Reinventing the wheel : a Buddhist response to the information age / Peter D. Hershock.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hershock, Peter D.

Series:

SUNY series in philosophy and biology

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Information technology--Religious aspects--Buddhism.

Information technology.

Buddhism--Social aspects.

Buddhism.

Buddhism--Doctrines.

Physical Description:

xvii, 309 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Albany : State University of New York Press, [1999]

Summary:

By uniquely using Buddhist teachings, Reinventing the Wheel assesses the personal and communal costs of our global economic and technological commitments. Hershock urges reinvention of the technological "wheel," and, at the same time, acknowledges the need for new forms of practice suited to our rapidly evolving social, political, and economic circumstances. His persuasive presentation urges the skillful spinning of a new "wheel of the dharma."

Contents:

Part 1 The Axis of Factual Success: From Controlling Circumstances to Colonizing Consciousness

Chapter 1. Technology and the Biasing of Conduct: Establishing the Grammar of Our Narrative 3

Primordial Technology in the Drama of Childhood 4

Freedom as a Dialectic of Projecting Self and Objecting World 8

Chapter 2. The Canons of Freedom and Moral Transparency: In Technology and the Media We Trust 19

The Imagined Neutrality of Technology 20

Individual Freedom and the Obdurate, Objecting World 27

Just Saying No to the Logic of Choice 32

Chapter 3. Technology as Savior: It's Getting Better, Better All the Time 35

Technology: The Original Broken Promise 39

Toward an Ethics of Resistance 52

Chapter 4. The Direction of Technical Evolution: A Different Kind of Caveat 55

Cultivating Discontent: Advantaging Existence

Living Apart and at a Distance 56

The Corporation as Technology 61

Chapter 5. The New Colonialism: From an Ignoble Past to an Invisible Future 67

Extending Control through Cultivating Dependence: The Colonial Method 68

The Evolution of Colonial Intent into the Development Objective and Beyond 73

The Colonization of Consciousness 79

Chapter 6. Pluralism versus the Commodification of Values 87

Is There a Universal Technological Path? 94

Independent Values, the Value of Independence, and the Erosion of Traditions 99

Part 2 Practicing the Unprecedented: A Buddhist Intermission

Chapter 7. Appreciative Virtuosity: The Buddhist Alternative to Control and Independence 105

Liberating Intimacy: A New Copernican Revolution 106

Responding to Trouble: The Character of Buddhist Technologies 111

Technological Difference: The Case of Healing 116

Unlocking the Treasury: A Matter of Will or the Fruit of Offering? 125

Practicing the Dissolution of Wanting 129

Part 3 The Wheel of Dramatic Impoverishment: The Crisis of Community in the Information Age

Chapter 8. Concentrating Power: Are Technologies of Control Ever Truly Democratic? 137

Control and the Conflicts of Advantage 138

Mediated Control and the "Democratic" Process 142

The Societal Nature of a Controlling Advantage 146

Just Saying No: A Case History of Technical Dilemma 150

The Meaningless Politics of Generic Democracy 156

Chapter 9. Narcissism and Nihilism: The Atrophy of Dramatic Attention and the End of Authentic Materialism 161

Rationalizing Subjectivity: The Imperative Splitting of the Nuclear Self 162

Nothing Really Matters Anymore, Not Even Matter 165

Iconography and the End of Materialism 166

Losing Our Direction: The Iconic Roots of Boredom 169

From Perception to Conception: Deepening the New, Lock Groove 176

The Commodity-Driven Translation of Desiring into Wanting 181

Chapter 10. The New Meaning of Biography: The Efficient Self in Calculated Crisis 187

Commerce and Commodity: The New Grammar and Vocabulary of "I Am ..." 189

The Efficiency of Stress: Controlling Time and Misguiding Attention 192

The Infertility of Expert Mind 195

The Victimization of Suffering: An Expert Inversion 198

The Commodification of Dramatic Meaning 204

Consuming and Being Consumed: The Law of the Postmodern Jungle 209

The Rationality of Litter: Consuming Self, Consumed Community 213

The Production of Biographical Litter: Changing Minds in an Age of Lifestyle Choices 222

Chapter 11. The Digital Age and the Defeat of Chaos: Attentive Modality, the Media, and the Loss of Narrative Wilderness 229

A Reason to Be Naive: Disparities in the Metaphysics of Meaning 231

Calculation and Narration: Disparate Modes of World-Making 235

The Digital Defeat of Analogy: The Numerology of Rational Values 238

The Media and Digital Trouble: Suffering Alone Together 245

Mediation and Mediocrity 248

Media and the Declining Narrativity of Popular Culture 255

The Mediated Wilderness 258

The Density of Postmodern Time and Space and the Craving for Volume 265

Chapter 12. So What? 271.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 289-293) and index.

ISBN:

0791442314

0791442322

OCLC:

40113445