Suchergebnisse

Bellow, S. Literature in the age of technology.--Bell, D. Technology, nature, and society.--O'Gorman, E. History, technology, and the pursuit of happiness. --Medawar, P. Technology and evolution.--Clarke, A. C. Technology and the limits of knowledge

The author argues for the importance of humor both as a part of the human condition & as particularly important to the modern condition. Humor is often seen as a low form of intellect, & the author does not deny that this may be true. But he argues that this "lowness" is not the same thing as unimportance. Indeed, he believes that it is the task of late modernity, of post-historical humanity, to focus on humor. Other eras have contributed great ideas & lofty ideals to society & to the history of humanity. They have left our age to fill in the lower intellectual strata, including those layers dedicated to humor. It would be a violation of our place in history to fail to do so. D. Knaff

Klappentext: How higher education has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today's students. The author says, "More than anything else, this book is to be taken as a report from the front. The reader can judge for himself the gravity of our situation. Every age has its problems, and I do not claim that things were wonderful in the past. I am describing our present situation and do not intend any comparison with the past to be used as grounds for congratulations or blaming ourselves but only for the sake of clarifying what counts for us and what is special in our situation."

Part I. The revolt of the masses -- The crowd phenomenon -- The rise of the historic level -- The level of the times -- The increase in life -- A statistical fact -- The mass-man dissected -- Noble and common life, or effort and inertia -- Why the masses intervene in everything and why they always intervene violently -- Primitivism and technology -- Primitivism and history -- The age of self-satisfaction -- The barbarism of specialization -- The greatest danger: The state -- Part II. Who rules the world? -- Who rules the world? -- We come to the real question.