- Title
- The digital revolution: theophilosophical reflections on the God of computechnology
- Creator
- Laura, Ronald; Chapman, Amy
- Relation
- 2008 Biennial Conference in Philiosophy Religion and Culture. Proceedings of the 2008 Biennial Conference in Philosophy Religion and Culture (Strathfield, NSW 05-07 October, 2012) p. 196-201
- Publisher
- Body and Soul Dynamics
- Resource Type
- conference paper
- Date
- 2012
- Description
- If there is a defining characteristic of the contemporary socio-cultural epoch, it is very likely to reside in the obsession of the western world with the power of the ‘digital revolution’ possesses to transform and control the world. Of the diverse examples one could conjure to illustrate the way in which the digital revolution mediates its transforming power, computechnology represents a bedazzling advance, In one way or another the computer is present in virtually every aspect of our lives, and we are increasingly connected to its multifarious technological modalities. This being so, we have come to regard technology in general and computechnology in particular as the panacea for all our ills, including those that are not even technological problems. Because we are so bedazzled by digital technology and the way in which it facilitates global communication, we forget that much of what we communicate is less intimate and personal, less deep, less noble and less connecting. In what follows it will be argued that we have as a society slipped almost imperceptibly from believing that digital technology can make our lives easier (ie. better?) to believing that digital technology is the source of our social and even our personal salvation. Far from the massive progress clearly made in making communication easier, computechnology has also made it easier for us to be less present and less accessible within the context of our exchanges. We end up spending more time communicating with people via our machines and thus spend less actual time with people than we do with our machines. Indeed, there is a mordant irony in the fact that a growing segment of our population journey to chat rooms, not to chat with each other but to log on and work on their own computer. Never has it been easier to communicate, but it is paradoxical that never has the social disease of loneliness been higher or more associated with the despair of cultural and community isolation.
- Subject
- digital revolution; communication; culture; loneliness
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1316978
- Identifier
- uon:23293
- Identifier
- ISBN:9780646589183
- Language
- eng
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