\pm\simprev

Lorenzo Simpson's Conversations with Technology, Modernity, and Postmodernity: Some Critical Reflections

Review Essay

By Douglas Kellner

Technology, Time, and the Conversations of Modernity. Lorenzo C. Simpson. New York and London: Routledge, 1995. Pp. xii and 232. Paperback: $16.95; cloth: $55.00.

The question of technology is the burning issue of our time. Lorenzo Simpson offers important philosophical reflections about technology, time, and the discourses of modernity that contribute to our understanding of the ways that modern science and technology have created the contemporary world and are generating vast and dramatic changes for which the discourse of a postmodern rupture with modernity has been coined. In Simpson's vision, technology is the major constituent force of modernity and a key factor in generating a new postmodernity. The question of technology embraces for Simpson the central philosophical, social, political, and cultural issues of the era, and accordingly requires philosophical understanding and analysis.

Simpson's distinctive contribution to the philosophy of technology is to show both how contemporary philosophy and its understanding of time and reality were deeply influenced by the rise of modern science and technology and how philosophy in turn can help illuminate the origins, nature, trajectory and effects of technology and modernity. Simpson wishes to elucidate the phenomena of technology and modernity, their interconnection, and to make us aware of the price exacted by technology which is at once our instrument and our master, our tool and our fate.

Simpson roots the question of technology in a metaphysical context, in terms of human time-consciousness, finitude, and the desire to transcend the limitations of the human condition. Technology in this reading strives to make us better than our finite selves, more masterful and controlling, and thus to become more godlike. Technological domination and transcendence is, for Simpson, a failed project that generates illusions and uproots individuals from their cultures and traditions, creating a false understanding of self and world that requires philosophical correction.

In my reflections on Simpson's analyses, I will first take up his philosophical mediations on technology, time, and modernity. I will probe the contributions and limitations of a philosophical perspective on technology, as well as the insights and drawbacks of Simpson's specific analysis. I will then suggest another conceptual scheme -- that of critical social theory -- as an optic to theorize technology and modernity, and will conclude with an argument for a multiperspectival approach that combines philosophical and sociological perspectives in theorizing the nexus between technology and modernity, and the concept of postmodernity.

Technology, Time, and Modernity: Simpson's Philosophical Perspectives

Simpson draws on the most advanced contemporary philosophical thought to engage the question of technology. He offers a series of illuminating ideas and distinctions that help us theorize the force and effects of technology and the extent to which its imperatives structure our lives. Yet Simpson is concerned to develop critical perspectives that enable us to reflect on the costs as well as the benefits of living in a technological world and to encourage us to develop alternative perspectives on self and world that will free us from the constraints of the worldview generated by modern science and technology.

Simpson argues that "technology, through its emphasis upon efficiency and control, effects a 'domestication' of time, a reduction of time to manipulable, dispensable units geared toward future goals. As technology's functional paradigm assumes increasing authority for us, our understanding of the meaning of action is thereby distorted" (p. 4). In effect, then, Simpson will develop a hermeneutical and philosophical perspective from which he will critique and appraise the technological perspective and way of life. This involves, in his words, "three interrelated projects":

(1) to give a phenomenological account of the technological and scientific life-worlds in modernity; (2) to argue that the technological worldview is incompatible with other sources of action, which are also part of our life-world (communication, friendship, love, parenting and so on), a meaning and significance that provide us with the conceptual and moral resources from which to criticize technology; and (3) to develop the rational basis of the kind of cultural and social critique of technology which I deploy (p. 5).

Simpson begins his encounter with technology with an account of technological rationality. This requires, first, reflections on technology itself and its status vis-a-vis human values. He acknowledges that a vast literature debates whether technology is an autonomous phenomenon with its own laws and dynamics, or is a value-neutral instrument in the service of human needs and substantive social goals and interests (p. 13). Simpson rejects this dichotomous either/or perspective in favor of an approach that roots theorizing technology in an understanding of human beings and their needs, ways of being, and ends. All technological ends, Simpson claims, are rooted in human capacities and desires for communication, transportation, shelter, health, entertainment, and novelty. On this view, technology is shaped by human needs and desires which generate the realm of technics and specific technologies that then become autonomous and themselves shape human activities and worlds. Technology for Simpson thus has anthropological origins, but can become a determining and constituent force of human life whereby its imperatives, values, goals, and practices are imposed on human beings and help constitute the human life-world.

In particular, Simpson claims, all technologies are shaped by time-consciousness, of limited amounts of time at our disposal, and thus are oriented toward timesaving (p. 14). Technologically rational activity is thus efficient, saving time and energy, and it sees the world as neutral instruments and objects to be used, fit into the most effective technological nexus to achieve the goals at hand. What Simpson calls the "technological gaze" is "guided by an end that has been articulated, and hence understood, in terms commensurate with the particular technology in question. For instance, in medicine, one typically speaks in terms of halting the progress of a specific medically defined disease rather than, say, in terms of invoking the concept of health, where health is understood to involve social and cultural as well as medical dimensions" (p. 15).

