Bodies In Technology (Electronic Mediations) [Paperback]

Don Ihde (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0816638462 | ISBN-13: 978-0816638468 | Publication Date: December 6, 2001 | Edition: 1

New technologies suggest new ideas about embodiment: our "reach" extends to global sites through the Internet; we enter cyberspace through the engines of virtual reality. In this book, a leading philosopher of technology explores the meaning of bodies in technology-how the sense of our bodies and of our orientation in the world is affected by the various information technologies.

Bodies in Technology begins with an analysis of embodiment in cyberspace, then moves on to consider ways in which social theorists have interpreted or overlooked these conditions. An astute and sensible judge of these theories, Don Ihde is a uniquely provocative and helpful guide through contemporary thinking about technology and embodiment, drawing on sources and examples as various as video games, popular films, the workings of e-mail, and virtual reality techniques. Charting the historical, philosophical, and practical territory between virtual reality and real life, this work is an important contribution to the national conversation on the impact technology-and information technology in particular-has on our lives in a wired, global age. Don Ihde is distinguished professor in the Department of Philosophy, and is also affiliated with the history of science and women's studies programs, at SUNY, Stony Brook. Electronic Mediations Series, volume 5

Product Details

• Paperback: 232 pages
• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press; 1 edition (December 6, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0816638462
• ISBN-13: 978-0816638468
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.8 x 0.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,028,811 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Plasticity and Polymorhpism!, January 13, 2005

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Terence P. Mcnulty "unravelling syntactically" (Upstate NY America) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Bodies In Technology (Electronic Mediations) (Paperback)

Working off phenomenological and soci-cultural defintions of embodiment (borrowed largely from Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Foucault), Don Ihde's central task in Bodies in Technology seems to be to argue that even our most foundational bodily technological acts (everything from the Virtual Reality we may typically imagine to the simpler act of holding a gun) redefine our worldliness as selves and as relations. Ihde works hard to posit a post-Cartesian space in which technologies allow the body to open itself to many definitions of identity - most simply, chat rooms engage (and maybe encourage!) multiple self identifications, but, more complexly, Ihde argues powerfully that we can not ignore that, when I am holding a gun, our relationship (that's you, reader, and me) is not the same as when I am not holding a gun.

And this is all great. As I (admittedly a novice in the Philosophies of Science and Technology!) read this book, new worlds and ideas were constantly opened to me, and generally I would say - what more can one ask of a book? So I agree with nothing Ihde has to say about semiotics -- it's still a space to think, reflect - to learn.

But as I finished the book, I was left feeling that it never really cohered - each individual essay holds, but the book ultimately feels rushed - not thrown together - but without an overarching force of unity. And as much as I'd love to attribute that to the "plasticity and polymorphism" of identity for which Ihde so potently argues , in the end I think the disunities of the text (and I grant that it's a collection of essays!) betray the quality of thinking it posits and fosters.