The Habitat of Information: Social and Organizational Consequences of Information Growth

The 8th Social Study of ICT workshop (SSIT8) at LSE

25 April 2008

The Growth of Information and the Texture of Reality
Albert Borgmann

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Traditionally information has served to illuminate and enrich our world. It has lent the texture of reality definition and splendor.

Writing and printing have increased the benefits of information. So have the explosive developments of computers, communication, and media. But they have also rendered the texture of reality brittle and opaque. Its surface has become both glamorous and ambiguous, its substructure both powerful and impenetrable. We feel overwhelmed by information commodities and ruled by the information machinery.

The texture of reality can become newly luminous and intelligible if we balance the glamour of its surface with physical and social engagement and lift the opaqueness of its underside through technological literacy. The growth of information will then find its appropriate channels and levels and fulfill its promise of clarity and prosperity.

Albert Borgmann is Regents Professor of Philosophy at the University of Montana, Missoula where he has taught since 1970. His special area is the philosophy of society and culture. Among his publications are Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life (University of Chicago Press, 1984), Crossing the Postmodern Divide (University of Chicago Press, 1992), Holding On to Reality: The Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millennium (University of Chicago Press, 1999), Power Failure: Christianity in the Culture of Technology (Brazos Press, 2003), and Real American Ethics (University of Chicago Press, 2006).

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