Living In The Labyrinth Of Technology

From the very beginnings of their existence human beings have distinguishedthemselves from other animals by not taking immediate experience for granted.Everythi... » 

From the very beginnings of their existence human beings have distinguishedthemselves from other animals by not taking immediate experience for granted.Everything was symbolized according to its meaning and value a fallen branchfrom a tree became a lever a tree trunk floating in the river became a canoe.Homo logos created communities based on cultures humanity?s firstmegaproject.Further symbolization of the human community and its relation tonature led to the possibility of creating societies and civilizations.Everything changed as these interposed themselves between the group and nature.Homo societas created ways of life able to give meaning direction and purposeto many groups by means of very different cultures humanity?s secondmegaproject. What Das Kapital did for the nineteenth century and La techniquedid for the twentieth Willem H. Vanderburg?sLiving in the Labyrinth ofTechnology seeks to create for the twentyfirst century an attempt atunderstanding the world in a manner not shackled to overspecialized scientificknowing and technical doing. Western civilization may well be creatinghumanity?s third megaproject based not on symbolization for making sense ofand living in the world but on highly specialized desymbolized knowingstripped of all peripheral understanding. Vanderburg focuses on twointerdependent forces in his narrative namely people changing technology andtechnology changing people. The latter aspect although rarely consideredturns out to be the more critical one for understanding the spectacularsuccesses and failures of contemporary ways of life. As technology continues tochange the social and physical world the experiences of this world ?grow?people?s minds and society?s cultures thereby recreating human life in theimage of technology. Living in the Labyrinth of Technology argues that thetwentyfirst century will be dominated by this pattern unless societyintervenes on human as opposed to technical terms. «