Coeckelbergh, Mark (Author)
The MIT Press
Publication date: 2017
Language: English
Physical Details: 336 pages
An account of the complex relationship between technology and romanticism that links nineteenth-century monsters, automata, and mesmerism with twenty-first-century technology's magic devices and romantic cyborgs.Romanticism and technology are widely assumed to be opposed to each other. Romanticism -- understood as a reaction against rationalism and objectivity -- is perhaps the last thing users and developers of information and communication technology (ICT) think about when they engage with computer programs and electronic devices. And yet, as Mark Coeckelbergh argues in this book, this way of thinking about technology is itself shaped by romanticism and obscures a better and deeper understanding of our relationship to technology. Coeckelbergh describes the complex relationship between technology and romanticism that links nineteenth-century monsters, automata, and mesmerism with twenty-first-century technology's magic devices and romantic cyborgs.Coeckelbergh argues that current uses of ICT can be interpreted as attempting a marriage of Enlightenment rationalism and romanticism. He describes the "romantic dialectic," when this new kind of material romanticism, particularly in the form of the cyborg as romantic figure, seems to turn into its opposite. He shows that both material romanticism and the objections to it are still part of modern thinking, and part of the romantic dialectic. Reflecting on what he calls "the end of the machine," Coeckelbergh argues that to achieve a more profound critique of contemporary technologies and culture, we need to explore not only different ways of thinking but also different technologies -- and that to accomplish the former we require the latter.
...MoreReview Alexander, Amir R. (2018) Review of "New Romantic Cyborgs: Romanticism, Information Technology, and the End of the Machine". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 228-229).
Similar Citations
Thesis
Sayers, Jentery;
(2011)
How Text Lost Its Source: Magnetic Recording Cultures
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001567268/)
Book
George Ogola;
(2023)
The Future of Television in the Global South: Reflections from Selected Countries
(/p/isis/citation/CBB491303826/)
Article
Maggini, Golfo;
(2013)
Bodily Presence, Absence, and their Ethical Challenges: Towards a Phenomenological Ethics of the Virtual
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001201745/)
Article
Tiago Saraiva;
Ana Cardoso de Matos;
(April 2017)
Technological Nocturne: The Lisbon Industrial Institute and Romantic Engineering (1849–1888)
(/p/isis/citation/CBB445246378/)
Book
Reynolds, Nicole;
(2010)
Building Romanticism: Literature and Architecture in Nineteenth-Century Britain
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001211500/)
Book
Sheila J. Nayar;
(2018)
Renaissance Responses to Technological Change
(/p/isis/citation/CBB968641703/)
Article
Oosterhout, Dianne Van;
(2008)
From Colonial to Postcolonial Irrigation Technology: Technological Romanticism and the Revival of Colonial Water Tanks in Java, Indonesia
(/p/isis/citation/CBB000950519/)
Article
Hadzigeorgiou, Yannis;
Klassen, Stephen;
Klassen, Cathrine Froese;
(2012)
Encouraging a “Romantic Understanding” of Science: The Effect of the Nikola Tesla Story
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001250453/)
Article
Lean, Thomas;
(2013)
Mediating the Microcomputer: The Educational Character of the 1980s British Popular Computing Boom
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001320416/)
Book
Kline, Ronald R.;
(2015)
The Cybernetics Moment, or, Why We Call Our Age the Information Age
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001422604/)
Book
Sørensen, Knut H;
Faulkner, Wendy;
Rommes, Els;
(2011)
Technologies of Inclusion: Gender in the Information Society
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001201369/)
Book
Blair, Ann;
(2010)
Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001231884/)
Book
Cortada, James W.;
(2016)
All the Facts: A History of Information in the United States since 1870
(/p/isis/citation/CBB378790354/)
Book
Blok, Aad;
Downey, Greg;
(2003)
Uncovering labor in information revolutions, 1750--2000
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001180030/)
Chapter
Downey, Greg;
(2003)
The place of labor in the history of information technology revolutions
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001180034/)
Book
Gleick, James;
(2011)
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001421267/)
Book
Maria Gioia Tavoni;
(2021)
Storie di libri e tecnologie. Dall’avvento della stampa al digitale
(/p/isis/citation/CBB578661884/)
Book
Francis, R. D.;
(2009)
The Technological Imperative in Canada: An Intellectual History
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001200657/)
Book
Blaszczyk, Regina Lee;
(2009)
American Consumer Society, 1865--2005: From Hearth to HDTV
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001201132/)
Book
Christopher A. Reed;
Cynthia Brokaw;
(2010)
From Woodblocks to the Internet: Chinese Publishing and Print Culture in Transition, Circa 1800 to 2008
(/p/isis/citation/CBB667455096/)
Be the first to comment!