Technology thus generates an instrumental world, a distinctive way of seeing the world as the stuff of domination and ordering, a specific practice oriented toward problem-solving and efficiency, and its accordant set of skills, knowledge, and practice. Resisting, however, social constructionist theories of technology Simpson insists that while there are historically contingent features of technological practices and technologies, there are also "historically invariant features that survive the transformations, features that enable us to identify and reidentify a practice or some aspect of it as technological. Among these are: (1) the separation of means and ends; and (2) the rationality of the means for the efficient procurement of ends" (pp. 15-16). Technology for Simpson is thus a way of ordering the world "whose aim is to control and transform" (p. 16).

This analysis raises the question of the relation between technology and science and here Simpson wisely suggests that there is considerable overlap, that the "border" is quite fluid, and that definitions are thus conventional and somewhat arbitrary. In his formulation, "Scientific practice aims at increasing our knowledge of the natural and social worlds by offering explanations of phenomena. Technological practice aims at solving the material problems of human life by increasing our power to transform those worlds. An adequate attempt to differentiate between the scientific and the technological, then, must take its orientation from an acknowledgment that science's aim is primarily cognitive, while technology's is primarily practical" (pp. 17-18).

Simpson is basically concerned with "the practical aims of technology and their wider consequences" (p. 18). This evokes the issue of technological progress, of whether technology intrinsically guarantees progress, and thus is unabashedly a force for the good. For Simpson, the criterion of technological progress "is the imperative to maximize effectiveness (reliability, durability, strength, ease of use and so on) and efficiency in the securing of a given end" (p. 18). Evoking Jacque Ellul, Simpson suggests that the danger of this view is surrendering to an autonomous and totalitarian technology that itself structures and determines the course of human action (pp. 18-21). Simpson wants to develop perspectives counter to the surrender to the imperatives of technology through understanding its limitations and the need for an alternative conception of the role of technology in human life guided by critical norms and the quest for meaning.

Throughout the following chapters, Simpson evokes the "worldlessness" of both science and technology, its abstraction from the concreteness of everyday life and its embedded meanings and traditions so as to postulate an objective and neutral world of values and technical processes. Simpson does not, however, explicate the mathematical projection of being in science and technology stressed by Husserl, Adorno and Horkheimer, Marcuse, and others. On this view, Galileo and modern science developed a conception of measured and quantitative time and space, and thus a mathematical projection of nature in terms of numbers and quantity. In this world-view, technology is the most effective way to measure, master, and organize reality, and quantitative modes of thought became the dominant ways of conceiving, organizing, and mastering reality.

Yet Simpson does thematize the relation of technology to time and the ways that the mechanical clock constitutes a new representation of time (pp. 22ff). The clock carries out an objective ordering and structuring of time and makes possible the mastery of natural and social processes that are arranged according to quantitative and temporal structures. From this perspective, technology provides "a set of practices whose purpose is, through ever more radical intervention into nature (physical, biological and human), systematically to place the future at our disposal" (p. 24).

Science too contributes to this worldview and worldlessness, also abstracting from the richness of concrete experience. Science and technology both, on Simpson's reading, distance themselves from experience and bracket out cultural norms and meanings in order to better control and master the objects of experience. By bracketing out cultural meanings and norms, science cannot therefore aid in the process of self-understanding or the interpretation of experience, projecting the model of an abstract worldless subject facing an objective world ready for ordering and domination (pp. 34ff). Such a scientific projection of the world is congruent with what Simpson calls a "technological anticipation" that reduces objects to means in the service of technological mastery and control.

Humans, Meaning, and Critique: Normative Perspectives

Against the technological conception of the world and erasure of experience, Simpson wants to valorize self-understanding and reflexivity, critical cultural meanings and traditions, and a normative concept of human beings involved in a process of self-development and community in order to make technology subservient to human needs and imperatives rather than vice-versa as he believes is the case in our increasingly technological civilization. For Simpson, the human being is both an unfinished project, open to the future and novel modes of experience and development, and a historical being shaped by traditions and meanings that constitute identity and selfhood. By submitting to technological domination, however, human beings limit and constrict their possibilities and become the slave of things and techniques, subservient to technological values and practices. In addition, they are cut off from dimensions of meaning which endow human life with its significance, purpose, and richness.

Simpson's important argument is that our self-understanding, our very vision of ourselves and our world, is structured by the technological perspective, by our interaction with technology, with a mode of ordering experience that sees the world as a continuum of means/end instrumentalities, objects as the stuff of domination, time as a matrix to order experience and achieve ends according to the most effective means, and the self as a organizer of experience through the mastery of means/ends instrumentalities. Against this view, Simpson wishes to provide an alternative philosophical understanding of self and world, and to provide strong normative critical perspectives to show the limitations of the technological perspective and mode of being.

In order to develop a standpoint for critique of technological civilization and practices, Simpson first develops a series of ideal-type contrasts between different modes of being-in-the-world, different normative orientations, and different ways of living temporality and historicity. Simpson's basic distinction, which runs through the book and a wide array of arguments, is between what he calls the "value-perspective" and a "meaning-perspective." Technological civilization reproduces a value-perspective which sets subjects against objects seen as material for ordering and domination and which posits values as arbitrary constructs of subjects, or as technical actions implicated in means/ends instrumentalities in which the technical apparatus determines what one does according to norms of efficiency and control.

