SPT (Research in Philosophy and Technology) - Volume 11, Number 1 - Theorizing the Cultural Quality of New Media by Philip Brey

SPT (Research in Philosophy and Technology) - Volume 11, Number 1 - Theorizing the Cultural Quality of New Media by Philip Brey: "In Holding on to Reality, Albert Borgmann develops a critique of cyberspace (Borgmann, 1999). Borgmann argues that cyberspace presents an illusory escape into another reality. He claims that it tends to trivialize and glamorize facets of reality that appear to one detached from their context and setting, and that it blurs the distinction between fact and fiction."


Hubert Dreyfus has critiqued computer-mediated education (Dreyfus, 1999). He argues that education centrally involves the transmission of skills and a process by which educators foster commitments in their students and stimulate them to develop strong identities. He then argues that such skills, commitments and identities cannot adequately be transferred in distance education since they require bodily presence and localized interactions between students and teachers. This requires a relation of apprenticeship, which according to Dreyfus cannot be attained on-line.


Paul Virilio has argued that electronic media, developed and used in a capitalist consumer society, combine with other technologies in speeding up the process of production and consumption so as to create a culture of speed (Virilio, 1994). The immediate availability of information and the continuous production and consumption of new information ultimately lead, according to Virilio, to a feeling of confinement or incarceration in the world. Virilio also holds that the culture of speed threatens writing and the author, because the speed with which information is produced and consumed only allows for shallowness.

Virilio, P. 1994. The Vision Machine. Indiana University Press. [trans. from French, La Machine De Vision, 1988]