New Left Review - Rob Lucas: The Critical Net Critic

New Left Review - Rob Lucas: The Critical Net Critic:

In this argument, what Carr termed ‘intellectual technologies’ in particular—map, clock, typewriter—both augmented our mental abilities and transformed them. Each carried an ‘intellectual ethic’, a hidden norm of mental functioning, that might be obscure to users—and even inventors—yet which shaped them nonetheless. As these technologies entered general use, passing down the generations, their intellectual ethics became ingrained in the structures of human experience, acquired as standard by each individual. The history of technology could thus be read as a history of transformations in the human mind.

Regardless of whether or not you agree with the thrust of this article, the technology world needs more of this kind of thinking. Completely rejecting the humanities at a cultural level means that the world of technology can be remarkably unreflective.