Confronting Technopoly (Book)

Charting a Course Towards Human Survival

Edited by Phil Rose

In 1992, Neil Postman presciently coined the term 'technopoly' to refer to 'the surrender of culture to technology'. This book brings together a number of contributors from different disciplinary perspectives to analyse technopoly both as a concept and as it is seen and understood in contemporary society. Contributors present both analysis of and strategies for managing socio-technical conflict, and they also open up a number of fruitful new lines of thought around emerging technological, social and even psychological forms.  

Edition

In 1992, Neil Postman presciently coined the term 'technopoly' to refer to 'the surrender of culture to technology'. This book brings together a number of contributors from different disciplinary perspectives to analyse technopoly both as a concept and as it is seen and understood in contemporary society. Contributors present both analysis of and strategies for managing techno-social conflict, and they also open up a number of fruitful new lines of thought around emerging technological, social and even psychological forms.

Phil Rose is the author of Roger Waters and Pink Floyd: The Concept Albums and Radiohead and the Global Movement for Change: 'Pragmatism Not Idealism'.

Foreword 
Eric McLuhan

A Trialogic Introduction 
Robert K. Logan, Corey Anton, and Lance Strate

Chapter One: The Form of Things to Come: A Review of Media and Formal Cause
Corey Anton

Chapter Two: McLuhan, Formal Cause and the Future of Technological Mediation & Postscript
Corey Anton

Chapter Three: Medium as ‘Metaform’: An Inquiry into the Life of Forms 
Paolo Granata

Chapter Four: From Aristotle via Aquinas: Understanding Formal Cause in Marshall McLuhan’s Philosophy
Laura Trujillo Liñán

Chapter Five: The Effects That Give Cause, and the Pattern That Directs 
Lance Strate

Chapter Six: McLuhan and Causality: Technological Determinism, Formal Cause and Emergence
Robert K. Logan

Chapter Seven: Formal Cause: McLuhan’s ‘Objective Turn’? 
Yoni Van Den Eede

Chapter Eight: Forms of Causality 
Chad Hansen

Chapter Nine: Anti-Environmental Art and Its Role in Making Formal Cause Visible
Steve Reagles

Chapter Ten: Of Memes, Modes, Minor Audiences and Formal Cause 
Eric S. Jenkins

Chapter Eleven: After Effects, Before Causes: Technique, Artistic Intent and Formal Causality
Kirk Zamieroski

Chapter Twelve: Re-Cognizing Formal Cause 
Peter Zhang

Chapter Thirteen: Disrobing the Probe, Unpacking the Sprachage: Formal Cause or the Cause of Form Reframing McLuhan and the Kabbalah
Adeena Karasick

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