Before I begin to catalogue some of my brief thoughts with regards to Albert Borgmann’s “Device Paradigm” I want to offer a slight disclaimer. Like most everyone in our class, save Dr. Langguth, I have yet to finish “Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life.” Much of the inquiry and examination which I apply to Borgmann’s way of taking up with technology and our global sociopolitical context is at a serious disadvantage at this stage in our discovery of Borgmann’s paradigm and earnest cogitations. Much, as I am quite sure, has yet to be procured through impending analysis. As such, much of what I comment on and argue in this and the following blogs will likely come to a point of reconciliation at a latter instance in Borgmann’s work. Thus, in hindsight several weeks from today, my reasoning in this my first blog may appear rather unfounded and trivial when taken in light of the necessary and final developments of Borgmann’s central apriorism. As the book is carefully worked through, I hope that any crude opinions and notions which I first envisaged are reformulated in an appropriate fashion. However, this point, in and of itself, offers the ardent learner and genuinely interested reader both much caution and help. Such a reflection alerts the reader to stave off any preconceived notion of how exactly Borgmann regards modern technology as of yet. We need not rain down a final judgment when the defense has yet to offer four fifths of the evidence in its favor. Nonetheless, there are a couple of issues which I would like to discuss.
The introductory chapters and topics, many of which work to diagram what the device paradigm is and how humanity takes up with its technological foreground and background, almost seem to come down as condemnatory of any technology which is not pre-modern. Those examples of modern technological features of our society, or features which were at least modern when Borgmann had his work published in 1984, seem to be demonized by Borgmann amidst the backdrop of an excessive romanticizing of what has once been. Take for instance the stereo set (this is actually kind of a throwback to the ‘80s isn’t it?). When speaking of this ‘device,’ Borgmann seems to want to imbue his rather negative ambivalence toward the object upon the reader when he states that there is “an extreme concealment or abstractness in the mode of [the music’s] production” (page 4). Here, Borgmann positions the device within an enigmatic context, and the reader has nowhere to turn but ambivalence towards the stereo set. He seems to do this with many of the examples he cites. I mean, yes. I guess he’s right. Other than the basic knowledge of magnetism, circuitry, and sound I acquired in my Elements of Physics course here at Thomas More College, I really couldn’t tell you exactly how the music I gather from a stereo set is procured. The ends seem very distinct from the means. I most certainly couldn’t fix a stereo set either. But at a much deeper level, I don’t think many people could tell you exactly how music from an orchestra is procured either. Yes, the musicians strum their instruments, blow into them, bang them, or what not to incur vibrations in the air, vibrations which stimulate our neuronal connections. But that knowledge of the acquirement of music is almost rudimentary when compared to the musician’s knowledge of the same subject. So, as it would seem, the means can also be quite concealed in such an object which likely constitutes a “thing” from Bormann’s point of view. When looking at such topics from this perspective, the line between things and devices becomes rather obfuscated.
Why would devices be so bad? Yes, things, in the Borgmann sense, do seem to offer more of a focus than devices sometimes do today but not always. There are many devices which seem to be a place of focus. It may sound rather ironic, but isn’t the modern family room with all of its electronics and media still a place of high focus for many families. I know that it is for my family. Sometimes, the television set draws my family together in order to rally around our favorite sports teams or listen attentively to our national leaders. Sometimes, the familial warmth and affinity which is cultivated around the television is more potent and stronger than that nurtured around the traditional hearth. Now certainly I know that many exceptions and arguments to the contrary undoubtedly exist, but these premises, along with a final thought, are worth our consideration. Have you ever considered the tradeoffs required to move along the evolutionary line from thing to device? And if you have, are those tradeoffs worthwhile?
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