I have a deep appreciation for Borgmann and his approach. Soon after encountering his work about 15 years ago I ran across this piece (https://cspo.org/legacy/library/1104251605F53294166SV_lib_WetmoreAmishTech.pdf) by James Wetmore about how the Amish make decisions about technology adoption, which I think you might appreciate as well. Essentially, they take the time to reflect on their values and then ask, will this technology help or hinder our quest to have those values be an integral part of our lives. I'm not sure that I want to become Amish per se, but I do think that the philosophy behind that kind of thinking is worth bringing into the wider world.
I think the difference between devices and focal things is very helpful. My iPhone is a device. My piano is a focal thing. It's an interesting question whether the modern car is better seen as a device or as a focal thing.
However, I think it is important to grasp that many of our devices also function as *portals*: they are a way of connecting us with a vast digital network. And at this point the promise of easy satisfaction offered by the device will often break down. If I can't save a document to the Cloud, or download a software update that my device needs in order to function properly, it's because the relationship between my device and the wider network is not functioning properly. And usually when this happens it is wholly unclear what has gone wrong and how to fix it. Although on the face of it my devices offer immediate easy gratification, sometimes this breaks down and I am left with incomprehension, frustration, and rage.
By contrast, when I can't get my piano (focal thing) to do what I want it to do, the solution is usually wholly transparent (though it may be very difficult to achieve). I can't play a particular passage accurately at speed: that means I need to practice it more, or perhaps I need to practice exercises that are targeted at a specific kind of technical difficulty. With a device, what to do next is either easy or incomprehensible. With a focal thing, what to do next is often hard, but is at any rate legible.
I was a student of Borgmann's from 2004-2010, and, interestingly enough, the difference in legibility that you point out would come up more and more in seminars. (When I was at the University of Montana, he was working out the idea of a moral cosmology.) To be sure, he had always used this difference to characterize the difference between devices and focal things. But it became more and more relevant in the discussions he was having with his students.
I think the difference in legibility hasn't, on the whole, been properly emphasized and properly appreciated. This is not to say it's the most important (or most fundamental or most consequential or most interesting) difference between devices and focal things. It's simply to say it would bear some deeper exploration and articulation.
Matthew Crawford has done some interesting things with the idea, especially in his writings on what he calls algorithmic governance. (It's interesting that you call devices portals, for Crawford calls them "portals to bureaucracies.") Leon Kass has used it in his argument against biomedical enhancement. (Roughly: performance-enhancement technological shortcuts strike us as unnatural because their causality isn't phenomenologically accessible.)
Arguably, part of living a good life is being at home in the world. And surely, a part of being at home in the world is being able to understand it in human terms.
Brilliant moment at the farmers market! Pass them my British appreciation if they turn up again. Yes, I already commented when a young British writer Hayden Turner at 'Over The Field' ran a critique on the barefaced Apple Ad. Might as well repeat it here, with a nod also to the books by Jeremy Naydler about the struggle for a human future.
My comment to Hayden was: "It is all a bit of a con I think. Apple is a highly physical object - and to be profitable just now must be made and sold continually in many millions. The mounds of ore and fuel and wastes of its making would make an interesting advert. We know that it took a civilisation to make a piano; there is even a limit to pianos, and books. Profitable digital realities though require continual unconstrained electricity, which is the product of a civilisation relying on an abundance of ancient sunlight. When the carbon pulse dies down, as any candle must, certain delusions are likely to die with it. There will be music though for those with ears to hear. On top probably of youthful industrial injury, old age has made me increasingly deaf to critical frquencies of sound. Digital hearing aids have their uses but cannot replace the reality. There are very physical constraints."
I like to think it's the tech people who have already crushed themselves and are losing authority by the day. Reactions to the ad seem to bear that out.
I had an iPhone for years before I even made the connection between the plainly displayed apple with the bite taken out of it emblem and the tech giant’s modus operandi; this ad just seems to me to be more of the same. We can only hope that this level of hubris turns the majority of us back to the “real” things in life… Heaven help us if it doesn’t.
