Customer Reviews

The End of Everything: Postmodernism and the Vanishing of the Human

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The book is a collection of essays written with the following formula: Select a major name in postmodern philosophy (or Plato) and either one technology or one technological buzzword. Mix vigorously, but not rigorously, and call it an "encounter" or "chance meeting" between old philosophy and new [fill in the blank]. Brush off any objection by claiming it fails to account for the new technology or the paradigm represented by the buzzword. Rush to presses.

Worst offender: George Myerson's "Heidegger, Habermas, and the Mobile Phone." The primary problem with this essay may be that Myerson's entire conception of the significance and impact of mobile phones is built directly from the self-congratulatory and sales-oriented ad copy of cell phone companies--the essay literally cites snippets of business press articles and corporate press releases without giving them any critical examination. Lifting some of the vaguest phrases Habermas may have ever penned and tossing these into the mix, Myerson ends with the hopeful conclusion that maybe, if we are lucky, there will still be communication in the post-cell-phone world. (In fairness, he concocts a story about how cell phones usher in one-sided communication because we could, for example, ostensibly make purchases with them from machines instead of from cashiers, etc.)

Best essay (used loosely): George Myerson's (yes, again!) "Donna Haraway and GM Foods." Myerson still buries his essay in two-sentence news clippings, and these still have approximately the same effect on the argument of the essay as George Bergeron's "mental handicap radio" has on his own train of thought. Nevertheless, on an undistracted read-through Myerson does manage to argue that Haraway's work points to some moderate, marginally well-thought-out conclusions about how we should think about genetically modified foods. Whether you buy into the argument depends largely on whether you buy into Haraway's rhetoric. None of the conclusions of this essay in themselves tell us how to deal with the situation "frankenfoods" present, but Myerson readily admits this, and in the context of this collection that is a remarkable level of intellectual humility and candor.

Frankly, I enjoy ill-conceived mashups between influential thinkers and novel concepts. Every so often there is some signal in the noise, and the noise itself is often cleverly written and so entertaining regardless of the content. The End of Everything is all noise, and only strains (and fails) to be clever. The book is, borrowing quotes from the Foreword by Will Self, both "a cut-and-paste job on the human condition" and "achingly dull."