Technoculture and Critical Theory

While technology allows humanity to develop more constructive ways of engaging with the world, it also extends the capacity for domination and exploitation. It enables us to realize our needs, but can also reconstruct those needs so that aspirations towards human progress realize themselves within a technocratic, antihuman paradigm - in the 'service of the machine'. Technoculture and Critical Theory theorizes the ambivalence most of us register towards technological progress. The author explores the work of major thinkers and cultural movements that have grappled with the complex relationship between technology, politics and culture. Subjects such as the Internet, cloning, warfare, fascism and Virtual Reality are placed within a broad theoretical context which explores how humanity might, through technology, establish a more ethical relationship with the world. Examining the philosophy of writers such as Heidegger, Benjamin, Lyotard, Virilio, and Zizek, and cultural movements such as Italian Futurism, this book marks a timely intervention in critical theory debates.