Simpson contrasts this value-perspective to a meaning-orientation in which subjects are guided by compelling norms and traditions through which individuals establish identity and community. Following Heidegger and pragmatism, Simpson argues that humans live in a world, conceived as "a context of practices, beliefs, interests, concerns and fundamental commitments that give a point to action and provide a place for things" (p. 44). Dwelling within a given world, we appropriate its meanings and live its forms of life. The detached observer of the value-perspective, by contrast, is worldless, directed more by instrumentalities of means and ends and arbitrarily posited values than by traditions, norms, and meanings of a given world. The value-perspective is thus nihilistic in that it does not accept the validity or force of anything beyond the values posited by the individual will to power and the compulsion of technical instrumentalities.

Meanings for Simpson are thus maps of our practices and have "the character of the 'always already' in which processes of life and action 'dwell'" (p. 47). They are social and communal and make claims upon us that we accept as members of a given world. Technological practice, however, abstracts from these meanings and posits values as purely subjective posits and objects as neutral resources to be used and ordered according to technical criteria. Drawing on Aristotle, Simpson equates the value perspective with techne, mere technical activity, which is contrasted with praxis that is guided by cultural norms and traditions, in which "the activity contains its end, as in acting bravely," or helping one's neighbor build a house has symbolic meaning as an expression of caring and communal feeling and sharing (pp. 49f).

The different value and meaning perspectives also involve different orientations toward time and history. Simpson uses Kierkegaard's distinction between "internal history" and "external history" to denote contrasting attitudes toward time. The latter is directed toward a future and time is seen as that which stands between us and the goal, thus external to our lived experienced. "Internal history," by contrast, is interpreted by Kierkegaard under the rubric of "repetition," which "moves through time, where it is at home, grappling with time and exposing itself to the latter's flux; its task is to persevere in time and to maintain its singleness, identity and continuity within the flux. It seeks, then, not to kill or subdue time, but rather to come to terms with it" (p. 51). As with Kierkegaard, Simpson connects repetition with resolve, commitment, responsibility, and the construction of an authentic selfhood in which one repeats ethical choices and decisions, rather than, say, mere banal repeating of actions.

Simpson believes that the notion of external history is appropriate to describe the experience of time within a goal-oriented and means-end paradigm of technology in which the goals and ends are external to the individual, in which the end or product is something other than the activity itself, and thus in which the meaning is outside of the immediate activity oriented toward realizing this future goal. By contrast, praxis contains the goal and meaning within the activity, as in caring for a sick person, teaching students, or engaging in any intrinsically valuable activity like study, or gardening.

The technical perspective with its external history is in effect an annihilation of history, since the past and tradition have no meaning with the project of always seeking the most effective and efficient means to establish ends, to constantly innovate and overcome the limitations of tradition and the past. Such an orientation involves the destruction of history for the past has nothing to teach us, no lessons to convey, as we relentlessly careen into a technological future which promises ever more effective and powerful instrumental orderings of the world.

Developing his major theme of technology and time, Simpson argues that technology itself is an attempt to domesticate a future external to the individual, attempting to reduce contingency and uncertainty through establishing mastery of time through planning and ordering. In an insecure world, technology thus helps gain security by constructing ordered series of actions and an apparatus that will help us reduce contingency and uncertainty. Its time-consciousness is linear, positing a series of causal orderings of experience that will help us master instrumentalities. Technology is also geared toward progress, toward making techne more effective and secure, toward improvement and "domestication" of time, "that is, the prediction and control of that which appears in time" (p. 53). Such domestification manifests itself as "a will to control" and leads Simpson to conclude: "technology is fundamentally an expression of and response to the 'terror of history'" (pp. 53-4).

Technological time is the time of the clock, of control and prediction, and is future-oriented, geared toward "saving time" and "mastering time." It does not want to leave anything to chance and strives to reduce contingency and uncertainty, and thus becomes dependent upon systems that secure "technical control over history" (p. 55). The time of praxis, by contrast, is that of "an actualization of sociocultural norms, as an activation or repetition of possibilities shaped by our historical past" (p. 56). Praxis conceives of time as its field of action and as an "enabling medium" "and seeks, ideally, to maintain the singleness of individual identity through the vicissitudes of temporal existence. Indeed, our singleness, identity and integrity are both forged and confirmed by the way we comport ourselves in and through time, for instance, through promise-keeping or by demonstrating patience" (p. 57).

The time of praxis is thus the time of meaning, in which we create our identity and social relations through our choices, commitments, and action. It is lived time that synthesizes past, present, and future, as opposed to the time of techne that negates the past and tradition to move toward an ordered and controlled future. It is the time of ethical choice and action in which repetition "is to resolve to accept in earnest the challenge thrown down by time. The time of internal history is a testing time, a time through which who we are is forged and revealed" (p. 58). The concept of repetition is a key notion for Simpson and should be contrasted with the banal repetitive conformism which lacks passion, ethical commitment, and critical reflection. Repetition is rather an act of testimony whereby one reveals who one is, whereby one establishes one's identity in terms of choice and commitment, in which one constitutes one's being through resolve and recurrence, rather than arbitrary self-positing acts ex nihilio, a subjectivism which for Simpson is a form of nihilism.

