviewing the two decades, 1965–1985, that saw the formation of the philosophy of technology in North America. From an explicit pragmatist standpoint, the chapter finds that philosophers were originally reaching to the philosophy of technology in hopes of better understanding and addressing our “major technosocial disasters.” It urges today's philosophers of technology to remember again these original concerns and to take up this struggle with particular pernicious technosocial problems one at a time, even though addressing these problems at a philosophical level will be very difficult in the coming technological culture. Within this frame it evaluates several possible readings of Borgmann's work. (pages 38 - 50)
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II. Evaluating Focal Things

Focal Things and Focal Practices - Lawrence Haworth
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226333885.003.0004
[focal practice, focal thing, Borgmann's work, technology, democracy, modern devices, good life]
This chapter examines the relationship between focal practices and focal things. The chapter's meditation on things and practices, with its thoughtfully selected and well-developed examples, appeals to those who might not know Borgmann's work firsthand and deepens and clarifies, with its subtle distinctions, any sophisticated reader's understanding of Borgmann's account of this matter. Technology's relationship with democracy is at best an uneasy one, especially given Borgmann's claim that our modern devices are not mere value-neutral instruments. Thus, technology may play a greater role in determining the character of the good life than any of the founders of the liberal democratic tradition imagined. (pages 55 - 69)
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Technology and Nostalgia - Gordon G. Brittan
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226333885.003.0005
[technology, liberal democracy, good life, freedom, devices, self-sufficiency]
This chapter is concerned with Borgmann's critique of liberal democracy and his larger argument that technology fails to provide the kind of good life we expect from it. After evaluating these claims, this chapter argues that a good reason for limiting technology can be found instead by an appeal to the core concern of liberal democracy: freedom. While technology provides the basis for liberal democratic freedom, it can also threaten our autonomy by making us too dependent on devices. In the interest of freedom, we should reform technology so that we regain and retain a measure of essential self-sufficiency. Thus, to reform technology we could avoid entering into the endlessly controversial questions of the good life invited by Borgmann's critique and reform of technology. How can we evaluate what Borgmann calls the life of consumption or technology as a way of life? The chapter addresses the question of how successful Borgmann's tests are concerning the failure of technology to procure a good life. (pages 70 - 88)
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Focaltechnics, Pragmatechnics, and the Reform of Technology - Larry Hickman
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226333885.003.0006
[pragmatechnics, focaltechnics, Borgmann, technology, device paradigm, flexible functionalism]
This chapter addresses two related questions: How can we evaluate appropriate and inappropriate technology? And how can we evaluate focal things and practices, for surely many of them are troubling? The chapter, inspired by John Dewey's work, has developed a pragmatic philosophy of technology—pragmatechnics. The chapter contrasts pragmatechnics with focaltechnics, a characterization of Borgmann's vision of appropriate technology. Borgmann presents a rigid essentialism, splitting technology into “two ledger columns” of bad and good. The device paradigm is bad; devices as supportive of focal things are good. The chapter argues for a “flexible functionalism” that would counter what is perceived here as a tendency by Borgmann to reduce a device to an essential property. This chapter's claim is that pragmatechnics are more flexible and better for understanding the complexities of contemporary technological life. (pages 89 - 105)
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Borgmann's Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen: On the Prepolitical Conditions of a Politics of Place - Light Andrew
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226333885.003.0007
[prepolitical conditions, Borgmann's politics, reform program, political condition, contemporary culture, Nietzsche]
This chapter stresses that Borgmann's reform program advocates a set of issues that any political system must address if it is to be effective in a social sphere dominated by technology. It makes a comparison between Nietzsche and Borgmann, an unusual pairing, into an interpretation of Borgmann's politics. Nietzsche is widely known for his unfashionable observations on contemporary culture, unfashionable because they bucked most conventions and trends at the time. However, he did not have a political theory per se, which left his work unfortunately open to adoption by any number of political persuasions. Instead, Nietzsche developed what is being described as prepolitical conditions, or those “that must obtain in order for any healthy public sphere to emerge and sustain itself according to its author's diagnosis of the general cultural, social, or political conditions required for such thriving.” (pages 106 - 125)
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On Character and Technology - Carl Mitcham
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226333885.003.0008
[character, technology, theory of technology, reform of technology, character criticism, art]
This chapter considers the meaning of character, historically and within Borgmann's work, in order to elucidate Borgmann's theory of technology and a profound problem at the heart of the reform of technology. It finds that the reform of technology will take nothing short of a transformation of our character, and that character in turn already has been formed in a distinct way by the character of technology itself. Such a transformation of this preexisting character then poses an enormous task. In the absence of a religious teleology, Borgmann relies on the historical promise of technology and the power of poetry for character criticism and reform. However, the chapter questions the effectiveness of art and reflection alone to transform personal and societal character in this radical way. (pages 126 - 148)
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III. Theory in the Service of Practice

