Information technology as an agent of post-modernism--论文代写范文精选

信息技术与现代主义的承诺,并没有带来社会的乌托邦。信息技术创造的一个宇宙特征是虚拟世界,不断变化的,不确定的,以信息为导向的角度来看世界。技术进步并没有伴随着社会进步。下面的paper代写范文进行详述。

Abstract 
Society is in a tumultuous state. Today’s Western society is characterized by disillusionment, doubt, irony, fragmentation and plurality. With the failure of Modernism and the rise to prominence of Nihilism, Post-Humanism, Post-Structuralism and Individualism, society has entered a thoroughly Post-Modern era. Over the past couple of decades humanity has increasingly turned to Information Technology as the great enabler. Through the capabilities that Information Technology offers, undreamed heights of scientific and technological progress have been reached in an amazingly short span of time. However, rather than uplifting and emancipating society, the wholesale implementation of Information Technology has brought with it a host of unintended and unforeseen consequences. 

As with the promises of Modernism, Information Technology has not brought society the Utopia that it imagined. Information Technology rather has acted to create a universe characterized by virtuality, constant change, indeterminacy, and an information orientated perspective on the world. Technological progress has not been accompanied by social progress. Through a comprehensive literature review and an examination of both Post-Modernism and Information Technology, it is proposed that the influences of Information Technology have acted and continued to act to promote Post-Modernism. These influences amongst others include its displacement of space and time, its promotion of the Information Society, its ability to create digital hyperrealities, its destructive influence on tradition and culture, and most of all its catastrophic/ revolutionary impact on the identity. Through these influences this paper seeks to prove that Information Technology acts an agent of Post-Modernism.

Introduction 
Modern society finds itself in a tumultuous state. The sureties of the past have been stripped away. The utopia predicted by the Modern age has not arrived. Society is characterized by a search for identity, for new meanings or new truths. Change has become the norm. Society has emerged from the dream of Humanism and Modernism and found itself in the flexible realities of Post-Modernism. Society has increasingly turned to Information Technology to provide the means to re-enchant its disillusioned world, to fulfil its growing needs for effectiveness and efficiency, for entertainment and pleasure, and to provide the means to transcend nature’s constraints. 
This mass implementation has resulted in Information Technology penetrating all aspects of society, ‘increasingly at the heart of scientific, commercial and media processes’ (Eischen, 2000). Complex information systems, virtual realities, communication superhighways and ubiquitous computing have become the defining characteristics of today’s technologically saturated society. Information Technology has risen to be the preeminent technology of today with the computer becoming synonymous with the emerging global, networked society. This pervasiveness of Information Technology in all aspects of life must inevitably have a massive impact on society and the individual. Through Information Technology, society has experienced a revolution that is comparable to that of the Industrial Revolution. Floridi (2002: 127) states that ‘[n]o previous generation was ever exposed to such an extraordinary acceleration of technological power over reality, with the corresponding social changes and ethical responsibilities’. 

Society is being reshaped and remolded around the principles of virtual environments. Hierarchies are being flattened, accountability is being blurred and personal freedoms are being pushed to their extremes. This new society, along with the powerful capabilities that Information Technology presents to the individual, has served to render old ethical and societal models inadequate as guiding structures. According to Bynum & Moor (in Floridi, 2002: 129), computing has brought massive changes to society’s understanding of the world ‘changing the way philosophers understand foundational Preprint: Information Technology as an Agent of Post-Modernism – Nel, D.F. & Kroeze, J.H. 4 concepts in philosophy, such as mind, consciousness, experience, reasoning, knowledge, truth, ethics and creativity’. It is the authors’ contention that through Information Technology, society has finally found complete emancipation, but in doing so, has in effect set itself adrift. Through understanding and examining the influences of Information Technology in this paper, the authors attempt to prove that Information Technology acts to promote the various permutations and facets of Post-Modernism, in fact that Information Technology acts as an agent of PostModernism.

Background considerations 
In order to comprehensively examine the effects of Information Technology as it relates to PostModernism it is necessary to first have an understanding of both Post-Modernism and the forces that are instrumental in Information Technology’s influences on society. To this end PostModernism, the pervasiveness of Technology, the ethical nature of Technology and lastly Technological determinism will be briefly considered before examining the Post-Modernistic influences of Information Technology.

Post-Modernism 
Post-Modernism is an extremely complex philosophy that can be difficult to conceptualize. It is filled with contradictions; the rejection of truth while in the same breath proposing truth, the rejection of religion while still longing for a Saviour or Messiah. Post-Modernism denies the veracity of knowledge, viewing it as being subjective and open to deconstruction. It is characterized by the rejection of traditional structures and culture resulting in the individual being left to define his or her own version of reality. There are a number of differing viewpoints on Post-Modernism, illustrating its complex and multifaceted nature. These multiple facets and inherent plurality are a defining characteristic of the Post-Modern mind. Tarnas (1991: 395) says ‘the postmodern mind may be viewed as an open-ended, indeterminate set of attitudes that has been shaped by a great diversity of intellectual and cultural currents’.

To provide a view or definition of Post-Modernism is easier said than done, as Post-Modernism could equally be taken as all or any one of the above as well as none of them. Despite this the authors believe that the definitions offered are all inadequate to illustrate the complexities and multiple facets of Post-Modernism. Post-Modernism is above all else a social phenomenon and the result of the continued evolution of the Western mind.(paper代写)

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