Linking the value-perspective with emotivism, Existentialism, and poststructuralism, Simpson wants to articulate a strong normative critical position whereby his distinction between symbolically meaningful action and technical action can set the stage for a critique of technological rationality (pp. 63ff). Here Simpson takes on the specters of nihilism and relativism which would deny that one can establish firm grounds to carry out a critique of technological civilization. In Chapters 5-7, however, Simpson attempts to ground his critical perspectives, building on and engaging Habermas, MacIntyre, Rorty, Taylor, and other major theorists. His attempt to establish grounds of critique and his own critical perspective is one of the most challenging and provocative aspects of his book.

He begins by continuing to develop a distinction between technical and symbolic action in terms of differences between what Habermas calls instrumental action and communicative action, and the differences between functional and critical rationality. Simpson want to develop a sharp contrast between these forms of rationality and to defend critical rationality against the assaults of relativism and nihilism which would deny the validity of any strong standpoint of critique or rationality. At stake, therefore, is the standpoint of critique, of establishing a normative position to critique technological society and practice, and to defend a version of critical rationality that will withstand the contemporary attacks by postmodern and poststructuralist theory, as well as other versions of skepticism, relativism, and nihilism. The value-perspective and world-view of science and technology, Simpson believes, fails to articulate criteria that can be used as norms of critique, or, for that matter, as forms of self-understanding and critical rationality.

While Simpson is sympathetic to Habermas's attempt to develop a critique of instrumental action and functional rationality, and to develop alternative concepts of communicative rationality, he objects to the excessive generality and universalization of Habermas's procedure and is more sympathetic to the pragmatic and hermeneutic tradition that insists we derive our norms and standards of critique from our own local cultures. Accepting the critiques of the limitations of Habermas's universalism, Simpson attempts in Chapter 7 to delineate his own critical perspectives and defense of critical rationality.

He begins by attempting to dismantle the claims of the value-perspective by calling into question a key distinction of this position between the detached, disillusioned, and neutral observer of the value-perspective and the naive participant of a community of meanings and traditions (pp. 97ff). The detached observer looks at experience and norms skeptically and ironically, refusing to accept any particular way or life or set of norms as binding and compelling. The naive participant, by contrast, submits to the existing norms of one's way of life uncritically, refusing to problematize or put in question existing norms. Both positions are one-sided, Simpson claims, and a third position is possible which he will attempt to set out and defend.

As we have seen, in carrying out quite complex and sophisticated strategies of critique, sometimes Simpson develops contrasts between two ideal-types of thought and practice, in which he defends one position against the other, while other times he attempts to sublate opposed positions to move to a higher third position, as in the present case. Simpson believes that it is possible to self-reflexively defend one's norms and beliefs in terms of coherency and offering good reasons why one believes and acts as one does (pp. 114ff). Acutely aware of the serious challenges to all strong normative positions, Simpson concedes that good reasons are contextual and might not be accepted by individuals in different cultures, but he insists that within specific and given cultures there is tacit agreement concerning norms of good argumentation and that at least within delimited communities it is possible to give good reasons that will be recognized as compelling to defend one's choices and to critique practices and forms of life that are shown to be lacking, deficient, or problematical. (There are also some suggestions concerning how transcultural translation and argumentation is possible, but this issue goes beyond the focus of my engagement with Simpson's theory of technology).

While several prominent thinkers, some of whose views Simpson critically engages, enthusiastically endorse his book in publicity blurbs which adorn the back cover, I would doubt that either strong postmodernists or poststructuralists, Habermasians, or Rortyian pragmatists would support Simpson's effort to establish grounds for critique of technological society. Skeptics, relativists, and others will probably find his substantive arguments too strong, while Habermasians will probably find his critical position lacking in sufficient rigor or universality. It is also not completely certain on what grounds Simpson is appealing to support his critical perspectives. Sometimes he derives arguments concerning the superiority of one position over another from philosophical reflection on human being, while other times he appeals to a more pragmatic account of human practices. At times, following Rorty, Habermas, and others, Simpson seems to positively valorize the social and communicative aspects of human beings, encouraging dialogue and discussion over technological and social issues, participation in social dialogue, and the creation of a shared world of meanings and social practices in which technology is embedded. On this view, humans are linguistic, social, and communicative beings who create meanings and culture to orient themselves and secure themselves in the world, and thus anything like technological civilization which threatens human culture and meaning is seen to be problematical.

Other times, Simpson appeals to existing norms, practices, and tradition to criticize the claims of technical action and technology to govern life. On this account, we share norms and traditions through which we make sense of the world and should not allow the norms of technological practice to intrude into the human life-world. This argument rests on an assumption, spelled out in detail by the Habermas in the various stages of his work, that there is a difference between both the natural and cultural sciences and the world of science/technology and everyday life and that perspectives from the natural science and imperatives from technology should not be allowed to colonize and govern the social world, which derives its norms from a shared social experience and world. On this view, science and technology are acceptable in their own domains but should not intrude into areas where they are not appropriate (though more radical environmental perspectives put this latter relative legitimation of science and technology into question, though this is a topic that Simpson does not engage and that I too will therefore put aside in these reflections).

