TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 1143 Precisely because they deal only with biographical matters, these two books may suggest to thoughtful students of technology the more general questions that are so strikingly absent in them, such as: Do theoreticians of technology merely express the Zeitgeist, or does their work have lasting value? If so, how? What significance, if any, do theories of technology have? What is the proper training for people who wish to address such issues? (After all, McLuhan had a Ph.D. in English literature.) One hopes that some of these matters will consti tute research agendas in the 1990s, but for the moment, we can appreciate these books about a key figure in the theory of technology whose provocative work continues to raise important issues a decade after his death. James M. Curtis Dr. Curtis is professor of Russian at the University of Missouri-Columbia and the author of two books that apply McLuhan’s work: Culture as Polyphony (1978) and Rock Eras: Interpretations ofMusic and Society 1954—1984 (1987). Under Technology’s Thumb. By William Leiss. Montreal: McGill— Queen’s University Press, 1990. Pp. xii+169; notes, bibliography, index. $34.95 (cloth); $15.95 (paper). This collection of essays might have been called “the Idols of Technology.” William Leiss transforms Bacon’s earlier list of false notions he called “idols” into a critique of misleading contemporary depictions of industrial technology. Leiss is particularly intent on challenging portrayals of technology as an autonomous phenomenon, beyond human control. Four idols of modern technology are identified and criticized. “Idols of the Theater” involve two fatalistic visions of technology. On the one hand technology promises ultimate victory over scarcity and misery; on the other, it threatens to smother us with its terrifying magical powers. Both views portray humans as subject to forces dictated by technological imperatives and thus “under technology’s thumb.” By means of helpful distinctions between “techniques,” “technologies,” and “modes of social reproduction,” Leiss presents a “soft” cultural determinism in place of the technological determinism implicit in this idol. “Idols of the Marketplace” occur in literary descriptions of technology involving such metaphors as slave/master, autonomy/automation, and organic (live)/inorganic (dead). Emerson, Melville, and Ruskin, among others, are criticized. While Leiss is brilliant in identifying and analyzing these metaphors, he is less successful in “demythologizing” their expressive power. Leiss identifies the “Idols of the Cave” with the doctrine of reification, as defined by Lukács, and developed by the Frankfurt School, according to which capitalist social organization transforms 1144 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE human artisan into machine server. Lukács, it would seem, has inadvertently fostered a theory of autonomous technology. Leiss relocates the “logic” of technological action in the dictates of indus trialization, a mode of social organization shared by both capitalism and socialism. His argument here is subtle, and a brief summary fails to do it justice. Finally, with “The Idols of the Tribe” Leiss returns to the theme of his earlier book, The Domination ofNature (1972). There he traced the philosophical and historical reasons why humans came to see their earthly goal as the conquest of nature. Bacon was, of course, a leading figure in this account and argued the point, ingenuously or not, that technological domination was a sign that humans were once again morally worthy in the sight of God. Absent the deity, however, Leiss argues, a secularized doctrine of the domi nation of nature by the human species is incoherent. Leiss’s earlier proposal that a doctrine of mastery and domination of nature be replaced by one of liberation and self-understanding is here redefined as a principle of caring. Such an approach encom passes humans, things, and nature itself. Leiss cites Albert Borgmann ’s distinction between commodities and focal things {Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life') as a parallel attempt to reinvest the lived world with “deep” significance. In two additional chapters Leiss discusses environmental issues at the level of policy analysis and criticizes the claims that contemporary Western nations constitute historically unique “information societies.” Despite vast stores of information, contemporary society is as critically dependent as earlier ones on a well-educated, literate citizenry. One cannot help...