The Labyrinth of Technology: A Preventive Technology and Economic Strategy as a Way Out

By Willem H. Vanderburg

Book Overview

Why does modern technology succeed so brilliantly in some respects and simultaneously fail in others? While he was completing a doctoral thesis in mechanical engineering in the late 60s and early 70s, Willem Vanderburg became convinced that the environmental crisis and the possible limits to growth would require a fundamental change in the engineering, management and regulation of technology. In this volume he exposes the limitations of conventional approaches in these fields. Modern societies urgently need to rethink the intellectual division of labour in science and technology and the corresponding organization of the university, corporation, and government in order to get out of a self-destructive pattern where problems are first created by some than then dealt with by others, making it almost impossible to get to the roots of anything. The result is what he calls the labyrinth of technology, a growing patchwork of compensations that merely displace and transform problems from one place to another. The author's diagnosis suggests the remedy: a new, preventive strategy that situates technological and economic growth in its human, societal, and biospheric contexts, and calls for a synthesis of methods in engineering, management, and public policy, and of approaches in the social sciences and humanities. He also suggests that this same synthesis can be applied in medicine, law, social work, and other professions. The Labyrinth of Technology is a unique and invaluable text for students, academics and laypersons in all disciplines, and speaks to those who are torn between the benefits that modern technology provides and the difficulties it creates in our individual and collective lives.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802083854
• ISBN13: 9780802083852
• Release Date: December 2000
• Publisher: University of Toronto Press
• Length: 494 Pages
• Weight: 1.59 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

A book every engineering graduate should read

After reading countless engineering textbooks about the most minute of topics I finally have an opportunity to read about engineering outside of its usual specialized context. Finally an engineer who isn't afraid to talk about some of the problems in engineering curriculum.

An Ounce of Prevention

The Labyrinth of Technology opens with the current political vision of technological and economic growth and ends with another that would permit the economy to deliver goods and services with greater competitiveness and with much lower social and environmental burdens. Between these visions, we find a detailed analysis of what has gone wrong with the engineering, management and regulation of modern technology to the point that, at present, they are almost certainly reducing the production of net wealth and undermining the quality of human life by creating social and environmental problems. The claim that we could do much better is unbelievable and impossible if we continue to do things as we are. Because the consequences of decisions made by countless practitioners in the engineering, management and regulation of modern technology fall beyond their domains of expertise, the resulting problems are dealt with by others in whose area of competence they fall. As a result, the "system" first creates problems and then seeks to address them, which, common sense tells us, is ineffective and expensive. The case is amply doumented in this important work.Since we all live in a society in which technology is directly or indirectly involved in virtually all daily-life activities, an understanding of its inner workings and how this affects our lives is important to everyone. In my estimation, this book is an absolute must for ANYONE who seeks to understand the successes and failures of our industrially-advanced civilization.