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A human lifetime no longer plays out against the enduring and familiar rhythms of a relatively constant world. While there are those who enthusiastically celebrate the phenomenal transformations now taking place in every field of human endeavor, and those who critically lament them, there is no contesting their force, profundity, and irreversibility. Easily the most apparent of these changes are the transformations taking place technologically. Recent history makes clear that the quantum leaps being made in technology are the leading edge of a groundswell of paradigm shifts taking place in science, politics, economics, social institutions, and the expression of cultural values. Indeed it is the simultaneity and interdependence of these changes occurring in every dimension of human experience and endeavor that make the present so historically distinctive. What has become equally clear is the fact of unparalleled and accelerating global change acting, at the same time, as an imperativefor change, culturally and socially, as well as personally. The present volume recognizes the new millennium as one of interdependence. Its contributors acknowledge that the blurred distinction between cause and consequence is nowhere so obvious as in the domain of technology and that any useful critical reflection on the process of change must be both intercultural and interdisciplinary. The imperative for change issued by our historical circumstances and their technological underpinnings cannot be successfully met unilaterally, but only through empowering diverse sources of critical innovation. The essays gathered here give voice to perspectives on the always improvised relationship between technology and cultural values from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Pacific. Drawing on resources from wide-ranging philosophical, religious, and critical traditions, as well as academic disciplines from anthropology to medical ethics to women's studies, this volume represents an attempt to think clearly through the creative challenges of the new millennium. © University of Hawaii Press |
A human lifetime no longer plays out against the enduring and familiar rhythms of a relatively constant world. While there are those who enthusiastically celebrate the phenomenal transformations now taking place in every field of human endeavor, and those who critically lament them, there is no contesting their force, profundity, and irreversibility. Easily the most apparent of these changes are the transformations taking place technologically. Recent history makes clear that the quantum leaps being made in technology are the leading edge of a groundswell of paradigm shifts taking place in science, politics, economics, social institutions, and the expression of cultural values. Indeed it is the simultaneity and interdependence of these changes occurring in every dimension of human experience and endeavor that make the present so historically distinctive. What has become equally clear is the fact of unparalleled and accelerating global change acting, at the same time, as an imperativefor change, culturally and socially, as well as personally. The present volume recognizes the new millennium as one of interdependence. Its contributors acknowledge that the blurred distinction between cause and consequence is nowhere so obvious as in the domain of technology and that any useful critical reflection on the process of change must be both intercultural and interdisciplinary. The imperative for change issued by our historical circumstances and their technological underpinnings cannot be successfully met unilaterally, but only through empowering diverse sources of critical innovation. The essays gathered here give voice to perspectives on the always improvised relationship between technology and cultural values from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Pacific. Drawing on resources from wide-ranging philosophical, religious, and critical traditions, as well as academic disciplines from anthropology to medical ethics to women's studies, this volume represents an attempt to think clearly through the creative challenges of the new millennium. © University of Hawaii Press |
