Week 4 Entry

Borgmann contrasts the modern world of technological information, or information as reality, with what he calls the ancestral environment, which requires a great degree of intamacy with eality and the natural world. The ancestral environment is one of natural signs and natural information. He presents this world as an "economy of signs and presences", which is inherently ordered, as opposed to technological information, particularly that found on the internet, which is often very much disordered. The great contrast between the ancestral environment of information and the modern environment of technological information couldbe used to show how far humanity has come, how greatly the technology we have developed has changed our lives, but Borgmann has a different view. Brogmann argues that spending time in the ancestral environment provides an intimacy with nature that is often lost or neglected in our world today, yet is inherently pleasant when it is experienced. Borgmann seems to be implying that our technology is destroying our connection with nature, and robbing us of the joy that connection can bring.