Western Quest for Certainty

By Jerry Killingsworth

The author, a generalist, reviews the megatrend in the West for certainty. The most visible signs of this trend is in what McLuhan called the "Gutenberg Galaxy, to show the macrocosmic impact of the printing press and typography. Then, the Renaissance Humanism, the Protestant Reformation, the Scientific Transformation, Age of Reason-and-Certainty-and- the Enlightenment moved us closer to certainty. Newton's "Clockwork Universe" was a step toward certainty, and then, to use Toffler's term "Indust-Reality," claimed a certainty that would lead toward the Technological Singularity and a data based, but post human-biological era, that would provide something on the order of a computable universe, and this shows great certainty, but is, according to the author, the last thing in this world that we should want, for it is a singularity of human-artificial intelligence-and-ultra computers that shows a certainty but one that lacks the seamless web-unity of human existence.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1514185296
• ISBN13: 9781514185292
• Release Date: June 2015
• Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"