The Moving Image: Between Devices and Things - Phillip R. Fndozzi
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226333885.003.0009
[film, art, technology, focal things, device paradigm, montage, advertising, television]
This chapter points out how art, in particular film, can challenge technology in Borgmann's sense. Films, such as The Conversation, can help us to criticize technology by demonstrating vividly its logic and irony. Other films, such as Babette's Feast and Local Hero can disclose in moving detail Borgmann's focal things and practices. Films such as these may bring us out of the cave of consumption into the light of day. However, the chapter first shows how film, television, and advertisement fuel the device paradigm and keep us chained in the cave, as it were. It distinguishes these kinds of films from the way cinema as mass media can be reduced to a mere device, a source of entertainment and little else. In relation to this, the chapter discusses the development of montage in advertising, television, propaganda, and film. (pages 153 - 165)
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Farming as Focal Practice - Paul B. Thompson
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226333885.003.0010
[farming, focal practices, devices, focal material, Kantian environmentalism, device paradigm]
This chapter argues not only that farming is an exemplary focal practice, but, moreover, that it is the most primary and comprehensive of all focal practices. For Borgmann, the material event of the shift from things to devices is the most significant of our time; the chapter finds that land should be seen as the largest of these public, focal material things because land and nearly all cultural practices are intertwined. Arguing for the fundamental importance of place over things, the chapter maintains that farming is correlative to a place, not a thing; it warns against a reading of Borgmann that would reduce place to a function of the things that occupy it, a kind of “Kantian environmentalism.” This subtle difference between places and things becomes important when we remember that inhabiting a place is the real issue of reform and when we consider that “land as place is replaced by a version of the device paradigm in which land presents itself as but one of many purchased inputs in the production process.” (pages 166 - 181)
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Design and the Reform of Technology: Venturing Out into the Open - Jesse S. Tatum
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226333885.003.0011
[reform of technology, design of technologies, artifacts, participatory research, participatory democracy]
Drawing on studies of the home power movement, the chapter distinguishes between technologies and practices that center our existence and those that enable, in a supportive role, that center to exist and flourish. With this basic distinction in hand, it draws out reform possibilities in the design of technologies. Along the way, the chapter uses a phrase of Langdon Winner that artifacts have politics; the chapter finds that the redesign of technology encourages participatory research and development and participatory democracy. (pages 182 - 194)
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Nature by Design - Eric Higgs
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226333885.003.0012
[ecological restoration, cultural choice, focal restoration, commodification of nature, commodification of practice, focal practice]
This chapter shows that as we practice ecological restoration, even wild places like the Canadian Rockies force us to give up modernist assumptions about nature. However, attempting to practice ecological restoration in a postmodern manner, we face the same sort of cultural choice as Borgmann's between “technological restoration” and “focal restoration.” The former practice results in the commodification of nature (e.g., Disney's “Wilderness Lodge”) and the commodification of practice (e.g., when corporations restore nature through landscaping). As an instance of a focal practice, focal restoration requires multifaceted engagement and “the realization of a new kind of relationship with nature, one that enforces humility and respect.” For this focal practice to become viable for many people, more must be done to reform the political economy than Borgmann outlines. (pages 195 - 212)
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IV. Extensions and Controversies

