Postmodern Encounters
3 total works
Genetically modified food has become in the past few years a portent symbol of the dangers inherent in technology and science and their commitment to "progress". The issues that have been raised foreshadow a greater ethical problem and fundamental philosophical impasse that is likely to arise, as science fact becomes more and more to resemble science fiction. Donna Haraway has taken in her work the implications involved for humanity, and for feminism in particular, this ever nearing synthesis of the human and the artificial. George Myerson examines the media hype in the light of Haraway's unrepentantly post-modern, but critical work, becoming ever more essential as we watch technology engulf our lives.
Global instantaneous mobile telephony is at the cutting edge of the communications revolution. Humanity, for Martin Heidegger, is 'the entity that talks'; Jurgen Habermas is a passionate advocate of authentic human interaction.
In 1979 Jean-Francois Lyotard claimed to have laid the 'grand narrative' to rest. Yet the ecological disasters of recent years Myerson argues, herald a return of the big story, and in a new way are a legitmation, after all, of science. Once again, the minutiae of the everyday are simultaneously part of the bigger picture...