My apologies! ... and more reading

Well, I have finished "Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life", and have been enthralled by the thoughts proposed by it, both because of the quality of thought and the resonance with my spirit.

When I was reading back over putting some thoughts into a paper, I realized that I may have left out a significant chunk of Borgmann's thought.

Page 114ff. - "The sharp division in our lives between labor and leisure is a unique feature of modern existence. It is my thesis that this division reflects the split between machinery and commodity in the pattern of technology. Leisure consists in the unencumbered enjoyment of commodities whereas labor is devoted to the construction and maintenance of the machinery that procures the commodities. Labor is a mere means for the end of leisure... Human life is always full at any one time, and innovations can take place only by displacing some tradition. Thus, technology had to displace and destroy the traditional crafts... The division of labor makes work more reliable because the simplicity of divided labor eliminates the need of skill, thus enlarging the labor pool and making workers more freely substitutable for one another... But as I have suggested before, liberation has gradually given ay to disengagement, and distraction has displaced enrichment..."

Now this is significant for concerns of an oversight of the social ill of devalued work:.
- Page 121 - "Just as the broad middle class, being committed to technological progress, tolerates social injustice since it has become a motor and stabilizer of that progress, so it tolerated degraded work since at least until now it has been the necessary condition and counterpart of consumption. And indeed, the tie of degraded labor to technology has been more intimate and hence more disquieting than the tie of social injustice to technology. That may be the reason why the degradation of labor has been more hidden that social injustice. The unions always complain of the latter, but rarely the former."

These quotes hopefully help illuminate and strengthen my previous entry of quotes. Enjoy - DEW