Professor Andrew Feenberg

Abstract:

Andrew Feenberg will be offering a brief overview of a selection of concepts in his work (and his recent book Technosystem: The Social Life of Reason). After this overview, we will have an open discussion related to technology, design, and ethics grounded in concepts from philosophy of technology. The intersection of ethics and technology is particularly important in SIAT. In addition to being studiers and critical observers of technology, we are also the form givers of technology. So we are directly implicated in the effects and consequences that emerge when technology is released into the world. 

Biography:

Andrew Feenberg is Professor and former Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Technology in the School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, where he directs the Applied Communication and Technology Lab. He has also taught for many years in the Philosophy Department at San Diego State University, and at Duke University, the State University of New York at Buffalo, the Universities of California, San Diego and Irvine, the Sorbonne, the University of Paris-Dauphine, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, and the University of Tokyo and the University of Brasilia.  Dr. Feenberg is Directeur de Programme at the College Internationale de Philosophie for the period 2013-2019.

He is the author of Lukacs, Marx and the Sources of Critical Theory (Rowman and Littlefield, 1981; Oxford University Press, 1986), Critical Theory of Technology (Oxford University Press, 1991), Alternative Modernity (University of California Press, 1995), and Questioning Technology (Routledge, 1999). A second edition of Critical Theory of Technology appeared with Oxford in 2002 under the title Transforming Technology. Heidegger and Marcuse: The Catastrophe and Redemption of History appeared in 2005 with Routledge. Between Reason and Experience: Essays in Technology and Modernity appeared with MIT Press in 2010. The Philosophy of Praxis: Marx, Lukacs and the Frankfurt School was published by Verso Press in 2014. His most recent book, Technosystem: The Social Life of Reason, appeared with Harvard University Press in 2017. Translations of several of these books are available. Dr. Feenberg is also co-editor of Marcuse: Critical Theory and the Promise of Utopia (Bergin and Garvey Press, 1987), Technology and the Politics of Knowledge (Indiana University Press, 1995), Modernity and Technology (MIT Press, 2003), Community in the Digital Age (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004) and (Re)inventing the Internet (2012) . His co-authored book on the French May Events of 1968 appeared in 2001 with SUNY Press under the title When Poetry Ruled the Streets.  He has also created the May Events Archive consisting of scanned documents from the events at the Simon Fraser University library http://edocs.lib.sfu.ca/projects/mai68/. With William Leiss, Feenberg has edited a collection entitled The Essential Marcuse published by Beacon Press. A book on Feenberg's philosophy of technology entitled Democratizing Technology, appeared in 2006. A second book appeared in 2017 entitled Critical Theory and the Thought of Andrew Feenberg. For more on these publications, see https://www.amazon.com/author/andrewfeenberg or consult his personal homepage at www.sfu.ca/~andrewf.

In addition to his work on Critical Theory and philosophy of technology, Dr. Feenberg has published on the Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitaro. He is also recognized as an early innovator in the field of online education, a field he helped to create in 1982. He led the TextWeaver Project on improving software for online discussion forums under a grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education of the US Department of Education. For the latest web based version of this software, see http://webmarginalia.net/.