Nihilism and Technology

    Activity: Talk or presentationInvited talk

    Description

    According to Dr Nolen Gertz, Assistant Professor of Applied Philosophy, there is a tendency in technological production called the “leisure-as-liberation” model of technological design. In this lecture, he will outline how it has evolved from Aristotle to Marx, to today. In addition, Gertz aims to demonstrate how Nietzsche would criticize the idea that we could find liberation through leisure and will introduce Don Ihde’s postphenomenology in order to set up parallels between Nietzsche’s human-nihilism relations and Ihde’s human-technology relations. How can technologies mediate nihilism and how can nihilism mediate technologies? Dr Gertz will reflect on how rehabilitating the concept of responsibility can help us to move away from this nihilistic “leisure-as-liberation” model of technological design.
    Period27 Mar 2018
    Held atUniversity of Ottawa, Canada
    Degree of RecognitionInternational

    Keywords

    • nihilism
    • philosophy of technology
    • Nietzsche
    • postphenomenology
    • mediation theory