Simpson thus proposes a variety of positions to defend critical rationality, to explicit a standpoint for critique for contemporary philosophy, and to articulate critical perspectives against the claims of technical reason and functional rationality. In developing such critical perspectives, it is often useful and illuminating to create ideal-type normative contrasts between value-orientation of technology and alternative ways of social being and hermeneutical understanding. Simpson wants to insist that we not uncritically and unreflectively submit to the norms of scientific and technological understanding, that we reflect our being-in-the-world and interaction with objects, that we submit science and technology themselves to critical scrutiny, and that we develop a self-understanding and critique of technology independent of the perspectives and imperatives of science and technology.

In his critical reflections on technology and modernity, Simpson thus develops a philosophical basis for rational critique of technological society from reflection on human beings and the hermeneutical perspectives that humans are by nature linguistic, social, and communicative beings who create meanings and discourse to make sense of the world and to create selves and communities. In so doing, he provides a challenging alternative to the value-perspective of technological civilization and his account suggests some other interesting positions that I address in the concluding sections.

Technology, Finitude, and Ambivalence

Technology for Simpson is therefore not value-neutral, it contains its own specific values, biases, and view of the world and is indifferent to tradition and pre-existing meanings. There is indeed a destructive, even demonic dimension to technology, though Simpson does not explicitly argue this, in its annihilation of tradition and alternative forms of cultural expression and meaning, and in its valorization of its own values and techniques above all others (i.e. efficiency, objectivity, abstraction, instrumentality, etc.). Yet technology makes us like gods, enabling us to fly, traverse great distances of time and space, communicate instantaneously with people throughout the world, provide access to previously unimaginable quantities and forms of information and entertainment, as well as to extend our lives and gain power over nature. Yet technology makes us impatient to accept limitations and produces the illusion that we can indeed control and master a contingent and often unpredictable and uncontrollable world. It also helps foster the illusion that we mere finite beings can do anything, that we can overcome all limitations, and that infinite being and possibility is open to us.

Yet our finitude all-too-often asserts itself as we age and die, and watch our loved ones decay and disappear despite all medical technology and knowledge, as we all-too-frequently make wrong choices and observe the mistakes and failures of others as well, and as we watch even the most sophisticated technologies and technological systems fail. We are finite, limited beings and should not fall prey to a technological illusion that we can overcome our finitude.

But despite, and in some ways because of, our limitations, technological rationality, control, and knowledge are essential to human happiness and well-being. Thus, we need to cultivate dialectical appreciations of technology that allow us to be clear on what technology can and cannot do, on its positive contributions and limitations, so that we do not fall prey to either uncritical technophilia or technophobia. It is a paradox of our human condition that both illusions as to what we can know and do and deficiencies concerning knowledge and practices both cause human suffering and that we must cultivate understanding of both the strengths and limitations of our knowledge and technology. Curiously, at the same time that science and technology make possible a better understanding of the world, they are creating ever more complex and difficult theories, practices, and social realities, thus both helping us to grasp and master the world and making this process ever more difficult and challenging.

Likewise, science and technology are relatively autonomous social forces that can help us understand and control the world and are at the same time the instruments of big institutions that often control and dominate us, reducing human beings to objects of administration. Science and technology are thus inherently ambivalent, possessing positive and negative features, enabling us to increase our power and scope of action, and limiting and controlling us. A dialectical view of science and technology thus conceptualizes the ambivalence of technology, the ways that it serves both as an instrument of liberation and of domination, of both the costs and benefits of our pact with technology and inclusion in a technological civilization.

It is our fate today to live through the dialectics of technology and to try to understand our technological universe. Simpson warns us of the limitations of our technological worldview and the efficacy of our technologies and the need to guide technical understandings and practices with richer normative philosophical and cultural views. Such an understanding is of great importance in help us navigate through the complexities and challenges of the present age and Simpson's mediations on technology are of great value in illuminating the challenges to philosophy and human beings in confronting technology and all of its works. Yet in the next section, I want to suggest that he exaggerates the constituent role of technology in the vicissitudes of modernity and downplays the emancipatory potential of new technologies which are, in his view, the levers to a new postmodern condition.

Capitalism, Modernity, and the Postmodern Turn

Simpson is aware of the epochal significance of capitalism (p. 19, passim), but in his predominantly philosophical perspectives abstracts from socio-economic and historical conditions to focus on the role of technology in the constitution of modernity. By and large Simpson, like Habermas, pursues the philosophical discourse of modernity and neglects the discourses of social theory. Critical social theory, however, sees modernity as a complex conjuncture of the forces of science, technology, industry, urbanization, cultural differentiation, secularization, and other factors. Yet one might recognize a remarkable convergence between the forces of science, technology, and capitalism. Galileo and modern science articulated a form of measured and quantitative time and a mathematical projection of being that is congruent with technology as an efficient way to measure, master, organize and save time, and with capitalism which also has a quantitative and instrumental orientation toward time, technology, and the organization of labor. All foster an instrumental attitude toward nature and human beings, all promote similar worldviews, practices, and forms of industrial civilization. All abstract from human specificity and difference and tend to objectify and reify the objects of their purview. All see nature and human beings as objects of domination and thus are equally constituent parts of the modern world-view, society, and modes of domination and control.

