
Designing Information Technology in the Postmodern Age
From Method to Metaphor
Richard Coyne(Author)
MIT Press
Published on 28. September 1995
Book
Hardback
413 pages
978-0-262-03228-5 (ISBN)
Description
Coyne examines the entire range of contemporary philosophical thinking-including logical positivism, analytic philosophy, pragmatism, phenomenology, critical theory, hermeneutics, and deconstruction-comparing them and showing how they differ in their consequences for design and development issues in electronic communications, computer representation, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and multimedia.Designing Information Technology in the Postmodern Age puts the theoretical discussion of computer systems and information technology on a new footing. Shifting the discourse from its usual rationalistic framework, Richard Coyne shows how the conception, development, and application of computer systems is challenged and enhanced by postmodern philosophical thought. He places particular emphasis on the theory of metaphor, showing how it has more to offer than notions of method and models appropriated from science.Coyne examines the entire range of contemporary philosophical thinking-including logical positivism, analytic philosophy, pragmatism, phenomenology, critical theory, hermeneutics, and deconstruction-comparing them and showing how they differ in their consequences for design and development issues in electronic communications, computer representation, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and multimedia. He also probes the claims made of information technology, including its presumptions of control, its so-called radicality, even its ability to make virtual worlds, and shows that many of these claims are poorly founded.Among the writings Coyne visits are works by Heidegger, Adorno, Benjamin, Gadamer, Derrida, Habermas, Rorty, and Foucault. He relates their views to information technology designers and critics such as Herbert Simon, Alan Kay, Terry Winograd, Hubert Dreyfus, and Joseph Weizenbaum. In particular, Coyne draws extensively from the writing of Martin Heidegger, who has presented one of the most radical critiques of technology to date.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge, Mass.
United States
Publishing group
MIT Press Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
US School Grade: College Graduate Student and over
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 160 mm
Thickness: 37 mm
Weight
794 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-262-03228-5 (9780262032285)
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Richard Coyne | Roger F. Malina | Sean Cubitt
Designing Information Technology in the Postmodern Age
From Method to Metaphor
Book
09/1995
MIT Press
€51.50
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Persons
Richard Coyne is Professor and Chair of Architectural Computing, University of Edinburgh. He is the author of Technoromanticism: Digital Narrative, Holism, and the Romance of the Real (MIT Press, 2001) and Designing Information Technology in the Postmodern Age: From Method to Metaphor (MIT Press, 1995).
Author
Professor, Head of the School of Arts, Culture and Environment, The University of EdinburghUniversity of Edinburgh
Editor
Leonardo Executive EditorLeonardo/ISAST
Professor of Film and Television StudiesGoldsmiths, University of London