Borgmann traces a "history" of what the Western world has thought of as reality and information. For Borgmann, information is a "sign" that "informs" an individual about "some thing within a certain context," so our information about reality is socially contextual.

I found this compelling reading, especially as many other authors seem to confound "information" and "knowledge". I found his last section, dealing with technology, as less convincing than the earlier sections of his work; he does not seem to think as deeply about electronic information technology as he does about earlier information technologies. His work also suffers from having a very limited, Anglo/Northern-European bent, with the notable exception of his discussions of American Indian technologies of information.

However, Borgmann's book is well worth reading for anyone who needs or want to think deeply about information and knowledge, and the relation of social constructions to our perception of reality. As another reviewer noted, this book deserves a slow, careful reading.

Borgmann is a professor of philosophy at a university in Montana. This is an important point for several reasons: his use of his immediate surroundings to illustrate his theory of communication and his ability to tie that theory to his field of academic philosophy. While keeping his analysis of communication theory close to the history of communication, Borgmann weaves his story into a cogent read of contemporary issues in communication based on his foundation as a "realist." He manages to escape embracing a social contstructionist stance, but only barely. For his view of reality fits nicely with both a realist and a constructionist view. This is an amazing accomplishment. For those interested in the practical: his explanation of writing and structure are not to be missed. In this chapter he offers a way to think of the digital-ness of our past, present, and future via the use of information as a whole thing with a context and information as "reality...structured all the way down, and at the bottom...composed of a small number of meaningless, but well-defined elements." (p. 61)

Albert Borgmann examines "the nature of information at the turn of the millennium." In his Introduction, he examines Information vs. Reality. He then makes several distinctions which serve to organize the book into three separate but related parts: Natural Information: Information about Reality, Cultural Information: Information for Reality, and Technological Information: Information as Reality

What is Borgmann's ultimate objective? In his own words, "we need both a theory and an ethics of information -- a theory to illuminate the structure of information and an ethics to get the moral of its development." To achieve this objective, he creates a frame of reference within which to understand the evolution of "information" from primeval times when it served to disclose distant reality until now when it frequently seems to have a reality wholly apart from the actual world.

The importance of Holding On to Reality is perhaps most evident in its Conclusion when Borgmann invites his reader to reflect upon "The Lightness of Being" and "Adjusting the Balance" while hiking with him across his beloved Montana. Obviously, Borgmann struggles to hold on to the reality of his own world. With passion as well as eloquence and erudition, he inspires his readers to do so with theirs.

I sent a review about 10 days ago; I was wondering why you did not run it. Could you let me know? Thank you.

In Crossing the Post Modern Divide, Albert Borgman has done a fine job of describing many troubling features of modern society. The emotively vivid, often poetic language that he uses renders the book very readable. It is disappointing that his attempt to explain how we arrived at our current sorry state of affairs is not cogently argued. Rather, it is riddled with fallacies.

Take his reasoning in the concluding remarks of chapter one, which are the basis for the inquiry he pursues throughout the book. He has already convincingly shown that our modern era is in many ways "rotten" and plans to show how things got this way. So far, so good. But then things take a dramatically illogical turn. We are told that if we wish to avoid perpetuating the evils we now face, we must attend to their "initial conditions." His idea here seems to be that if our current situation is bad, then the prior situation which influenced it must be bad, too. So if we change those conditions, we will cease to perpetuate the horrid practices that followed.

This line of reasoning is nothing short of what we might term a "reverse genetic fallacy." A genetic fallacy imputes a characteristic of the origin of something to what was derived from it. If the parents are bad, then must not the child be bad, too? Of course not. Many a good person had less than exemplary parents. That's why it is an example of fallacious reasoning. The reverse is to impute to the origin of something a characteristic of what was derived from it. If the child is bad, must not the parents have been bad, too? Obviously not. Some really vile people have had morally upright parents. Again, we see the fallacy in situation is bad, then the "initial condition" in the form of ideas of Bacon, Descartes, and Locke must be bad, too. Are we to accept this, as if the mistakes might not have been a result of errors in their application? I certainly don't think so.

For instance, we are told that Francis Bacon left us a legacy of "vicious realism" in his scientific method based on the fact that he promoted the development of applied science in his New Atlantis. For have we not reaped a bitter fruit from the tree of technology in terms of environmental destruction? So the attitude that it is acceptable to exploit our environment to its detriment is laid at Bacon's door. What is overlooked is the fact that Bacon explicitly places moral strictures on the use of science insofar as it is to serve humanity for its benefit, contrary to the current abuses documented by Borgman. It would seem, then, that the reprehensible state of affairs in society's treatment of the environment is based on a misuse, rather than a use, of Baconian ideas.

