Heidegger, Winner, and Ellul's critiques of Western technology focus on a notion of efficiency that subordinates to itself all non-instrumental values. An alternative conception of efficiency is proposed based on the Taoist theory of non-action. The ancient Taoist text, The Chuang Tzu, reveals a type of efficiency that is effective, resourceful, and entrepreneurial. It is a form of action which has an intimate rather than alienated relation to technology, and which is sensitive to the ethical and aesthetic values that Heidegger (...) and Ellul claim are excluded from the Western conception of efficiency. (shrink)

Heidegger, Winner, and Ellul's critiques of Western technology focus on a notion of efficiency that subordinates to itself all non-instrumental values. An alternative conception of efficiency is proposed based on the Taoist theory of non-action (wu-wei). The ancient Taoist text, The Chuang Tzu, reveals a type of efficiency that is effective, resourceful, and entrepreneurial. It is a form of action which has an intimate rather than alienated relation to technology, and which is sensitive to the ethical and aesthetic values that (...) Heidegger and Ellul claim are excluded from the Western conception of efficiency. (shrink)

We live in an age when the dominant technologically utilitarian worldview is undergoing a transformation. To increase our awareness of this change, Turning Toward Technology introduces readers to the possibility of an alternative technological worldview by examining foundational concepts to Asian thought. The early Eastern philosophical treatment of technology was not ethical, but ontological, exhibiting sensitivity to how human existence was defined and determined in its relation to technology and to reality as a whole. Within the Eastern cultural orientation, technological (...) development was guided by a singular aesthetic sensibility to the useful, the good, the beautiful, the true, and the holy. Instead of controlling the shape of future technology by systems of rational management, George Teschner and Alessandro Tomasi recommend a view of technology that arises from questioning fundamental assumptions within Western culture about knowledge, reality, and human nature. Turning Toward Technology aims to stimulate awareness of an alternative technological paradigm, and thus a different mode of social action that can establish an optimistic future for global civilization. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to examine the nature of technology in view of Georges Bataille’s notion of intimacy. After providing a summary of Bataille’s critique of technology, I offer my response and show that a technological device can reach such a degree of familiarity that it becomes indistinguishable from our psychophysical personality. In this sense, we experience technology not as instrumentation, but in intimacy. The old theory of technology as organ-projection is, therefore, reinterpreted to produce a theory of (...) technology that includes the technological process in its entirety, from the moment of invention and innovation, involving a movement of transcendence and objectification, to the moment of intimacy. (shrink)

_Keiji Nishitani's critique of technology as a dehumanizing force is objected to by showing that it is possible to establish a relationship with technology characterized by the standpoint of sunyata. In order to support my claim, I offer an interpretation of sunyata as a lived experience in which knowing and being are unified. One method used to experience the identity of knowing and being is the method of negatio negationis. I argue that technology embodies this method, and that thus has (...) a built-in process that allows users of technology to achieve a samadhi experience in the use of tools and machines. Hubert Dreyfus' theory of embodiment is offered in support of this claim. If it is possible to establish an intimate relation with certain technologies, then the nature of technology cannot be reduced to its most obvious dehumanizing and destructive effects_. (shrink)