Technologies changes the world

Technologies changes the world
Review to “Don Ihde: The technological Lifeworld” by Peter-Paul Verbeek
By Yau Chi On

Don’t have much comment this time. All the essay tells is truth (or gospel if I call it holily). The three kinds of human-technology relation – embodiment relations, alterity relations and hermeneutic relations are easy to understand with examples. The continuum (stated at p.132) is reasonable as well. Just section one is a bit disrupting.

Due to the enrollment of another course, I’m reading plenty of philosophy books recently. Forgive me to be rude again (LOL), it sometimes makes me feel that philosophy is full of bullshit, a study attempted to understand the world completely based on literal apprehension, broadly speaking, twiddling with alphabet. It does not unclose the objective veil of the universe, like how gravity bends light in vacuum. What was revealed and interpreted is merely subjective, books of theories trying to find out the origin of lives by literal argument rather than biologic research. It doesn’t facilitate the advancement of human civilization. Discussion about the existence of palingenesis by a group of Hinduism monks does not stop the British rifle army ruining the India continent. Maybe Western philosophers argue that philosophy is the very foundation of Reissuance, thus the age of didacticism and modern technology. However, discovery of Newton’s second rule does not necessarily rely on philosophic theories, but antecedent Mathematics knowledge. Philosophy is just like religion, a very important part of human’s civilization, tempting to know the world as well as ourselves, not an essential part to us anymore.

LOL, it seems that my attitude is toward Materialism and Nihilism (the one who disagree with philosophy use terms of philosophy). How human interpret the world is not important at all. It does not change anything. Only changing the world is important, give us better lives, and ensure the forever survival of man-species. Science rules! (LOL, a crazy science enthusiast here)

A bit too far from the essay, sorry man. One point that I complete agree with the author is that technology deeply influence our culture. Naissance of new technology gave birth to new culture, like television programs and video games, not to mention. In fact new technologies keep changing existing culture. One simple instance is the evolution of music industry. Emergence of amplifier and loudspeaker after the World War II changed the conformation of music instruments. Wood guitar is reconstructed into electric guitar, while folk song and RNB is combined and transformed into Rock N Roll, thus heavy metal and punk. The birth of new music instruments due to new technologies changed the climate of music industry completely. Nowadays, the evolution is still ongoing, while this time computer generated sound (or simply called midi) is the pioneer.

03/03/2011