“Scientific progress can at most be liberation from; it can never constitute or provide the thing that it is a liberation for.”
These memorable words are from Albert Borgmann's insightful book: Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life. Though this quote is about the notion of scientific progress, this book is much more about the way technology changes our lives. Borgmann draws a distinction between science and technology in order to argue how technology is changing the way we deal with the concrete world, which has enormous ramifications. Specifically, technology tends to commodify our lives by transforming things into devices. A violin is a thing; it requires mastery to play it, it is more of a focal point for us; in other words, it is not just about the music it produces. A stereo, on the other hand, is a device that produces only the commodity of the music it plays. While we seem to be getting the "freedom" from the burdens of our lives, Borgmann warns us that the transformation of things into devices can thin the quality of our lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment