Chapter 26 Further Reading: Philosophy in the Digital Age
The philosophy of technology is a genuinely active and urgent field. The readings below range from classic texts that established the field to contemporary works that grapple with the specific features of the digital age. Entries are organized by category and annotated for how they connect to this chapter's themes.
Primary Sources: The Philosophical Foundations
Heidegger, Martin. "The Question Concerning Technology" (1954) Accessible in Basic Writings, edited by David Farrell Krell (Harper & Row, various editions). This is the essential text. The essay is demanding but repays careful reading. Focus especially on the passages about poiesis (bringing-forth) and the contrast between the craftsman's chalice and modern manufacturing; the analysis of the Rhine hydroelectric plant; and the final sections on "the saving power" and art. Heidegger's dense style can be disorienting — read it slowly, in short sections, looking for the central thread: what is the essence of modern technology, and why is it dangerous?
Winner, Langdon. "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" (1980) Available in The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology (University of Chicago Press, 1986) and reprinted in many anthologies. This is one of the most accessible and influential papers in the philosophy of technology. Winner writes clearly and builds his argument through concrete examples. The Robert Moses bridge story is in this essay. Required reading for anyone thinking seriously about technology and society.
Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (PublicAffairs, 2019) This is a long book (over 500 pages); the most essential sections for this chapter are Chapter 1 ("Home or Exile in the Digital Future"), Chapter 2 ("August 9, 2011: The Timely Destruction of Privacy") and Chapter 3 ("The Discovery of Behavioral Surplus"). The later chapters develop the broader argument about behavioral modification and "the instrumentarian power." Zuboff writes in an accessible academic style and builds her argument through extensive empirical research into Google and Facebook's actual business practices.
Primary Sources: AI and Consciousness
Turing, Alan. "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" (1950) Published in Mind, vol. 59, no. 236, pp. 433–460. Available freely online. This is the paper that introduced the "imitation game" (what became the Turing Test). Turing writes with remarkable clarity and wit. The paper anticipates many standard objections to machine intelligence and responds to them. Reading it shows how philosophically careful Turing was — and how many of his questions remain unresolved 75 years later.
Searle, John. "Minds, Brains, and Programs" (1980) Published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 3, pp. 417–424, with extensive peer commentary. Searle's Chinese Room argument is here in its original form. Read the paper and at least some of the responses — the peer commentary is unusually accessible and directly engages the strongest objections to the argument.
Chalmers, David. "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness" (1995) Published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, vol. 2, no. 3. Available on Chalmers's website. Chalmers introduces the "hard problem" of consciousness and the zombie thought experiment. This paper established the contemporary framework for debates about machine consciousness.
Transhumanism and Posthumanism
Bostrom, Nick. "Why I Want to Be a Posthuman When I Grow Up" (2008) In Medical Enhancement and Posthumanity, edited by Bert Gordijn and Ruth Chadwick. Available on Bostrom's website. Bostrom's most accessible and personal statement of the transhumanist position. He is clear about what he values (rich experience, expanded capability, freedom from suffering), honest about the philosophical objections, and explicit about the connections between transhumanism and liberal political values.
Haraway, Donna. "A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s" (1985) Published in Socialist Review, vol. 80, pp. 65–108; reprinted in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (Routledge, 1991). Haraway's manifesto is deliberately provocative — the cyborg as a figure that breaks down comfortable oppositions (human/machine, nature/culture, organism/artifact). This essay requires some patience with academic feminist theory but rewards it. Haraway's point is not that we should become cyborgs but that we already are — and that recognizing this should change how we think about technology, nature, and gender.
Contemporary Works: The Digital Age
Carr, Nicholas. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (W. W. Norton, 2010) An accessible synthesis of cognitive science research on how internet use is changing the brain's capacity for sustained, deep reading. Carr is not a Luddite; he is a journalist who finds himself unable to read the way he once could and wants to understand why. The book engages with McLuhan's "the medium is the message," with the history of reading, and with neuroscience research on plasticity. A good entry point for thinking about the cognitive effects of digital technology.
Crawford, Kate. Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence (Yale University Press, 2021) Crawford traces AI from its material foundations (the mining of rare earth metals, the energy costs of data centers, the labor of human trainers) through its deployment in hiring, policing, healthcare, and military applications. The book challenges the framing of AI as weightless software and situates it in specific physical, economic, and political contexts. Essential for understanding the full scope of what "AI" involves beyond the software layer.
Vallor, Shannon. Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting (Oxford University Press, 2016) Vallor develops a virtue ethics approach to technology: rather than asking "what rules should govern technology?" she asks "what character traits do we need to flourish with technology?" She draws on Aristotelian, Confucian, and Buddhist virtue traditions. Accessible and practically oriented. The chapter on "technomoral wisdom" is particularly relevant to the "living philosophically in the digital age" themes of this chapter.
O'Neil, Cathy. Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy (Crown, 2016) A data scientist examines algorithmic systems in hiring, credit, healthcare, policing, and education, showing how supposedly objective mathematical models reproduce and amplify inequality. Accessible and empirically grounded; good companion reading to Winner's theoretical framework. O'Neil coined the term "WMD" (weapons of math destruction) for algorithms that are opaque, self-reinforcing, and harmful to vulnerable populations.
For Deeper Philosophical Engagement
Borgmann, Albert. Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry (University of Chicago Press, 1984) Borgmann develops the concept of the "device paradigm" — the way modern technologies hide their machinery and deliver commodities, replacing "focal practices" (activities that gather and orient life) with effortless consumption. A Heideggerian analysis that is more concrete and livable than Heidegger himself. His analysis of the "gathering" function of the hearth versus the "commodity" of central heating is a classic.
Floridi, Luciano. The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence: Principles, Challenges, and Opportunities (Oxford University Press, 2023) A systematic introduction to AI ethics by one of the field's leading philosophers. Covers consciousness, agency, moral status, digital identity, privacy, and AI governance. More technical than the other readings listed here but not inaccessible; good for readers who want a comprehensive philosophical map of the field.