We live in a culture defined and sustained by technology. Usually we equate this access to technology with opportunity, affluence, even happiness: "the good life." Albert Borgmann's Power Failure raises some crucial, if disconcerting, questions: If technology liberates us, exactly what kind of liberation does it promise? Do we really feel free? Are we prospering, and by what definition? Borgmann looks at the relationship between Christianity and technology by examining some of the "invisible" dangers of a technology-driven lifestyle. Specifically, he points out how devices and consumption have replaced physical things and practices in everyday life. This book calls you to vigorous Christian practice in a technological age. These practices include citizen-based decision making, communal celebrations, and a vital connection with the table and the word through daily shared meals and the discipline of reading. Examining the influences that shape people, this unique and insightful text will appeal to anyone interested in technology, philosophy, or cultural critique.
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Reviewed by B. Roy (Canada), August 17, 2004
In Power Failure: Christianity in the Culture of Technology,
Borgmann attempts to outline the linkages between Christianity and technology and suggests the positive responses Christians should make to the challenge of technology, concluding that “making room for Christianity is in fact the most promising response to technology” (8).
Borgmann assumes there is a “concealed poverty” in the technologically affluent countries, something he calls “advanced poverty,” as opposed to the “brute poverty” still existing in the third world (104). An understanding of poverty is needed for the revival of Christianity (107), but revival is unlikely when “during the week, the life of a typical Christian hardly differs from that of an atheist or agnostic” (108). Moral courage or “the willingness to suffer discomfort or disgrace in the defence of what is right and good” is also needed (114).
Borgmann’s hope is that “underneath the surface of technological liberty and prosperity there is a sense of captivity and deprivation” and that once we more clearly understand technology, “there will be good news once again" (8). Borgmann concludes technology is neither an outright evil nor an absolute good, and that we do not need to demolish it or run away from it (8).
The discerning reader would detect Borgmann’s tendency to favour political correctness and feminism, and his Roman Catholicism is palpable in his espousal of religious pluralism and ecumenicalism, although these need not detract from his message. If anything does, it is his approach to the material, which can be intimidating, evidence perhaps of a life ensconced in academia that seems at first to have rendered him incapable of clearly communicating his points to those of us outside his world. Power Failure contributes to one’s ability to think Christianly and should be required reading to any Christian interested in first understanding, and then restraining and redeeming technology and returning to the culture of the word.
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