Philosophy and Technology II: Information Technology and Computers in Theory and Practice ed. by Carl Mitcham, Alois Huning

Abstract

196 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE communication technologies. Although the authors would like to see the public become more involved in the political process through home voting, electronic town meetings, and such, they do a good job of evaluating the failures of Qube, the Reading, Pennsylvania, elec­ tronic town meeting experiments, and the Hawaii televote case. And they are generally pessimistic about the idea that multiple channels offered through cable systems and increasingly sophisticated polling techniques will cause the electorate to be more informed or the politicians to pay more attention to the desires and opinions of their constituents. The authors instead call for changes in broadcast policy that would allow a public broadcast system financed by commercial stations and dedicated to representing a wide range of social groups in the United States, instead of the elite groups PBS now serves. And they worry that the speed and reach of new media will lead to greater control over the plebiscite rather than increasingly involving the citizens in debates, discussions, and dialogues with political representatives. So in the end, the authors note that it is those in control of the technology who will decide how it is to be used. That use will most likely support the maintenance of the present system rather than bring any funda­ mental expansion of democracy. So what else is new? Christine Ogan Dr. Ogan is an associate professor in the School of Journalism, Indiana University. She teaches courses in new communication technology issues and international communication and combines these interests in her research into the role of commu­ nication technology in developing countries. She recently conducted research on issues related to video piracy and the role of video in cultural preservation. Philosophy and Technology II: Information Technology and Computers in Theory and Practice. Edited by Carl Mitcham and Alois Huning. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1986. Pp. xxii + 352; notes, bibliography, index. $59.00. Available from Kluwer Academic Publishers, 190 Old Derby Street, Hingham, Massachusetts 02043. Typically, a collection of papers from a conference tends to lack the focus that one expects from a book-length work, primarily because the expected thematic unity generally emerges only out of the deliberations of the conference itself. This collection, based on the proceedings of a 1983 conference organized by the Philosophy and Technology Studies Center of the Polytechnic University in conjunc­ tion with the Society for Philosophy and Technology, proves to be an exception to the rule. It is not only well focused topically, there is an underlying consistency of voice somewhat unexpected in an area of inquiry that as yet lacks a certain amount of maturity. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 197 The volume advertises itself as only the second book to attempt to explicitly bridge the theory-practice gap in studies of information technology (the other being Zenon Pylyshyn, ed., Perspectives on the Computer Revolution, 1970). While the gap is not bridged by individual authors, the overall character of the volume does exhibit an integra­ tive tendency. To support the effort, a respected collection of authors have been assembled, including some of the main voices in the philosophy of technology such as Friedrich Rapp, Heinrich Beck, Fred Dretske, Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus, Albert Borgmann, and Langdon Winner. Carl Mitcham does his usual fine work in setting up the historical and structural tendencies of the issues surrounding the developments in information technology. There are three major divisions: the metaphysical and epistemo­ logical character of information; philosophical analyses of the inter­ actions between human beings and computers; and ethical and political issues associated with information technology and comput­ ers. The topics in the first two sections flow naturally into each other and are a continuation of the same structure. The third section, concerned with more practical issues such as data pollution and the use of computers as diagnostic tools, is not explicitly connected to the work in the first two. Topically, these readings also lack a unifying principle, serving more as a set of examples of possible issues related to the implications of computer use than as an overview of the significant issues in the field. It is no coincidence that four of the five authors in the first part come...