Philosophy of Technology

TL;DR: The development of a professional philosophy of technology has, after the 1960s, developed along two different yet familiar trajectories: one into an analytical philosophy of information technology and science, the other into a Continental (or more broadly humanities-oriented) philosophy as discussed by the authors.

Abstract: Philosophy of technology only came into existence as a specialist branch of professional philosophy during the 1970s, although the philosophical literature during the years between 1945 and the 1970s voices an increasing preoccupation with technology. Just as the First World War led to a wave of disillusionment among intellectuals as well as the common man, so did the Second World War. This disillusionment manifested itself as pessimism, which became characteristic of several influential philosophers during the two first decades after the war. We find it echoed, for instance, in Gabriel Marcel’s The Decline of Wisdom (1954), where Marcel describes the “horror and anxiety” he felt walking through “the ruins of Vienna in 1946, or more recently in Caen, Rouen or Wurzburg” (21). But the 1970s, with growing social prosperity, industrial growth, and better technologies, changed that sentiment. The development of a professional philosophy of technology has, after the 1960s, developed along two different yet familiar trajectories: one into an analytical philosophy of technology and science, the other into a Continental (or more broadly humanities-oriented) philosophy of technology (see also Thomson, this volume).