Albert Borgmann's new book Holding onto Reality. The Nature of
Information at the Turn of the Millennium (1999) continues the
interrogation of the epochal significance of new information
technology he began in Crossing the Postmodern Divide (1992). For
Borgmann, the postmodern divide involves, among other things, a
shift from involvement with "focal" things and practices (i.e.
activities such as eating, gardening, running, and the like), to
immersion in media fantasies, or the thrills of cyberspace and
virtual reality. Borgmann continues his defense of "reality"
against the champions of the hyper or virtual realities of
cyberspace and new technologies, focusing on the concept of
information and its vicissitudes under the impact of new computer
and information technology.
Borgmann's latest book also has millennial echoes, signalled
in the book's subtitle, suggesting ways to survive the new era of
information technology. Borgmann reminds us that the concept
"millennium" contains a sense of both crisis and renewal, of a
breaking down of the old order and the creation of a new one. It
has overtones of apocalypse, that the breakdown may be catastrophic
and that the emergent order may not be preferable to the old order
and may indeed be inferior, perhaps disastrously so. This is indeed
the thrust of a series of books that present the technological
revolution as a philosophical and human catastrophe, a collapse of
the real, identity, meaning, the subject and the human, as the
explorers of technoculture get lost in byways of cyberspace and the
information superhighway.1
On the other hand, a new millennium suggests the possibility
of a better future, an overcoming of the limitations and problems
of the past epoch in the transition to a preferable new age.
Borgmann, however, is neither an optimist, a utopian, nor a
visionary of a better future. The title of his recent book Holdingonto Reality succinctly epitomizes his position concerning his
preferred response to the radical effects of new information
technology. Hence, "holding onto reality" in the face of the
seductions of virtual reality, hyperreality, and the new worlds of
cyberspace amounts to Borgmann's fundamental position and advice.
Borgmann bases his analysis on distinctions between three
types and levels of signs, of information -- natural, cultural, and
technological. Natural information for Borgmann is "information
about reality," involving "natural signs," like signs of weather,
the environment, or the presence of animals or other human beings.
"Cultural information" arose in the transition between oral and
written culture, involving the production of conventional signs in
the form of writing, art works, or diagrams such as architectural
drawings or musical scores which allow one to reproduce cultural
forms and products. "Cultural information" can thus be for, as well
as about, reality, informing practice and constructing tradition.
Much of Borgmann's text is about the genesis and structure of
"cultural information," including studies of "producing
information" that focus on "writing and structure" (Chapter 6) and
"measures and grids" (Chapter 7), as well as studies of "realizing
information" that analyze "reading," "playing" (i.e. musical
scores), and "building" (Chapters 8-10). The modes of producing
information analyze the structures and constituents of information,
while the latter three modes of realizing information refer to
their fundamental embodiment in focal human activities (reading,
playing, and building), Borgmann's riff on Heidegger's trinity of
living, building and dwelling.
Borgmann provides strong historical and philosophical analyses
of the origins of writing, of grids and graphics, of print and book
culture, drawing on classical and contemporary philosophical
sources to illuminate the structure and evolution of what he calls
cultural information. Yet his analyses tend to summarize existing
material on these topics rather than breaking new ground. Hence,
while one might learn much from Borgmann's account of the genealogy
of different forms of cultural information, a thorough-going
history and philosophical critique of information for the present
age remains to be written.
Yet it is perhaps the third part of his book on technological
information, or "information as reality," that constitutes the
heart of Borgmann's analysis of the information revolution where
the stakes of his undertaking become evident. His project, as
signalled in the introduction, is to provide "both a theory and an
ethics of information -- a theory to illuminate the structure of
information and an ethics to get the moral of its development. My
hope is that the theory will lend perspicuity to the ethics, that
the ethics will give the theory some force, and that, once we have
understand information, we will see that the good life requires an
adjustment among the three kinds of information and a balance of
signs and things" (6).
Borgmann's worry is that with the advent to cultural dominance
of information technology, we will lose touch with nature and
natural information, as well as culture and our embodied social
lives. Continuing a set of reflections delineated in Crossing the
Postmodern Divide, Borgmann worries about losing touch with
concrete reality and everyday life, substituting virtual relations,
communities, and reality for face-to-face social interaction and
enjoyment and preservation of nature. He believes that an imbalance
is emerging whereby technological information overpowers concrete
"reality," substituting hyperreality and virtual reality for the
sort of natural and cultural forms of reality and interaction upon
which the human being was focused during past millennia.
