ABSTRACT
The argument presented in this book has proceeded by way of a series of stages. First, I have suggested that a critical theory of technology might most usefully be formulated through considering technology as a broad phenomenon that reconstitutes our modes of knowing and acting in the world. The theorists and cultural movements that appear in the book have been analysed in the light of this approach. Second, I have suggested that the reconstitutive process enabled through technology can best be understood under the rubric of abstraction, considered as much a material process as one which occurs in the realm of the conceptual. It is at this point that a crucial issue arises. If technology enables a more constitutively abstract mode of engagement with the world, then to what extent might we wish to welcome or limit this mode? What are the conditions under which we are best able to posit the question?
