Event Details

The talk and the accompanying discussions, will be the first of a series dealing with perspectives/provocations concerning our current envisioning(s) of technological futures in both the ‘academic’ and the ‘practitioner’ worlds.

Can we bring technology under the control of an ethics? To what extent is ethics a technology in itself? If the future is going to be “better”, does not technology and technocratic rule present itself immediately under an ethical guise? Why, and when, does technology, and the promise of the rational and better control of everything fail? What is the connection between bringing everything out into the the open for a better future, and what remains hidden, or undisclosed, or left out or behind

In this seminar we will examine how technology becomes a means to establishing regimes of complete and satisfying presence and control, and how this presents itself as a desirable, a positive. Technology and technocratic rule become binding for the future, as what can make the future “better”. We will then ask what “better” means: what are the limitations of technology and technocratic rule? What happens when technology fails, both in specific ways and more generally, and when failure becomes “acceptable”? What sort of world is pursued in the name of utopia, and how far short of utopia is acceptable?

Laurence Hemming has been associated with Lancaster University since 2008 and is now an Honorary Professor in both the Management School and in FASS. He has published a number of books on Martin Heidegger, and written on themes in Marx, Hegel and in ancient philosophy. He recently translated Ernst Jünger’s 1932 book ’The Worker’ with Bogdan Costea and he continues to focus on issues around management and technology.