I have a deep appreciation for Borgmann and his approach. Soon after encountering his work about 15 years ago I ran across this piece (https://cspo.org/legacy/library/1104251605F53294166SV_lib_WetmoreAmishTech.pdf) by James Wetmore about how the Amish make decisions about technology adoption, which I think you might appreciate as well. Essentially, they take the time to reflect on their values and then ask, will this technology help or hinder our quest to have those values be an integral part of our lives. I'm not sure that I want to become Amish per se, but I do think that the philosophy behind that kind of thinking is worth bringing into the wider world.
He has an old blog post to this effect! https://thefrailestthing.com/2012/08/04/the-tech-savvy-amish/
I think you would find of interest David Sax’s book, The Revenge of the Analogue: Real Things and Why They Matter.
I think the difference between devices and focal things is very helpful. My iPhone is a device. My piano is a focal thing. It's an interesting question whether the modern car is better seen as a device or as a focal thing.
However, I think it is important to grasp that many of our devices also function as *portals*: they are a way of connecting us with a vast digital network. And at this point the promise of easy satisfaction offered by the device will often break down. If I can't save a document to the Cloud, or download a software update that my device needs in order to function properly, it's because the relationship between my device and the wider network is not functioning properly. And usually when this happens it is wholly unclear what has gone wrong and how to fix it. Although on the face of it my devices offer immediate easy gratification, sometimes this breaks down and I am left with incomprehension, frustration, and rage.
By contrast, when I can't get my piano (focal thing) to do what I want it to do, the solution is usually wholly transparent (though it may be very difficult to achieve). I can't play a particular passage accurately at speed: that means I need to practice it more, or perhaps I need to practice exercises that are targeted at a specific kind of technical difficulty. With a device, what to do next is either easy or incomprehensible. With a focal thing, what to do next is often hard, but is at any rate legible.
I was a student of Borgmann's from 2004-2010, and, interestingly enough, the difference in legibility that you point out would come up more and more in seminars. (When I was at the University of Montana, he was working out the idea of a moral cosmology.) To be sure, he had always used this difference to characterize the difference between devices and focal things. But it became more and more relevant in the discussions he was having with his students.
I think the difference in legibility hasn't, on the whole, been properly emphasized and properly appreciated. This is not to say it's the most important (or most fundamental or most consequential or most interesting) difference between devices and focal things. It's simply to say it would bear some deeper exploration and articulation.
Matthew Crawford has done some interesting things with the idea, especially in his writings on what he calls algorithmic governance. (It's interesting that you call devices portals, for Crawford calls them "portals to bureaucracies.") Leon Kass has used it in his argument against biomedical enhancement. (Roughly: performance-enhancement technological shortcuts strike us as unnatural because their causality isn't phenomenologically accessible.)
Arguably, part of living a good life is being at home in the world. And surely, a part of being at home in the world is being able to understand it in human terms.
Brilliant moment at the farmers market! Pass them my British appreciation if they turn up again. Yes, I already commented when a young British writer Hayden Turner at 'Over The Field' ran a critique on the barefaced Apple Ad. Might as well repeat it here, with a nod also to the books by Jeremy Naydler about the struggle for a human future.
My comment to Hayden was: "It is all a bit of a con I think. Apple is a highly physical object - and to be profitable just now must be made and sold continually in many millions. The mounds of ore and fuel and wastes of its making would make an interesting advert. We know that it took a civilisation to make a piano; there is even a limit to pianos, and books. Profitable digital realities though require continual unconstrained electricity, which is the product of a civilisation relying on an abundance of ancient sunlight. When the carbon pulse dies down, as any candle must, certain delusions are likely to die with it. There will be music though for those with ears to hear. On top probably of youthful industrial injury, old age has made me increasingly deaf to critical frquencies of sound. Digital hearing aids have their uses but cannot replace the reality. There are very physical constraints."
I like to think it's the tech people who have already crushed themselves and are losing authority by the day. Reactions to the ad seem to bear that out.
I had an iPhone for years before I even made the connection between the plainly displayed apple with the bite taken out of it emblem and the tech giant’s modus operandi; this ad just seems to me to be more of the same. We can only hope that this level of hubris turns the majority of us back to the “real” things in life… Heaven help us if it doesn’t.