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Title: The Cult of Information: A Neo-Luddite Treatise on High Tech, Artificial Intelligence, and the True Art of Thinking by Theodore Roszak ISBN: 0520085841 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 1994 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4
Rating: 5
Summary: Business People Should Read It
Comment: Roszak bursts the bubble of marketing hype that touts information technology as an all-powerful force that can do anything for business or society. Those of us involved in consulting, communications, product development and CRM can benefit from this perspective, so that we do not overpromise. This neo-luddite is not opposed to technology, but he wants us to know its limitations and its effect on our humanity. The book was prescient when it was written a decade ago, and today its lessons seem all the more important. My only criticism is I wish the author would offer constructive suggestions for those of us who have to make decisions on information technology. He rips down our facade, but does not tell us how to rebuild.
Rating: 3
Summary: A Demonstration of Human Emotion
Comment: The Cult of Information is a heartfelt but in the end unsatisfying book, The cause for this disappointment can be found in the book's subtitle which contains the phrase 'And The True Art of Thinking'. Roszak is deeply concerned that the computer is commonly used as a model of the brain. He is concerned by the importance that some give to computer skills. He is concerned that the time taken to learn computer skills lessens the amount of time children have to learn how to live in a truly human environment. He is concerned that people will begin to think that they can only act in the strictly procedural way that computers act. He is concerned that the computer brain model will make people believe that they can only aspire to the rudimentary types of interactions that computers are capable of.
Roszak spends most of his book creating examples to illustrate his concerns. However the book would have been better is Roszak had a better idea of what human thinking was really about. Instead of many many declarations that human thought is intuitive and impossible to explain, a review of the brain mechanisms that have been discovered to be behind thought, learning, emotion etc. would have been much better.
Roszak would have discovered that far being purely procedural devices, new models of computer activity are now in widespread use. These models were developed because the lack of capability that the procedural model exhibits was recognized by specialists in computer science and artificial intelligence. Indeed the same criticism that Roszak gives of computers not being capable of truly fitting itself for detailed interaction in a human environment was one of the reasons that these new models were developed. New 'situated' models of computer behavior are designed from the beginning to fit themselves in to the world of humanity. They are designed as an attempt to do the routine things such as driving a car, mowing a lawn etc. that Roszak says that computers are incapable of. That these are very difficult tasks for a computer to do and that true success in this area has not yet been achieved does not deny the fact that the attempt is bing made.
Roszak seems to have a very narrow view on what human interaction is about. He does not attempt to describe it clearly. His understanding of Marshall Mcluhan is definitely lacking. He makes a statement about Marshall Mcluhan's views on television that is clearly incorrect. His lack of understanding of human activities is shown by his confounding of activities that Mcluhan would have called 'hot' and 'cool'. For Roszak, learning is a hot occupation. Learning is a matter of solitary thought whose goal is develop to a private understanding. Roszak never seems to describe a 'cool' interaction that takes place publicly and whose goal is sharing and accomplishment.
Roszak's book is worth reading for the depth and sincerity of its concerns. It would have been better if the computer and modern forms of computer mediated interactions would have been describe doing, were more than a cartoon outline. As Mcluhan and many others have demonstrated the computer is part of a technological development that is changing the way people interact and so changes their view of themselves. Some of these changes are for the good and others are most definitely for the ill. Mcluhan and Innis, years before Roszak, recognized this and founded an insightful literature which explores this area. Roszak describes his book as a treatise. However it is more of an emotional cry in opposition to the ill effects that computers and computer mediated communication can have on humanity. Read it to understand the concerns that the neo-Luddites, as Roszak describes himself, have about technology. Read Mcluhan and others to understand these effects.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Full-Broadsided Body Punch To Conventional Wisdom!
Comment: This book is a thoughtful and thought-provoking examination of both the meaning of and the consequences associated with the rising computer information cult within contemporary society. Roszak is a skilled writer and an even more perceptive thinker. He quickly disposes of the contemporary idea equating data or information, on the one hand, with knowledge and wisdom, on the other hand. He despairs of the notion that technological progress is an unalloyed blessing, and provides a lot of supporting documentation illustrating that for all those capabilities we gain through the use of digital technology, for example, we also lose important capabilities and perspectives.
According to Roszak, we have now come to almost rely on exclusively rational,"logical", and quantifiable methods of understanding everything around us, often to the detriment of ignoring more traditional and time-honored methods of knowing. This, in turn, leads to a very narrow perspective of how it is that the world operates, one devoid of anything not quantitative, anything comprised of more "qualitative" means of observation. Thus, to the digitally oriented logical and rational mind, anything not disposed to undertanding through calculation and the scientific method simply is not real. Furthermore, he shows us, such digital computing techniques creates as many problems as it solves.
He fears for good reason that we are falling into a hyperbolized and superficial culture where we have come to completely depend on scientific rationalism as it is depicted by the media, and that this creates a conundrum we cannot escape from, since many of the problems associated with modern society stem from this increasingly exlusively scientific and rational approach toward problem-solving.
As with other contemporary critics of the new Digital Intelligence cult like social critic Neil Postman, Roszak argues for a more comprehensive perspective , one that places the tools of computer technology at the behest of a more broad-based intelligence, one that recognizes that there is a whole range of ways of knowing and understanding that those contained in programming code. This is a provocative and thought-indicing book. I enjoyed and learned from it, and recommend it to anyone who enjoys watching a superior intellect at work, and who also appreciated the thread of a finely-hewn intellectual argument. Enjoy!
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Title: Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology by Neil Postman ISBN: 0679745408 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 1993 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman ISBN: 0140094385 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 1986 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition by Theodore Roszak ISBN: 0520201221 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 1995 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Building a Bridge to the 18th Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future (Vintage) by Neil Postman ISBN: 0375701273 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 10 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Conscientious Objections: Stirring Up Trouble About Language, Technology, and Education by Neil Postman ISBN: 067973421X Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 1992 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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