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The Sceptical Optimist: Why Technology Isn't the Answer to Everything
Nicholas Agar
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Description for The Sceptical Optimist: Why Technology Isn't the Answer to Everything
Hardcover. In The Paradox of Progress, Nicholas Agar challenges the central claims of 'radical optimism': that technological progress will automatically make us happier and healthier. Using recent psychological studies about human well-being, he instead presents a more realistic approach to understand the positive and negative issues that progress brings. Num Pages: 224 pages. BIC Classification: PDA; PDR; PDZ. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational; (U) Tertiary Education (US: College). Dimension: 145 x 223 x 24. Weight in Grams: 388.
The rapid developments in technologies - especially computing and the advent of many 'smart' devices, as well as rapid and perpetual communication via the Internet - has led to a frequently voiced view which Nicholas Agar describes as 'radical optimism'. Radical optimists claim that accelerating technical progress will soon end poverty, disease, and ignorance, and improve our happiness and well-being. Agar disputes the claim that technological progress will automatically produce great improvements in subjective well-being. He argues that radical optimism 'assigns to technological progress an undeserved pre-eminence among all the goals pursued by our civilization'. ... Read more
The rapid developments in technologies - especially computing and the advent of many 'smart' devices, as well as rapid and perpetual communication via the Internet - has led to a frequently voiced view which Nicholas Agar describes as 'radical optimism'. Radical optimists claim that accelerating technical progress will soon end poverty, disease, and ignorance, and improve our happiness and well-being. Agar disputes the claim that technological progress will automatically produce great improvements in subjective well-being. He argues that radical optimism 'assigns to technological progress an undeserved pre-eminence among all the goals pursued by our civilization'. ... Read more
Product Details
Format
Hardback
Publication date
2015
Publisher
OUP Oxford New York
Condition
New
Number of Pages
224
Place of Publication
Oxford, United Kingdom
ISBN
9780198717058
SKU
V9780198717058
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 5 to 9 working days
Ref
99-69
About Nicholas Agar
Nicholas Agar is Reader in Philosophy at Victoria University. He has spent much of his academic career writing about ethical and philosophical issues that arise in connection with new technologies.
Reviews for The Sceptical Optimist: Why Technology Isn't the Answer to Everything
eloquent and well-informed book ... a refreshing corrective to the excesses of technological optimism
Network Review
Network Review