The fierce debates over the differences between capitalism and socialism as alternative paths to modernity have been superseded to some extent to be replaced in many quarters by controversy over whether we are still within modernity, or have passed over to a new postmodernity. Taking up this issue in the final chapter of his book, Simpson argues for a qualified version of the postmodern turn. He is sympathetic to claims that the proliferation of information and image technology and explosive level of technological development is propelling us into a postmodern society and that technology is the lever of the post, the demiurge of postmodernity. He first wishes to make clear some elective affinities between technology and the postmodern turn, to argue that technology provides the infrastructure for a new postmodern society, and that a new virtual reality technology "is both an especially telling emblem of the postmodern and a particularly desirable commodity in postmodernity" (p. 136). In this section, I will thus engage Simpson's analysis of the postmodern turn and the role of technology in this epochal event (For my own views on the postmodern turn, see Kellner 1989b, Best and Kellner 1991, 1997, and forthcoming).

While modernity undermined the totalizing worldviews rooted in religion and tradition, the postmodern turn rejects all grand narratives that try to provide a totalizing account of contemporary reality and all grand and redemptive schemes of social transformation. For Simpson, the postmodern condition of fragmentation, rootlessness, cynicism, and nihilism provides a major challenge to philosophy, rationality, and the canons of critique which he has attempted to answer. Following Jameson, Simpson portrays the postmodern condition as one in which the distinction between appearance and reality is negated in favor of a superficial play of form and appearance, and distinctions are also undermined between truth and reality, authenticity and inauthenticity, and alienation and disalienation. As Simpson puts it:

The world becomes transformed into sheer images of itself, a pure shimmering surface betraying no depth and no real referent. This is the mark of the age of the simulacrum, the identical copy for which no original ever existed. As one commentator remarks, postmodernism is the era of simulation, whereby reality is overtaken by its images [e.g. Baudrillard]. As we shall see, postmodernism's emphasis upon simulacra goes hand in hand with such a society's effacement of the memory of original contexts of meaning (p. 137).

Condemned to live in a one-dimensional culture of the simulacra and hyperreal, Simpson argues that the denizens of the postmodern condition actively seek out simulacra, entertaining and amusing themselves with television, film, and other forms of media culture; theme parks which simulate historical environments or past civilizations; computer and video games; and virtual reality devices. The simulacrum, thus, "can be usefully understood as the postmodern realization of 'value' or what 'value' means in postmodernity" (139). Moreover, and this is the key argument concerning the affinity of the postmodern and technology that Simpson wishes to advance, the world of postmodernity with its emphasis on surface, appearance, the artificial, and the simulacra is congruent with the technological gaze that also erases deeper worlds of meaning and significance, authenticity, and metaphysical and critical perspectives on the world.

Technology and the simulacra thus go hand in hand in promoting new ways of seeing and being that devalue previous modes of thinking and being in favor of new technologically-mediated forms. Postmodernity thus represents the triumph of technology, a novel stage in technological civilization, where technology literally produces new realms of experience and culture, the worlds of simulation, hyperreality, and virtual reality, leaving reality behind and indeed erasing the distinction between the real and the hyperreal. Henceforth, the postmodern subject lives in new technological worlds in which constantly evolving technologies produce new products, realms of experience, and ever more surreal/hyperreal worlds of cyberspace, virtual reality, and technologically-mediated experience.

The postmodern subject is a detached, ironic observer of the plethora of images, spectacles, and novelties of the contemporary world and Simpson notes how this attitude is similar to the detached, neutral subject of the technological values-perspective. The technological gaze and the postmodern perspective are also equally rejective of metaphysics, discourses of legitimation and truth, and strong normative perspectives. Postmodern theory's critique of metanarratives, essentialism, and foundationalism posits it against the discourse of metaphysics and Simpson notes: "postmodernism's hostility to metaphysics... and its receptivity to technology... have allowed it to come to pass that technology has reoccupied metaphysics place" (p. 150). In both cases, it is performativity (though sometimes in different modes) that replaces the discourse of truth and legitimation. Yet Simpson notes that there are also differences between the technological perspective and postmodern discourse, as when Lyotard criticizes the hegemony of technical discourses and performativity and advocates paralogy, dissensus, and a pluralism of discourses and perspectives.

Simpson claims that postmodern theory has not advanced a critical stance vis-a-vis technology and cannot given its defining antinormative positions and notions of decentered subjectivity (p. 151). Moreover, he argues that both the postmodern and technological attitude "envision the vaporization of limits, of the resistance offered by reality and its otherness" (p. 152). Both, in Simpson's view, disemburden reality of its claims and demands, and give us a sense of the lightness of being. Both immerse us in the now and the immediate future and disemburden us of the past and history. Both strive to overcome limits and promise constant innovation, newness, and mastery.

