Between Reason and Experience: Essays in Technology and Modernity (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Between Reason and Experience: Essays in Technology and Modernity Don Ihde (bio) Between Reason and Experience: Essays in Technology and Modernity. By Andrew Feenberg. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2010. Pp. xvii+257. $22. Andrew Feenberg, one of the most prominent contemporary philosophers of technology, has uniquely pursued a development of a critical theory of technology. The dominant philosophical traditions from which philosophy of technology has arisen are praxis traditions: pragmatism, phenomenology-hermeneutics, Marxian and critical theory. Feenberg’s strength spans both critical theory and phenomenology-hermeneutics. Between Reason and Experience contains three divisions of three chapters each, drawing from earlier work but arranged and rewritten to produce a coherent projection of Feenberg’s arguments for a critical theory of technology. It is a succinct and clear outline of this program. On the surface, Feenberg sometimes echoes the earlier dystopian tone of twentieth-century philosophy of technology. From the back cover: “We face recurring disasters in every domain: climate change, energy shortages, economics melt-down. The system is broken, despite everything the technocrats claim to know about science, technology and economics.” Then again,“The modern world develops a technology increasingly alienated from everyday experience. This is an effect of capitalism that restricts control of design to a small dominant class and its technical servants” (p. xvii). But while such statements are sprinkled through Feenberg’s text, they are misleading. His deeper program is more optimistic and progressive. The first section, “Beyond Dystopia,” hints at what is to come. [End Page 434] Parallel to Steven Jay Gould’s punctuated evolution, which argues that different results would come with “rewinding,” Feenberg’s view of technology also considers different results with “rewinding.” Feenberg’s program is potentially hopeful, arguing that a critical theory of technology could yield different technologies, non-dystopian ones. In a sophisticated framework, Feenberg deals with the following themes: dystopia and democracy, the double aspects of technology as technical and social, the need for an environmental reform of technical systems, with a look at both social science constructivism and the philosophy of technology (p. 3). The route he takes engages the span of major thinkers on technology, from Heidegger through Marcuse and on to Habermas. But he also deals with the “social construc-tionist” sociologies of science as well (Latour, Pinch, Bijker, and Foucault). His reframing of Heidegger, modification of Marcuse, and deep critique of Habermas add drama to arguments. The second section ranges through philosophy of technology in relation to “social constructivist” social science theory, and the third section more specifically develops the title theme of rationality and experience. Contrary to the dystopian generalizations of early philosophy of technology, Feenberg’s work belongs to the contemporary “empirical turn” among philosophers of technology (cf. Hans Achterhuis). Feenberg’s work is rich with concrete and historical examples, from nineteenth-century textile machines scaled to the small bodies of the children who operated them to government safety standards made in response to frequent boiler explosions on steam-powered vessels. In both such cases simultaneous social and technical changes occurred, supporting Feenberg’s argument against technological determinism and for the interrelatedness of social-technical changes. As he puts it, “I see [technology] as neither determining nor as neutral” (p. 6). When turning to twentieth-century technologies, the possibilities of “technology rewound” are suggested by more case studies. Feenberg, himself a pioneer in distance-learning programs, appreciates that rather than disembodied alienation, there can be virtual and extended communities. Then, too, with his work on the French videotex phone system, a pre-inter-net information system, hackers subverted the “control of design [of] a small dominant class . . . with technical servants” and turned it into a communication system for dating, entertainment, etc., prefiguring the later, even more decentralized and flexible internet. In short, Feenberg takes technologies that do not remain captive to capitalism and sees in them different and more democratic possibilities. Globalization also plays a role in the book. Feenberg traces early insights arising from Japanese philosophy with Kitaro Nishida who foresaw both the multicultural and transcultural tendencies thereof. Feenberg illustrates some of the particularly Japanese cultural-technological impacts in the miniaturization trajectory obvious in electronic technologies. [End Page 435] Part 3 then...