The Perfection Of Technology

Never has the cold, ruthlessness of the systematized, technological society been subjected to such a profound, penetrating critique as the one which Friedrich Georg Juenger (1898-1977) presents in this book?now for the first time published in English in the author?s final edition (the fourth German edition) and under its correct title. And many would claim this book?s central thesis and attendant insights, all deeply rooted in Juenger?s personal synthesis of the best traditions of European humanism, have never been refuted.?We will start from an observation which no one who has ever made it can forget,? writes Juenger. ?Is there not a direct connection between the increase in knowledge concerning mechanically exact processes, and the fact that modern man, in a strange manner, loses his individuality, loses his balance, his grip upon life, feels increasingly endangered and susceptible to attack...??When it was first published in Germany in 1946 and in the United States in 1949 (as "The Failure of Technology: Perfection Without Purpose"), this unsettling book confronted readers with this challenging question and others stemming from it?all of them more relevant in our age of computers and biotechnology than they were then. No one has probed as deeply as Juenger into the reasons that the instruments promised to bring ever greater freedom to man threaten to become the means of his economic, political, and social servitude. Topics include: the delusion of the saving of labor; the pillaging of the earth by industry; the invasion of life by the automaton; technology?s attack upon law and property; the profound difference between technical training and education; how and why technology usurps the state; the mechanical sterility of modern sports; and the unsettling coincidence of the rise of the industrial masses and the advent of imperialism.

Friedrich Georg Jünger's The Failure of Technology (Die Perfektion der Technik,1946) was written under the shadow of World War II - the threat of a German sky black with enemy aircraft that splattered fire and death on the burnt-out caves of industrial man. "Lava, ashes, fumes, smoke, night-clouds lit up by fire" - the landscape of twentieth-century man erupts, in Jünger's pages, like a volcano returning man's boasted artifacts to that first wilderness that stretched back beyond the age of the gods. This book is the sombre meditation of a poet who has looked into chaos, even into hell, and who has not flinched.

This book examines the work of Ernst Jünger and its effect on the development of Martin Heidegger’s influential philosophy of technology. Vincent Blok offers a unique treatment of Jünger’s philosophy and his conception of the age of technology, in which both world and man appear in terms of their functionality and efficiency. The primary objective of Jünger’s novels and essays is to make the transition from the totally mobilized world of the 20th century toward a world in which a new type of man represents the gestalt of the worker and is responsive to this new age. Blok proceeds to demonstrate Jünger’s influence on Heidegger’s analysis of the technological age in his later work, as well as Heidegger’s conceptions of will, work and gestalt at the beginning of the 1930s. At the same time, Blok evaluates Heidegger’s criticism of Jünger and provides a novel interpretation of the Jünger-Heidegger connection: that Jünger’s work in fact testifies to a transformation of our relationship to language and conceptualizes the future in terms of the Anthropocene. This book, which arrives alongside several new English-language translations of Jünger’s work, will interest scholars of 20th-century continental philosophy, Heidegger, and the history of philosophy of technology.

What is technology? Why does it have such power in our lives? Why does it seemingly progress of its own accord, and without regard to social or environmental well-being? The quest for the essence of technology is an old one, with roots in the pre-Socratic philosophy of ancient Greece. It was then that certain thinkers first joined the ideas of technê and logos into a single worldview. The Greeks saw it as a kind of world-force, present in both the works of men and in nature itself. It was the very creative power of the cosmos. In the 20th century, German thinkers like Dessauer, Juenger, and Heidegger sought the metaphysical basis of technology, with varying success. French theologian Jacques Ellul argued persuasively that technology was an autonomous force of nature that determined all aspects of human existence, but he neglected the metaphysical underpinnings. Recent writers in the philosophy of technology have generally eschewed metaphysics altogether, preferring to concentrate on constructivist models or pragmatic analyses. In the present work, Skrbina returns to a classic metaphysical approach, seeking not so much an essence of technology but rather a deep and penetrating analysis of the entire technological phenomenon. Drawing on the Greeks, he argues for a teleological metaphysics in which increasing order in the universe is itself defined as a technological process. On this reading, all of reality constitutes a technical sphere, a "pantechnikon," of universal scope. This work — the first-ever book-length treatment of the topic — breaks new ground by providing an in-depth and critical study of the metaphysics of technology, as well as drawing out the practical consequences. Technology poses significant risks to humanity and the planet, risks that can be mitigated through a detailed philosophical analysis.

Arguing against the widely held belief that technology and religion are at war with each other, David F. Noble's groundbreaking book reveals the religious roots and spirit of Western technology. It links the technological enthusiasms of the present day with the ancient and enduring Christian expectation of recovering humankind's lost divinity. Covering a period of a thousand years, Noble traces the evolution of the Western idea of technological development from the ninth century, when the useful arts became connected to the concept of redemption, up to the twentieth, when humans began to exercise God-like knowledge and powers. Noble describes how technological advance accelerated at the very point when it was invested with spiritual significance. By examining the imaginings of monks, explorers, magi, scientists, Freemasons, and engineers, this historical account brings to light an other-worldly inspiration behind the apparently worldly endeavors by which we habitually define Western civilization. Thus we see that Isaac Newton devoted his lifetime to the interpretation of prophecy. Joseph Priestley was the discoverer of oxygen and a founder of Unitarianism. Freemasons were early advocates of industrialization and the fathers of the engineering profession. Wernher von Braun saw spaceflight as a millenarian new beginning for humankind. The narrative moves into our own time through the technological enterprises of the last half of the twentieth century: nuclear weapons, manned space exploration, Artificial Intelligence, and genetic engineering. Here the book suggests that the convergence of technology and religion has outlived its usefulness, that though it once contributed to human well-being, it has now become a threat to our survival. Viewed at the dawn of the new millennium, the technological means upon which we have come to rely for the preservation and enlargement of our lives betray an increasing impatience with life and a disdainful disregard for mortal needs. David F. Noble thus contends that we must collectively strive to disabuse ourselves of the inherited religion of technology and begin rigorously to re-examine our enchantment with unregulated technological advance.

The aims of CMIT2013 are to provide a platform for researchers, educators, engineers, and government officials involved in the general areas of management and Information Technology to disseminate their latest research results and exchange views on the fu ture research directions of these fields, to exchange management and information technology and integrate of their practice, application of the academic ideas, improve the academic depth of information technology and its application, provide an internation al communication platform for educational technology and scientific research for the world's universities, business intelligence engineering field experts, professionals, and business executives. The CMIT 2013 tends to collect the latest research results an d applications on management and information technology . It includes a selection of 125 papers from 781 papers submitted to the conference from universities and industries all over the world. All of accepted papers were subjected to strict peerreviewing b y two to four expert referees. The papers have been selected for this volume because of quality and the relevance to the conference. The conference is designed to stimulate the young minds including Research Scholars, Academicians, and Practitioners to co ntribute their ideas, thoughts and nobility in these two disciplines.

This book explores the relationship between modern technological progress and classical liberalism. The compatibility of classical liberalism and technology is questioned, using fiction and film as a window into Western society's views on politics, economics, religion, technology, and the family.