Indeed, Simpson claims that "postmodernity can be thought of as the realization of the universalization of the technological attitude, as its completion. Postmodernity can be construed as the historical stage of the realization of technology's promise to eradicate limits and dissolve Otherness" (p. 153). This attitude and orientation is exemplified, Simpson claims, in virtual reality (VR) technology which promises us an entirely new dimension of experience and the possibility of the replication of the real in every dimension of reality -- travel, entertainment, sexuality, even touch, feeling, and smell. Indeed, there is already a highly developed sight and sound virtual reality accessible to us through our computers, as well as more exotic VR devices and simulation machines.

VR makes possible infinite reproduction and replication of the real and indeed the displacement of the real with the hyperreal. "This postmodern technology is thus a symbol of postmodernity itself" (p. 157), in which technology creates an entirely new domain of experience and makes possible the duplication of all texts, sights, and sounds of the world and even the creation of new identities. Simpson complains that such experience, however, produces an alienation from the body and the lived environment, alluding to the contemptuous references to the body as "meat" in Gibson's Neuromancer and Baudrillard's claims that the body is superfluous in the realm of simulation and hyperreality. The reproduction of simulation and the virtual also makes possible the commodification of all reality, in which even culture and experience can be digitized, reproduced, commodified, and thus bought and sold.

Simpson claims that postmodern obsession with the new, the virtual, and technologically-mediated experience also produce erasure of historicity which eradicates origins and replaces the real with the hyperreal. Concern with depth and greatness, with monumental works, is replaced with play with fragments and immersion in a world of images and spectacles. Irony and the aesthetic attitude supplement ethics and concern with social and political transformation. Eschewing the original and significant, the postmodern, in Simpson's view, attempts to escape from the anxiety of failure and is risk-aversive, backing away from taking strong positions that could be contested and rejected.

Simpson suggests that technology also is a mode of risk-aversion, of limiting contingency and uncertainty, and of rejecting the restraints of ethics, or the challenge of political justice. One could argue, however, that some forms of postmodern theory are quite novel and themselves risk highly provocative positions and the derision of those ensconced in the standpoint of modern theory. There are also attempts to develop postmodern ethics and politics, but Simpson is right that at least some versions of postmodern theory seem to exhibit an anxiety in the face of contingency and finitude, or complacently accept the contemporary moment despite its dangers and problematical features.

In any case, Simpson concludes with some reflections on "what is to be done" which reiterate his desire to produce strong ethical perspectives and what he calls a "meaning orientation" and an "ethics of resolve" (pp. 163ff.). Rejecting postmodern attitudes of cynical detachment, nihilism, or playful aestheticism, Simpson affirms the importance of an ethics of resolve which faces risks, takes "risks and resolve[s] to hold the course, relinquishing the demand for assurances and guarantees, be they Platonic or religious, and focusing upon how our this-worldly concerns can endow our lives with meaning" (p. 163). Simpson wants to protect "the integrity of practices" and ethical resolve from the hegemony of technological rationalization (p. 164) and returns to defend his emphasis on the importance of ethical choice and commitment and affirming the value of what Albert Borgmann calls "focal practices," those important aspects of everyday life that produce a meaningful life, including caring, loving, talking, cooking, and engaging in ethical action.

Simpson argues that rational norms can be derived from these practices that endow life with meaning and provide critical perspectives to reject the hegemony of technology and its world-views and practices over the entirety of human life -- as well as to provide an answer to skeptical and postmodern critique that would reject all normative standpoints as arbitrary and subjective. Non-manipulative conversation and friendship, for instance, contain norms that preclude treating the other as an object, engaging in manipulation, or mistreatment. A concern for the integrity of practice, Simpson claims, resists instrumentalizing other human beings or our social relations, and submitting human life to merely technical norms.

Such an orientation, Simpson suggests in conclusion, does not entail a blanket condemnation of technology or modernity. Simpson rejects the sort of nostalgic looking back at the past as a better time, which he claims informs the work of Christopher Lasch and other critics of contemporary society. Simpson proposes instead a dialectical juxtaposition where both traditionalists and modernizers (or postmodernists, one might add) show their credentials and "display their bona fides" (p. 173). This would lead, Simpson believes, to a rejection of extremes and carving out of a middle space that would reject both one-sided modernizing and traditionalist perspectives. Such conversation over the fate of modernity, as Simpson himself has been carrying out, would lead to neither technophobia or an uncritical affirmation of technology and the current organization of society. What is objectionable, Simpson claims, is not modern and postmodern technology per se but its hegemony over all other forms of life. Simpson concludes:

The new role of technology would then ideally be the outcome of something like a consensus arising from a discursive will formation, ever vigilant to uncover and criticize sources of domination and distortion, and, of course, also committed to discuss what should count as domination and distortion, given communitarian insights. Questions of the sort that I have alluded to define the boundaries for the contestation of what is to be done, a conversational contestation calling upon all of our powers of judgment. Our times demand nothing less (p. 175).

