Andrew Feenberg's Home Page

Andrew Feenberg Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Technology School of Communication Simon Fraser University Phone: (604) 291-5169 Email: feenberg@sfu.ca Last modified: March 14, 2004   For a more recent version of this homepage, please go to   http://www.sfu.ca/~andrewf/

Andrew Feenberg is Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Technology in the School of Communication, Simon Fraser University. He has also taught at for many years in the Philosophy Department at San Diego State University, and at Duke University, the State University of New York at Buffalo, the Universities of California, San Diego and Irvine, the Sorbonne, the University of Paris-Dauphine, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, and the University of Tokyo. He is the author of Lukacs, Marx and the Sources of Critical Theory (Rowman and Littlefield, 1981; Oxford University Press, 1986), Critical Theory of Technology (Oxford University Press, 1991), Alternative Modernity (University of California Press, 1995), and Questioning Technology (Routledge, 1999). A second edition of Critical Theory of Technology has appeared with Oxford in 2002 under the title Transforming Technology. Heidegger, Marcuse and Technology: The Catastrophe and Redemption of Enlightenment is in press (Routledge 2004). Translations of several of these books are available. Dr. Feenberg is also co-editor of Marcuse Critical Theory and the Promise of Utopia (Bergin and Garvey Press, 1988), Technology and the Politics of Knowledge (Indiana University Press, 1995), and Modernity and Technology (MIT Press, 2003), and Community in the Digital Age (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004). His co-authored book on the French May Events of 1968 appeared in 2001 with SUNY Press under the title When Poetry Ruled the Streets. In addition to his work on Critical Theory and philosophy of technology, Dr. Feenberg has published on the Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitaro. He is also recognized as an early innovator in the field of online education, a field he helped to create in 1982. He is currently working on the TextWeaver Project on improving software for online discussion forums under a grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education of the US Department of Education.

 

 List of publications (some downloads)

Courses

Symposia on Questioning Technology

Photo Galleries

Distance Learning and Online Community:

1. Discussion Management Software
2. The Online Patient Meeting
3. The Written World: On the Theory and Practice of Computer Conferencing
4. Tecnología para comunidades y racionalización democrática
5. Building a Global Network: The WBSI Experience
6. Distance Learning: Promise or Threat
7. Whither Educational Technology?
8. La enseñanza "online" y las Opciones de Modernidad
9. See also the University of Illinois Report on Online Distance Education
10. See also the Distance Education Policy of the SDSU Academic Senate
11. TextWeaver Home Page (alternative site) 
12. Community Technology and Democratic Rationalization, with Maria Bakardjieva

Some Background Texts:

1. Brief Summary of My Approach to the Study of Technology
2. A Democratic Utopia of Technique
3. Preface to the Chinese translation of Alternative Modernity
4. Feenberg on Modernity and Technology by Philip Brey
5. Women and Water: At the Crossroads of Critical Theory and Technology, by Yoko Arisaka
6. "Andrew Feenberg: Farewell to Dystopia," by Hans Achterhuis in American Philosophy of Technology, H. Achterhuis, ed., Indiana University Press, 2001.

Recent Talks:

1. Looking Backward, Looking Forward: Reflections on the 20th Century
2. Can Technology Incorporate Values? Marcuse's Answer to the Question of the Age
3. Socialism and Anti-Technocratic Struggle in the French May Events of 1968
4. Involving the Virtual Subject (Video of talk)
5. Active and Passive Bodies: Comments on Don Ihde's Bodies in Technology
6. Values and the Environment
7. What Is Philosophy of Technology?

 

Selected Articles:

1. From Essentialism to Constructivism: Philosophy of Technology at the Crossroads
2. Escaping the Iron Cage, or, Subversive Rationalization and Democratic Theory
3. From Information to Communication: the French Experience with Videotex
4. Subversive Rationalization: Technology, Power, and Democracy
5. Racionalizacion Democratica: Tecnologia, Poder, y Libertad
6. Experience and Culture: Nishida's Path 'To the Things Themselves'
7. Modernity Theory and Technology Studies: Reflections on Bridging the Gap

 

Texts in Japanese:

 

1. Technology in a Global World

2. Looking Backward, Looking Forward: Reflections on the 20th Century

3. Preface to the Chinese edition of Alternative Modernity

4. Democratic Rationalization

5.  See also the Japanese translation of Critical Theory of Technology, published by Hosei University Press and the translation of Questioning Technology, Iwanami Press

6. See also “Tekunoroji ha kati to gattai dekiruka? -- Jidai no mondai ni taisuru Maruku-ze no kai tou” in Jouhou Mondai Kenkyu, 2003.

Texts in Several Languages:

1. Review (in Italian) of Questioning Technology by Marina Maestrutti
2. Preface to La tecnologia in discussione
3. Review (in Korean) of Transforming Technology by SoYeon Park
4. Interview (in Korean) by Jinhee
5. Comment (in Chinese) on Alternative Modernity by Lujun
6. Modernity and Technology (partial draft translation in Chinese)
7. Postindustrial Discourses (in Greek)
8. Subversive Rationalization (in Greek)
9. Marcuse and Habermas (in Portugese)
10. Philosophy of Technology at the Crossroads (in Portugese)
11. O que é a Filosofia da Tecnologia?
12. Le probleme de la modernite dans la philosophie de Nishida,
13. Chapter 2 of Questioning Technology in draft French translation (on the May Events)
14. Chapter 6 of Questioning Technology in draft French translation (on democracy)
15. Racionalizacion Democratica: Tecnologia, Poder, y Libertad
16. La enseñanza "online" y las Opciones de Modernidad
17. Tecnología para comunidades y racionalización democrática

Additional Information

1. Curriculum Vitae
2. Summary of Curriculum Vitae
3. Cover Art from Alternative Modernity
4. Author's Picture from Alternative Modernity
5. Cover Art from Questioning Technology (Painting by Walter Murch)
6. Herbert Marcuse in Dialogue with a Young Hegelian (Nick)
7. The Family Funk Center
8. An Artistic Experiment, 1963
9. In front of the Renault factory, May '68
10. The Postmodern Academy
11. Paris Apartment for Rent

 

Links

 

Douglas Kellner

Voice of the Shuttle

Frontwheeldrive

William Leiss

Yoko Arisaka

Phil Agre

Andrew Light

Senator Byrd's Speech

 

The information on this page represents Andrew Feenberg. Andrew Feenberg takes full responsibility for the information presented.