Technology and Values provides a highly useful collection of essays organized around issues related to science, technology, public health, economics, the environment, and ethical theory. The editors present effective introductions that provide background information as well as philosophical tools and case studies to facilitate understanding of the variety of issues emanating from the most significant developments in technology, including the effects on privacy of the widespread use of computers to store and retrieve personal information and the ethical considerations of genetic engineering.

From editors Carl Mitcham and Robert Mackey comes an unusually reflective and wide-ranging colloquium on technology as a philosophical problem. Organized into sections on conceptual issues, ethical and political critiques, religious critiques, existentialist critiques, and metaphysical studies, Philosophy and Technology features an introductory overview that suggests the aims of truly comprehensive philosophy of technology. Philosophy and Technology features essays by Jacques Ellul, Lewis Mumford, Ortega y Gasset, and C.S. Lewis. This revised and fully updated edition features a comprehensive bibliography.

Technology is no longer confined to the laboratory but has become an established part of our daily lives. Its sophistication offers us power beyond our human capacity which can either dazzle or threaten; it depends who is in control. Living in a Technological Culture challenges traditionally held assumptions about the relationship between `man-and-machine'. It argues that contemporary science does not shape technology but is shaped by it. Neither discipline exists in a moral vacuum, both are determined by politics rather than scientific inquiry. By questioning our existing uses of technology, this book opens up wider debate on the shape of things to come and whether we should be trying to change them now. As an introduction to the philosophy of technology this will be valuable to students, but will be equally engaging for the general reader.

An account of conflicts within engineering in the 1960s that helped shape our dominant contemporary understanding of technological change as the driver of history. In the late 1960s an eclectic group of engineers joined the antiwar and civil rights activists of the time in agitating for change. The engineers were fighting to remake their profession, challenging their fellow engineers to embrace a more humane vision of technology. In Engineers for Change, Matthew Wisnioski offers an account of this conflict within engineering, linking it to deep-seated assumptions about technology and American life. The postwar period in America saw a near-utopian belief in technology's beneficence. Beginning in the mid-1960s, however, society—influenced by the antitechnology writings of such thinkers as Jacques Ellul and Lewis Mumford—began to view technology in a more negative light. Engineers themselves were seen as conformist organization men propping up the military-industrial complex. A dissident minority of engineers offered critiques of their profession that appropriated concepts from technology's critics. These dissidents were criticized in turn by conservatives who regarded them as countercultural Luddites. And yet, as Wisnioski shows, the radical minority spurred the professional elite to promote a new understanding of technology as a rapidly accelerating force that our institutions are ill-equipped to handle. The negative consequences of technology spring from its very nature—and not from engineering's failures. “Sociotechnologists” were recruited to help society adjust to its technology. Wisnioski argues that in responding to the challenges posed by critics within their profession, engineers in the 1960s helped shape our dominant contemporary understanding of technological change as the driver of history.

This ninth volume is one of the most arnbitious in the Philosophy and Technology series. Edited by technopolitical philosopher Langdon Winner, it assembles an impressive collection of philosophers and political theorists to discuss one of the most important topics of the end of the twentieth century - the bearing of technology, in all its rarnifica tions, on the practice of democratic politics in the developed world. When set beside the previous volume in the series - Europe, America, and Teehnology - the two together open a philosophical dialogue of great significance about the ways technology challenges democracy at its very roots. Some philosophers think the attack is fatal. Others are optimistic that democratic means can be discovered, or invented, for the control of technology. Still others object to an optimism-versus-pes simism formulation of the issue. But alI agree that the issue is highly significant, one that demands serious philosophical inquiry. The Society for Philosophy and Technology was fortunate in being able to draw this group of writers to Bordeaux, France, in 1989, along with a large number of others whose contributions to the debate could not be included here. It is equally fortunate to have chosen Langdon Winner as president when the time carne to select the best of the papers to fashion this volume. University of Delaware PAUL T.

Committee Serial No. 13. Considers technology assessment requirements for legislative and executive branches of government.

The new edition of this authoritative introduction to the philosophy of technology includes recent developments in the subject, while retaining the range and depth of its selection of seminal contributions and its much-admired editorial commentary. Remains the most comprehensive anthology on the philosophy of technology available Includes editors’ insightful section introductions and critical summaries for each selection Revised and updated to reflect the latest developments in the field Combines difficult to find seminal essays with a judicious selection of contemporary material Examines the relationship between technology and the understanding of the nature of science that underlies technology studies