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Books > Professional & Technical > Technology: general issues > General
The discipline of engineering presumes certain foundational truths
that are not reducible to mathematical formulas. It presupposes
certain things about creativity, beauty, and abstraction in order
to operate effectively. In short, engineering relies on philosophy.
Conversely, philosophy can draw profound truths from principles
derived from engineering experience. Engineering and the Ultimate
crosses boundaries between a wide variety of disciplines to find
truths both new and old that can be transformative to modern
thought and practice.
The internet has changed the way we communicate and so changed
society and culture. Internet, Society, and Culture offers an
understanding of this change by examining two case studies of pre
and post internet communication. The first case study is of letters
sent to and from Australia in 1835-1858 and the second is a study
of online gaming. In both case studies, the focus is on the ways
communication is created. The result is the definition of two types
of communication that are lived simultaneously in the twenty-first
century. One type of communication is from before the internet and
relies on the body having touched and created a message-for
example, by attaching signature-to stabilise the nature of sender,
message and receiver. Internet-dependant communication is different
because no identity-marker can be trusted on the internet and so
individuals' styles of communicating are used to stabilise the
transmission of messages. Being after the internet means having to
live these two contradictory forms of communication. >
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