Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
tradition and its temporary meaning—and a special space such as its milieu.
Every culture is always in many respects in a good relationship with nature
(successful harmony with nature and coincidence with nature), and the progressive
development of technology makes our life more convenient and happy. The devel-
opment of technology makes our life fruitful. And the problems in a modern city
of our computer-time are the same and common. It is because the computer
connects different cultures: we have now an information society. But we must
recognize that new conflicts between cultures or the modern city have arisen. The
domain of culture is complicated, and we are looking for the possibilities of a
reasonable universality.
The characteristic feature at the end of twentieth century is the time for a
modernized and systematized society for the development of technology. The
Japanese philosopher, Tomonobu Imamichi (1922-2012) named this developed,
systematized technology technological cohesion or conjuncture. Technological
cohesion or conjuncture means: by preserving the character of instrumentality,
newly developed technology is combined with computers and electronic networks
and, as a result, technology itself is becoming our circumstance to a large degree.
Human attitudes are now controlled by such a circumstance as technological
conjuncture or cohesion (cf.
Imamichi
, vols. 1-24).
10.2 Technological Cohesion or Technological
Conjuncture
10.2.1 Abstraction
What is the core problem in the contemporary technology? It is abstraction. Gabriel
Marcel said that he always fought against abstraction in general and, in particular, the
abstraction of technology. Because he aimed for a concrete philosophy, he discovered
the philosophical problem: despair in everyday life in technological world.
What is abstraction? The term abstraction is used only for the logical process of
making a concept, by producing one important concept from common elements by
eliminating the idiosyncratic. The ontic perceptual abstraction is done by visual and
audible sensibility. At the end of nineteenth century, we can find the abstract work
of drawing. Herbert Read wrote in his book Philosophy in Modern Art: “by
abstraction, we mean that it is derived or disengaged from nature, the pure and
essential form abstracted the concrete details.—Abstraction will include any form
of expression which dispenses with the phenomenal image, and relies on elements
of expression that are conceptual, metaphysical, abstruse, and absolute.” Abstrac-
tion is a higher mental operation that is conscious and, at the same time, uncon-
scious. Observing nature, artists such as Braque and Picasso extracted the
essential form from phenomenal things and made a new image through the
process of (1) analytic cubism and (2) synthetic cubism. As the result, they
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