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HOWARD P. SEGAL, FOR THE EDITORS In November 1979 the Humanities
Department of the University of Michi gan's College of Engineering
sponsored a symposium on ''Technology and Pessimism. " The
symposium included scholars from a variety of fields and carefully
balanced critics and defenders of modern technology, broadly
defined. Although by this point it was hardly revolutionary to
suggest that technology was no longer automatically equated with
optimism and in turn with unceasing social advance, the idea of
linking technology so explicitly with pessimism was bound to
attract attention. Among others, John Noble Wilford, a New York
Times science and technology correspondent, not only covered the
symposium but also wrote about it at length in the Times the
following week. As Wilford observed, "Whatever their disagreements,
the participants agreed that a mood of pessimism is overtaking and
may have already displaced the old optimistic view of history as a
steady and cumulative expansion of human power, the idea of
inevitable progress born in the Scientific and Industrial Rev
olutions and dominant in the 19th century and for at least the
first half of this century. " Such pessimism, he continued, "is fed
by growing doubts about soci ety's ability to rein in the seemingly
runaway forces of technology, though the participants conceded that
in many instances technology was more the symbol than the substance
of the problem."
This book proposes a revisionist approach to democratic politics.
Yaron Ezrahi focuses on the creative unconscious collective
imagination that generates ever-changing visions of legitimate
power and authority, which compete for enactment and
institutionalization in the political arena. If, in the past,
political authority was grounded in fictions such as the divine
right of kings, the laws of nature, historical determinism and
scientism, today the space of democratic politics is filled with
multiple alternative social imaginaries of the desirable political
order. Exposure to electronic mass media has made contemporary
democratic publics more aware that credible popular fictions have
greater impact on shaping our political realities than do rational
social choices or moral arguments. The pressing political question
in contemporary democracy is, therefore, how to select and enact
political fictions that promote peace and how to found the
political order on checks and balances between alternative
political imaginaries of freedom and justice.
This collection of essays from international scholars from various
disciplines addresses the theme of technological pessimism; the
conviction that technology has given us the means not only to
achieve unlimited progress, but to destroy ourselves and our most
cherished values.
This book proposes a revisionist approach to democratic politics.
Yaron Ezrahi focuses on the creative unconscious collective
imagination that generates ever-changing visions of legitimate
power and authority, which compete for enactment and
institutionalization in the political arena. If, in the past,
political authority was grounded in fictions such as the divine
right of kings, the laws of nature, historical determinism and
scientism, today the space of democratic politics is filled with
multiple alternative social imaginaries of the desirable political
order. Exposure to electronic mass media has made contemporary
democratic publics more aware that credible popular fictions have
greater impact on shaping our political realities than do rational
social choices or moral arguments. The pressing political question
in contemporary democracy is, therefore, how to select and enact
political fictions that promote peace and how to found the
political order on checks and balances between alternative
political imaginaries of freedom and justice.
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