Spring/Summer 2005 - University of Toronto Press Publishing

GENERAL INTERESTLiving in the Labyrinth of TechnologyWillem H. VanderburgFrom the very beginnings of their existence, humanbeings have distinguished themselves from otheranimals by not taking immediate experience forgranted. Everything was symbolized according to itsmeaning and value: a fallen branch from a treebecame a lever; a tree trunk floating in the riverbecame a canoe. Homo logos created communitiesbased on cultures: humanity’s first megaproject.Further symbolization of the human communityand its relation to nature led to the possibilityof creating societies and civilizations. Everythingchanged as these interposed themselves between thegroup and nature. Homo societas created ways of lifeable to give meaning, direction, and purpose tomany groups by means of very different cultures:humanity’s second megaproject.What Das Kapital did for the nineteenth centuryand La technique did for the twentieth, WillemH. Vanderburg’s Living in the Labyrinth ofTechnology seeks to create for the twenty-first century:an attempt at understanding the world in a mannernot shackled to overspecialized scientific knowingand technical doing. Western civilization maywell be creating humanity’s third megaproject, basednot on symbolization for making sense of and livingin the world, but on highly specialized desymbolizedknowing stripped of all peripheral understanding.Vanderburg focuses on two interdependentforces in his narrative, namely, people changingtechnology and technology changing people. Thelatter aspect, although rarely considered, turns outto be the more critical one for understanding thespectacular successes and failures of contemporaryways of life. As technology continues to change thesocial and physical world, the experiences of thisworld ‘grow’ people’s minds and society’s cultures,thereby re-creating human life in the image of technology.Living in the Labyrinth of Technology arguesthat the twenty-first century will be dominated bythis pattern unless society intervenes on human (asopposed to technical) terms.Willem H. Vanderburg is the director of the Centre forTechnology and Social Development and a professorin the Department of Civil Engineering, the Institutefor Environmental Studies, and the Department ofSociology at the University of Toronto.‘Willem H. Vanderburg’s work is highly regarded by many,but Living in the Labyrinth of Technology is surely hismost important book. Vanderburg compellingly explainshow daily life in modern society has evolved to become routinelyblind to the forces of authoritarianism and conformity.We learn, painfully, not only how the everyday of modernlife fails to question the meaning or ethics of its constructedreality, but why. The book’s disturbing explanation cannotcomfort readers, but it does offer the chance to reflect on ourcultural drift and, just possibly, to realize the need to resurrectnormative purposes for our being. A major work.’John Byrne, Center for Energy and EnvironmentalPolicy, University of Delaware‘An important contribution to the ongoing debate aboutwhere current events are leading us, Living in the Labyrinthof Technology is dense with profound, disturbing, and oftensurprising insights and connections. Vanderburg’s writing isexcellent – clear and refreshingly conversational – and heperforms an important role in pulling together Jacques Ellul’sideas about technology and technique and updating Ellul’sconclusions to the present at a time when the downside oftechnique seems to be accelerating.’Stuart Dreyfus, College of Engineering, University ofCalifornia, BerkeleyAlso by Willem H. Vanderburg:The Labyrinth of TechnologyA Preventive Technology and Economic Strategyas a Way Out0-8020-8385-4 / £16.00 / $28.95 / 2000SOCIOLOGY / TECHNOLOGYApprox. 550 pp / 6 x 9 / May 2005Cloth ISBN 0-8020-4432-8 £48.00 $75.00 EPaper ISBN 0-8020-4879-X £22.50 $35.00 C12