Still more fallacies are found in Borgman's attacks on the idea that there are moral universals. The first occurs where we are told that Kant is guilty of "sleight of thought" for moving from premises showing that feelings are unreliable guides for conduct to the conclusion that the ground of morality must be found in a universal principle of action. This is nothing less than an ad hominem attack. Disagree though one might (and I don't) with Kant's conclusion, and fault his transcendental logic as erroneous if you will, as some have done (not including myself), and you nevertheless remain on the firm ground of critical analysis. But insinuate that Kant was being deceptive, by using a play on words based on the phrase "sleight of hand" which characterizes tricksters, and you have crossed the line that demarcates reasoning from a personal attack. Having studied moral philosophy and taught ethics courses for three decades, I have encountered a wide range of both positive and negative opinions about Kant's theories, but none have cast aspersions on his character by suggesting that he was some sort of philosophical flimflammer.

The next fallacy is contained in Borgman's allegaton that Kant "purchased universality at the expense of vacuity," meaning that Kant provided no basis for actually applying moral universals. Here, Borgman is guilty of arguing against a straw person because he is demolishing a caricature instead of a characterization of Kant's theory. The view Borgman attacks is an oversimplified version because it ignores well known and relevant qualifications contained in the work he is citing, Kant's Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals. There, Kant gives two formulations of his categorical imperative in addition to the one mentioned by Borgman which address the issue of how to apply it to specific situations. For instance, in his second version, Kant presents criteria for treating people with respect for their dignity, and then in the third formulation, he provides additional guidance for acting in a moral community (see Barbara Hermann's Practice of Moral Judgment for an insightful explanation of these points and a discussion of why Kantian ethics is compatible with the insights of Carol Gilligan regarding the ethics of care). Taken together with his universal law formulation, Kant's two additional versions of the categorical imperative provide perspectives that inform the first and thereby render the theory applicable to our practical needs.

So although Crossing the Post Modern Divide initially holds out the promise of helping us to understand how we got ourselves into the post modern predicament in order to enable us to break free from its spiritually destructive grip, Borgman's treatment ultimately does not live up to the expectations raised at the outset because the author fails to provide a carefully reasoned and historically accurate treatment of the very conditions he sets out to change.

Vincent A. LaZara, Ph.D. www.odincomm.com

This is a fascinatingly interesting, endlessly provocative, and eminently worthwhile read penned by a thoughtful philosopher who seems to have one foot in the heavens and the other planted firmly in every-day life. Borgmann serves up a busman's tour of history, ranging from observations on icons such as Bacon, Descartes, and Locke, yet at the same time coldly,cautiously, and carefully illustrating how we have lost so much more than we have gained in our earnest struggle to free ourselves from tradition and its hold on us, as we have increasingly become the mindlessly individualistic souls so boldly detached from any meaningful connection to one another that we have now become both socially and spiritually bereft, strangers in a strange land indeed.

Borgmann's view of contemporary society offers us nothing that others have not written even more eloquently about elsewhere; his gift to us is rather to illustrate with uncommon verve and precision exactly how the our dance in the history of ideas as well as our enthusiastic embrace of materialism has acted to gradually bankrupt us in terms of having any real meaningful sense of who we really are and why it is we are alive. According to the author, we are now living in circumstances so far estranged from any kind of natural connection to or relationship with the environment that we seem to believe that whatever artificially created surroundings we may have are mere furniture, incidental and unconnected to us or how we experience our lives, and therefore we cannot understand the ways in which this "mere furniture" fatefully influences and determines our own possibilities, both in terms of our material well being, and for Borgmann, at least, also in terms of our waning recognition of the possibility of any substantial spiritual existence.

This is indeed a rather breath-taking vision, one that both encapsulates prior history, and also places that history in context as the meaningful prologue to what now exists. We have confidently left behind any belief in meaningful central authority, are ardently enthusiastic believers in the unalloyed superiority of the rational mode of thought, and are bravely rational progressives in the sense we take mere "material progress" to be the greatest possible good. Now at long last we awake from five centuries of striving to be free to find ourselves locked into a wide-open world of someone else's design, suddenly left in the lap of material luxury to try to cope with forces we neither understand nor fully appreciate in terms of their magnitude or consequence. Instead, we tune into the shallow commonweal of the media, where all things are hyped, and where nothing is scared, other than the stock market and the supposed spread of individual wealth. Is it any wonder we have collectively lost faith in the power of the present to satisfy us, or become suspicious that the future holds little but more of the same vacuous fare?

As another reviewer states, it seems the more we grasp for meaning, the more ghostly our existences become. Borgmann, true to his beliefs, underscores the desperate need each of us has to find meaningful connection in the community of our peers. We must strive to overcome our addiction to living lives of material inconsequentiality by devoting ore energy and resources to exploring our common humanity with others in our own habitat. For in the end, according to Borgmann, it is as simple (and as problematic) as having the good sense to establish more human connections to our colleagues, neighbors, and friends. We need a life, according to Borgmann, richer in social interaction and shared community as opposed to continue to seek material ends. This is a book I highly recommend. Enjoy!