To delineate his argument, Borgmann provides in the third part
of the book a philosophical genealogy of what he calls
"technological information," drawing on philosophical and
historical sources, replicating the procedure that he provided in
his analysis of natural and cultural information. Technological
information, for Borgmann, is described as "information as reality"
and here his critique finds its edge. Once again, one can learn
much about the genesis of information technology, its mode of
information and differences from natural and cultural signs, and
the epochal significance of the information revolution, although,
again, there is not that much new in the way of a philosophical
critique of informational technology.
Throughout, Borgmann deploys a structural analysis ofsignification in which signs are related to things whereby
"intelligence" enables a person to be informed about a thing within
a certain context. Different signs inform differently and Borgmann
is concerned to distinguish between three types of information and
signs and how they relate to "reality." For his project to work,
Borgmann must develop a robust conception of reality to, first,
overcome the postmodern dictum that reality (and language,
consciousness, et al) is a social construct, a mere effect of a
specific culture or discourse system. But he also needs to
demonstrate that a more fundamental and compelling "reality" is
being overcome and displaced by the new (hyper/virtual)realities of
cyberspace, informational technology, and new multimedia, and must
persuade his readers to take more seriously and ground their lives
in this more primal "reality."
Borgmann's conception of reality involves philosophical
analysis with theological underpinnings and attempts at
phenomenological evocation of focal and resonant natural and
cultural reality. For Borgmann, "reality" consists of structure,
"the how and lawfulness of a thing" (99), and contingency, "the
what and idiosyncrasy of a thing" (99). In this conception,
"Reality is both knowable and unsurpassable" (99). "Reality" is
also contested, with different conceptions competing for
allegiance. For Borgmann, "reality" has a "commanding presence" and
"real gravity" (189), as opposed to the "lightness" of virtual
reality.
Theological underpinnings run throughout Borgmann's arguments.
Reality and things are eloquent because they are created; nature
and natural reality are eloquent because they are the direct
product of the Creator, God, while humans, in the Christian
framework in which Borgmann operates, are also created by God,
although there are intimations their own human creations can be
divorced from reality, fallen into the realm of culture and
eventually cyberspace and hyperreality. For Borgmann, as medieval
philosophers, the significance of things "has priority over the
significance of words, and the significance of things in turn
arises from divine eloquence" (88). Throughout, Borgmann cites
biblical and theological sources to illustrate his points and
closes his book with cryptic religious millennial ruminationsconcerning a coming potential salvation whereby "our souls will be
rocked in the bosom of Abraham" (233).
There is thus in Borgmann a sense that the ascent into
cyberspace is a fall for the human being, creating a fatal
imbalance between nature, culture, and technology. For Borgmann,
"Righting the balance of information and reality is the crucial
task. It amounts to the restoration of eminent natural information"
(221). Borgmann is reasonable enough to acknowledge that: "There is
no danger that technological information might entirely displace
natural or cultural information" (219). Yet he fears that: "There
is a real possibility, however, that natural and cultural
information will decline to mere utilities, tools we need but fail
to sustain as signs of irreplaceable kinds of excellence" (219).
I think few will disagree with Borgmann that we need to
balance the types of information -- natural, cultural, and
technological -- that we utilize and that as we venture through the
realms of technological culture we need to be conscious of the
importance of the natural and socio-cultural environment with its
myriad forms of information and experience. Indeed, our challenge
is to produce a cultural ecology that achieves that sort of balance
that Borgmann wisely affirms. Yet I do not think that Borgmann
himself delineates a sustainable balance as he fails, in my view,
to adequately analyze and appraise the possibilities of the new
technological environment. Throughout, Borgmann frequently engages
in denigration and dismissal of salient aspects of the new
cyberculture and displays a technophobic negativity toward this
realm of experience, despite his attempts to fairly and cogently
address the nature and exigencies of the new information technology
and cyberculture.
There are frequent exaggerated claims concerning the dangers
and negativities of cyberculture and information technology, and
some dogmatic assertions of his critical stance that will not stand
up to more perspicuous critique. For instance, in appraising claims
for the positive effects of information technology, Borgmann argues
that growth in bandwidth, information-storing capacity, and
processing power "suggests that freedom of choice today is as
likely stifling as liberating" (139). But who exactly is "stifled"by such technological progress and how? Here and elsewhere Borgmann
engages in rhetorical assertion rather than deploying evidence and
argumentation to make his case.
