The technologies, markets, and administrations of
today's knowledge society are in crisis. We face
recurring disasters in every domain: climate change,
energy shortages, economic meltdown. The system is
broken, despite everything the technocrats claim to know
about science, technology, and economics. These problems
are exacerbated by the fact that today powerful
technologies have unforeseen effects that disrupt
everyday life; the new masters of technology are not
restrained by the lessons of experience, and accelerate
change to the point where society is in constant
turmoil. In Between Reason and Experience, leading
philosopher of technology Andrew Feenberg makes a case
for the interdependence of reason--scientific knowledge,
technical rationality--and experience. Feenberg examines
different aspects of the tangled relationship between
technology and society from the perspective of critical
theory of technology, an approach he has pioneered over
the past twenty years. Feenberg points to two examples
of democratic interventions into technology: the
Internet (in which user initiative has influenced
design) and the environmental movement (in which science
coordinates with protest and policy). He examines
methodological applications of critical theory of
technology to the case of the French Minitel computing
network and to the relationship between national culture
and technology in Japan. Finally, Feenberg considers the
philosophies of technology of Heidegger, Habermas,
Latour, and Marcuse. The gradual extension of democracy
into the technical sphere, Feenberg argues, is one of
the great political transformations of our time. Inside
Technology series
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