Technological Ethics in a Different Voice - Diane P. Michelfelder
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226333885.003.0013
[technological ethics, device paradigm, human relationships, relationship building, focal practice, narrative and tradition]
This chapter appreciates the way focal things may counterbalance devices. It finds that Borgmann's evaluation of the device paradigm does not always bear out for individual devices. Simply because a technological object can be classified as a device does not necessarily mean that it will have the negative effects on engagement and human relationships that Borgmann's theory predicts; some devices actually foster these values, illustrating the chapter's points with a study done on women's use of telephones. “The machinery that clouds the story of a device does not appear to prevent that device from playing a role in relationship building.” If so, devices under some conditions may be more promising than Borgmann thinks; Michelfelder finds that devices can themselves support focal practices if they are used in a context of narrative and tradition. (pages 219 - 233)
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Crossing the Postmodern Divide with Borgmann, or Adventures in Cyberspace - Douglas Kellner
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226333885.003.0014
[cyberspace, material culture, modernity, postmodernity, technology, focal things, realism]
This chapter argues for a moderate position on the changes we are now experiencing in material culture. On the one hand, it objects to Borgmann's claim that we really are at a point of crossing from modernity to postmodernity, arguing instead that our present cultural position is much more complex and confusing than Borgmann makes it out to be. Also, while the chapter agrees with Borgmann's claim that technology is a major force in postmodernity, it argues that technology is not the only shaping force in postmodernism. We also must pay attention to the forces of capitalism. On the other hand, the chapter also seeks the counterbalance of something like Borgmann's postmodern realism, where focal things weigh against devices. The chapter argues that as technology supplements face-to-face contact and encounter with things, it can actually help to form a richer life for those who avail themselves of it. It illustrates this argument with examples from cyberspace. (pages 234 - 255)
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Technology and Temporal Ambiguity - Mora Campbell
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226333885.003.0015
[temporal ambiguity, technology, focal things, social change, gender, focal practices]
This chapter makes use of the idea of temporal ambiguity, the condition of discordant synchronous events in one's life. Imagining a world that could be otherwise would involve resolving the deeper problems that Borgmann shows with technology. The chapter finds attractive the notion that undesirable kinds of ambiguity can be eliminated through focal things and practices. But reform needs to go further to meet the additional concerns with social changes, addressing gender, cross-cultural differences, and a greater appreciation for the continuity between humans, other living beings, and the natural world. For instance, while Borgmann speaks well of traditional focal things and practices, the function of gender never complicates this picture. Moreover, from the standpoint of temporal ambiguity, focal things and practices are too limited since they are caught up within the private home, leisure time only, and the Gregorian calendar. “Unless focal practices serve to shift this overall pattern, they cannot, in temporal terms, significantly reorient the context of our lives.” (pages 256 - 270)
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Trapped in Consumption: Modern Social Structure and the Entrenchment of the Device - Thomas Michael Power
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226333885.003.0016
[consumerism, social structure, market forces, modern societies, market constraints, well-being]
This chapter argues that consumerism is the result of market forces and is maintained by those forces. Market forces constrain our choices of what is realistically possible for most of us to choose. Blindness to this fact will only ensure that consumerism remains the dominant way of life in modern societies, regardless of how many people may wish to live in alternative ways. However, the chapter's reform tactic is not to do away with the market system, but rather to bring into relief how the market constrains (rather than enhances) choice to consumption and how the market depends on a human-crafted social context without which it would be brutal and inefficient. The chapter also emphasizes how we are already intervening to constrain the market from interfering with aspects of our well-being. Bringing these factors into the foreground will enable us to reform the market that now practically forces us to live the kind of life Borgmann critiques. (pages 271 - 293)
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From Essentialism to Constructivism: Philosophy of Technology at the Crossroads - Andrew Feenberg
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226333885.003.0017
[philosophy of technology, Borgmann's theory, focal things, essentialist theories, technological designs, social sciences]
This chapter directly criticizes Borgmann's theory in light of a philosophy of technology. Borgmann contends that devices or hyperreality need to be “counterbalanced,” not eliminated. On this view, to restrain devices appropriately, we need to counterbalance them with focal things (which can be in the normal sense technological) whose very meaning would be ruined if procured by a device. The device does not need to be redesigned so much as restrained in light of something non-device-like; that is, in the strict technical sense of Borgmann's theory, something “nontechnological.” This appropriation of technology is termed “a spiritual movement of some sort.”The chapter argues that the unifying powers of Borgmann's and Heidegger's “essentialist theories” need to be mitigated with an awareness of the significant differences between various technological designs and developments. The sophisticated developments of modern technology, on his account, allow for a “subversion” of their design for purposes that are more fully engaging and contextual. Roughly, the chapter's two-level theory shows how this subversion can take place between the essentialist theories of philosophers and the attention to “differences” of the social sciences. (pages 294 - 315)
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Philosophy in the Service of Things - David Strong
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226333885.003.0018
[Borgmann's philosophy, human and things, physical characteristics, devices, general philosophy, religious elements]
On the basis of Borgmann's two works on technology, this chapter tries to step beyond them and characterize Borgmann's philosophy. For Borgmann, philosophy's strengths and limitations can best be understood in the light of things. The chapter challenges Borgmann to work out his general philosophy, especially his idea that there is a kind of symmetry between humans and things. The chapter finds that Borgmann's most significant philosophical advance has to do with his careful analysis of the physical characteristics of devices and things and of the physical transformation of Earth and our built environment. It questions whether some of the received religious elements of Borgmann's books are consistent with the radical nature of his general philosophy in its concern with physical things. (pages 316 - 338)
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V. Postscript

Reply to My Critics - Albert Borgmann
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226333885.003.0019
[history, cosmology, technological control, scientific transparency, human construction, objective givenness]
Science makes reality ever more transparent, and technology makes it more and more controllable. But at the end of our inquiries and manipulations there is always something that reflects rather than yields to our searchlight and presents itself as given to us rather than constructed by us. It is intelligible not because we have seen through it or designed it but because it speaks to us from within the continuities of history and nature. Thus the task of cosmology is to understand the interconnection of lawfulness and contingency, of human construction and objective givenness. There is then the possibility that at the far end of scientific transparency and technological control an unforethinkable and uncontrollable reality newly presents itself and will suggest a resolution of contemporary ambiguities. (pages 341 - 370)
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Afterword

Index