In general, Borgmann asserts the "decline of meaning with rise
of information" (232, passim), but this is never clearly explicated
or demonstrated, and one could argue that information technology
provides new venues and opportunities for the production of
meaning, as well as new forms of experience and reality.
Throughout, one gets the sense that information technology is an
inferior source of knowledge and experience for Borgmann as when he
writes that compared to lecture halls, libraries and labs:
technological information, to the contrary, comes endlessly
and relentlessly pouring forth from one source to address an
immobilized body via one sense. Or so it would if personal
computers were a truly rich information source. As it is, the
prohibitive imbalance between abundant information and
severely stunted capacity is righted by reducing information
to a thin trickle, tricked up into colorful bubbles (208).
In passages like this, Borgmann reveals bias and prejudice
that he tries to avoid in his more rigorous philosophical and
historical studies. In doing computer research, one is not
necessarily more "immobilized" than in reading books, one may
access a multitude of sources, including some of the world's great
libraries, and with multimedia technology more than "one sense" is
in play. Multimedia may enrich information with sights, sounds, and
graphics, that are more than a "thin trickle" or "colorful
bubbles." In such passages, Borgmann relies more on questionable
rhetorical excess than philosophical argumentation, revealing a
prejudice against a technology and mode of culture that he finds
threatening and foreign.
To restore the balance, Borgmann sometimes exaggerates the
primacy of nature over other domains, arguing, for instance:
"Nothing so engages the fullness of human capabilities as a
coherent and focused world of natural information" (219). Whereas
in many contexts and epochs this is no doubt true, there are times
when humans are fully engaged in social activity (war, labor,invention, cultural production, etc), and for many the world of
cyberculture is fully engaging. A genuine balance between such
things as natural, cultural and technological information requires
that each realm be respected as equals, that all realms be accorded
appropriate validity, significance, and reality, and that specific
realms not be elevated over and against competing cultural forms
and realms of life which are correspondingly downplayed and
degraded.
Whereas champions of new information technology often make
overstated claims for the benefits of cyberculture over previous
natural and social forms of culture and life, Borgmann frequently
makes the opposite error, downplaying or denigrating technological
experience and reality in contrast to natural or cultural reality.
Moreover, Borgmann's critique rests on a series of binary
oppositions between reality and hyper/virtual reality, and
natural/cultural vs. technological information, in which
metaphysical and moral primacy is bestowed on the first term of the
opposition, while the latter is seen to be derivative and inferior
(curiously, the distinction between focal things and practices
versus the domain of technological devices which was central to his
earlier thought does not surface in a major way in his latest
book). A deconstructive critique could argue that "reality" and
"nature" are more highly constructed than in Borgmann's account,
while hyper and virtual reality, or technological information, also
are salient forms of reality. Borgmann has thus not really grounded
his conceptions of reality and the ethics of information in an
adequate metaphysical or normative conception. Occasionally, he
provides theological underpinnings to his apparatus, but does not
adequately develop a robust concept of reality to play against
hyper/virtual reality, nor does he provide grounding for an ethics
of information that would provide the sort of normative perspective
to make his arguments.
Hence, Borgmann's perspectives are somewhat free-floating,
rooted more in assertion, rhetoric, and theological spin, rather
than evidence or solid argumentation. Thus, while intuitively one
would be willing to agree with Borgmann that we need appropriate
scale in our adventures with new technologies, it is not clear that
he has provided an adequate account of its novelties, benefits, andpossibilities, or a genuinely balanced account of harmonious
relations between our natural, cultural, and technological
environments. Yet Borgmann is constantly provocative and his new
book should help generate informed debate over the benefits and
dangers of the shape and effects of a new mode of information and
the need to harmoniously integrate this sphere into the broader
dimensions of natural and cultural life.
Note
1. Such technophobic books include Martin Heidegger (1977) The
Question Concerning Technology. New York: Harper and Row; Jacques
Ellul (1964) The Technological Society. New York: Knopf; and a
series of books by Paul Virilio including (1996) Cybermonde, la
politique de pire. Paris: Textuel; (1997) Open Sky. London: Verso;
and (1998) Polar Inertia. London: Sage. U.S.-written jeremiads
against new technologies include Mark Slouka (1995) War of the
Worlds. New York: Harper and Row; Clifford Stoll (1995) Silicon
Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway. New York:
Doubleday and Borgmann's earlier (1992) Across the Postmodern
Divide Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Doug Kellner
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