For a Multiperspectival and Dialectical Approach

In conclusion, I want to briefly suggest that we need both the perspectives of philosophy and critical social theory to illuminate and critically engage the contemporary situation and will argue for a multiperspectival approach to understanding and transforming our current form of technological civilization. This requires developing a multiperspectival dialectics of technology, appraising both positive and negative features, and avoiding the extremes of technophobia and technophilia. It also involves avoiding a reductionist approach that would reduce technology to one theoretical perspective (i.e. Heidegger, Ellul, Marx or neoMarxism, Baudrillard, etc.), and developing a multidimensional way of seeing technology and modernity that grasps the full range of their economic, social, political, cultural, and other effects.

In theorizing technology and modernity, Simpson, like Habermas, focuses most intensely on the philosophical discourse on modernity, thus downplaying the sociological, political, and cultural discourses on modernity. This leads him to occlude the centrality of capitalism in the construction of technology and modern societies, as well as the social and political forms generated by modern societies, which are also, one might add, threatened by the forces of technology and its works, as are the philosophical and ethical dimensions of experience.

As we have seen, it is the strength of Simpson's perspectives that he develops a sophisticated philosophical vision of technology and attempts to displace its claims to hegemony and domination. Yet Simpson's great strength -- his penetrating philosophical analysis and insight -- is perhaps the greatest limitation of his book: philosophy can provide crucial insights to understand and criticize technology, but can only go so far and must be supplemented by other perspectives. My argument is therefore that there can be no deep and critical understanding of technology without philosophy, but philosophy alone cannot grasp the full range of technology's origins, trajectories, nature, and effects.

To take one example: on the whole, Simpson is dismissive of new technologies like computers, word-processing, and virtual reality devices, but neither explores in any particular depth the positive transformative and empowering potentials of these technologies and the ways that they are part of a global restructuring of capitalism in the production of a new type of information/entertainment society that I have called "technocapitalism" (Kellner 1989a and forthcoming). Of word-processing, Simpson writes:

With their ability to reverse quickly and painlessly any conceivable mistake, to revise easily, and consequently to enable an aesthetic distanced and playful attitude towards our written acts of establishment, they can be seen to be symbols of immortality and to provide us, within a very limited domain to be sure, with a species of functional immortality. The ease with which writing can be revised tends to undermine the investment in the original act of writing, in the original act of establishment; any given act of this sort loses in weight (p. 66)

Equating word-processing with "functional immortality" seems hyperbolic and ease of revision seems to be more positive than negative as it can focus attention upon developing one's ideas and the creative elements of writing rather than the instrumentality of getting the words on paper and painfully correcting mistakes (I shudder to think back on the pain of typing, making corrections, retyping messy manuscripts and the like, and unequivocally defend the rationality and benefits of word-processing). Or Simpson makes dismissive comments on email, MUDs, and virtual reality (pp. 155-162) without exploring their positive dimensions. Thus, although Simpson claims that he wants to avoid technophobia, his insufficiently dialectical optic seems to imply a technophobic dismissal or devaluation of new technologies.

Yet it is also a mistake to uncritically affirm technology without a critical optic and it is certainly the virtue of Simpson's work to present powerful critical perspectives that force us to consider the limitations of technology and technological civilization and the mistaken claims for their hegemony and rule. Yet as well as critical perspectives we need a dialectical optic that evaluates technology's benefits and losses, its contributions and the prices it extracts. Certainly such discussion will be controversial, but it is precisely the dialogue and controversy which we need and which Simpson own approach suggests -- as in the concluding pages of his book.

Consequently, in trying to make sense of our experience and to preserve meaning and significance in a technological civilization, we must at once maintain a critical distance and perspective, and yet be able to appreciate and use the positive aspects of technological society for our own projects and goals. While we should be aware of how technology functions in the mode of social domination, we should also examine how technology can help with democratic social transformation (Kellner 1995 and 1997). We should clearly not allow technology and its ways of seeing and being to become our master, but should interact consciously and intelligently with technology while appreciating its benefits. Such a critical engagement with technology and the contemporary condition requires, I believe, dialectical and multiperspectival vision that grasps the full range of its benefits and its limitations. Surely Simpson's perspective is immensely valuable in this project but we also need transformative visions which indicate how technology can help create a better future and help increase human happiness, freedom, and well-being.

DOUGLAS KELLNER

University of Texas/UCLA

References

Best, Steven, and Kellner, Douglas (1991) Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations. London and New York: MacMillan and Guilford Press.

______________________ (1997) The Postmodern Turn. New York: Guilford Press.

______________________ (forthcoming) The Postmodern Adventure. New York: Guilford Press.

Kellner, Douglas (1989a) Critical Theory, Marxism and Modernity. Cambridge and Baltimore: Polity Press and John Hopkins University Press.

______________ (1989b). Jean Baudrillard: From Marxism to Postmodernism and Beyond. Cambridge and Palo Alto: Polity Press and Stanford University Press.

_______________ (1995) "Intellectuals and New Technologies," Media, Culture, and Society, Vol. 17: 201-217.

______________ (1997) "Intellectuals, the Public Sphere, and New Technologies," in Research in Philosophy and Technology, Vol. 16: 15-32.

updated