Reinventing the Wheel: A Buddhist Response to the Information Age

by Hershock, Peter D.

• ISBN13: 9780791442326
• ISBN10: 0791442322
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-07-01
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr

Summary

Suggests that certain Buddhist notions may act as an antidote to the adverse effects of high-tech media.

Author Biography

Peter D. Hershock is a Fellow of the Asian Studies Development Program at the East-West Center in Honolulu.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. xi
The Axis of Factual Success: From Controlling Circumstances to Colonizing Consciousness
Technology and the Biasing of Conduct: Establishing the Grammar of Our Narrative	p. 3
Primordial Technology in the Drama of Childhood	p. 4
Freedom as a Dialectic of Projecting Self and Objecting World	p. 8
The Canons of Freedom and Moral Transparency: In Technology and the Media We Trust	p. 19
The Imagined Neutrality of Technology	p. 20
Individual Freedom and the Obdurate, Objecting World	p. 27
Just Saying No to the Logic of Choice	p. 32
Technology as Savior: It's Getting Better, Better All the Time	p. 35
Technology: The Original Broken Promise	p. 39
Toward an Ethics of Resistance	p. 52
The Direction of Technical Evolution: A Different Kind of Caveat	p. 55
Cultivating Discontent: Advantaging Existence--Living Apart and at a Distance	p. 56
The Corporation as Technology	p. 61
The New Colonialism: From an Ignoble Past to an Invisible Future	p. 67
Extending Control through Cultivating Dependence: The Colonial Method	p. 68
The Evolution of Colonial Intent into the Development Objective and Beyond	p. 73
The Colonization of Consciousness	p. 79
Pluralism versus the Commodification of Values	p. 87
Is There a Universal Technological Path?	p. 94
Independent Values, the Value of Independence, and the Erosion of Traditions	p. 99
Practicing the Unprecedented: A Buddhist Intermission
Appreciative Virtuosity: The Buddhist Alternative to Control and Independence	p. 105
Liberating Intimacy: A New Copernican Revolution	p. 106
Responding to Trouble: The Character of Buddhist Technologies	p. 111
Technological Difference: The Case of Healing	p. 116
Unlocking the Treasury: A Matter of Will or the Fruit of Offering?	p. 125
Practicing the Dissolution of Wanting	p. 129
The Wheel of Dramatic Impoverishment: The Crisis of Community in the Information Age
Concentrating Power: Are Technologies of Control Ever Truly Democratic?	p. 137
Control and the Conflicts of Advantage	p. 138
Mediated Control and the "Democratic" Process	p. 142
The Societal Nature of a Controlling Advantage	p. 146
Just Saying No: A Case History of Technical Dilemma	p. 150
The Meaningless Politics of Generic Democracy	p. 156
Narcissism and Nihilism: The Atrophy of Dramatic Attention and the End of Authentic Materialism	p. 161
Rationalizing Subjectivity: The Imperative Splitting of the Nuclear Self	p. 162
Nothing Really Matters Anymore, Not Even Matter	p. 165
Iconography and the End of Materialism	p. 166
Losing Our Direction: The Iconic Roots of Boredom	p. 169
From Perception to Conception: Deepening the New, Lock Groove	p. 176
The Commodity-Driven Translation of Desiring into Wanting	p. 181
The New Meaning of Biography: The Efficient Self in Calculated Crisis	p. 187
Commerce and Commodity: The New Grammar and Vocabulary of "I Am ..."	p. 189
The Efficiency of Stress: Controlling Time and Misguiding Attention	p. 192
The Infertility of Expert Mind	p. 195
The Victimization of Suffering: An Expert Inversion	p. 198
The Commodification of Dramatic Meaning	p. 204
Consuming and Being Consumed: The Law of the Postmodern Jungle	p. 209
The Rationality of Litter: Consuming Self, Consumed Community	p. 213
The Production of Biographical Litter: Changing Minds in an Age of Lifestyle Choices	p. 222
The Digital Age and the Defeat of Chaos: Attentive Modality, the Media, and the Loss of Narrative Wilderness	p. 229
A Reason to Be Naive: Disparities in the Metaphysics of Meaning	p. 231
Calculation and Narration: Disparate Modes of World-Making	p. 235
The Digital Defeat of Analogy: The Numerology of Rational Values	p. 238
The Media and Digital Trouble: Suffering Alone Together	p. 245
Mediation and Mediocrity	p. 248
Media and the Declining Narrativity of Popular Culture	p. 255
The Mediated Wilderness	p. 258
The Density of Postmodern Time and Space and the Craving for Volume	p. 265
So What?	p. 271
Bibliography	p. 289
Index	p. 295
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