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Philosophy of Technology Foundational
Resources

Last Update 8/22/2025

12 Most Influential Books on the Philosophy of Technology 

Annotated & Listed Chronologically

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Amazon

1. Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (1934)

Traces the history of technological developments arguing that cultural and moral choices, not just machines, shaped society. He emphasizes that the technological mindset began before the Industrial Revolution, with shifts in timekeeping, energy use, and urban life.

Cultural Constructivism: technology is shaped by, and in turn shapes, cultural values rather than being an autonomous force.

Current Significance: Challenges today’s narratives of inevitable AI or automation. Social priorities and ethical frameworks can redirect technological trajectories.

 

 

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Amazon

3. Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology (1954)

Critiques the instrumental definition of technology, proposing instead that it reveals the world through the “enframing” (Gestell), which reduces beings to resources. He warns that this mode of revealing risks obscuring other ways of being.

Substantivism: technology embodies a way of revealing reality that shapes human existence.

Current Significance: Heidegger’s thought frames contemporary debates about algorithmic worldviews, datafication, and the narrowing of human understanding in AI-mediated environments.​

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Amazon

5. Gilbert Simondon, On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects (1958)

Simondon reconceives technical objects as evolving through processes of individuation, in which they adapt and transform within specific technical and social environments. He links understanding technology to a philosophy of becoming, not fixed essence.

Relational Constructivism: technology develops through dynamic relationships between human, technical, and environmental factors.

Current Significance: Underpins posthumanist and systems-approaches to AI, robotics, and networked infrastructures, stressing the mutual shaping of humans and machines.

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Amazon

7. Langdon Winner, Autonomous Technology (1977)

Winner examines the ways technologies can have political properties and can evolve beyond human control, shaping social order in unintended or unaccountable ways.

 

Soft Technological Determinism / Political Substantivism: technology’s structure can embody and perpetuate political power.

Current Significance: Essential for understanding debates about algorithmic bias, infrastructure governance, and the politics embedded in platform design.

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Amazon

9. Don Ihde, Technology and the Lifeworld: From Garden to Earth (1990)

Ihde develops a phenomenology of technological mediation, showing how technologies transform perception and action in patterned ways. He emphasizes embodiment relations, hermeneutic relations, and background relations between humans and artifacts.

Postphenomenology: technology mediates human-world relations, actively shaping experience.

Current Significance: Ihde’s framework is highly relevant to AR/VR, wearable AI, and human–machine interfaces, where perception is technologically structured.

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Amazon

11. Shannon Vallor, Technology and the Virtues (2016)

Identifies“technomoral virtues” necessary for human flourish in an age of AI, robotics, and digital networks.

​

Virtue Ethics for technology: moral cultivation is essential for guiding technological futures.

Current Significance: Offers a positive moral framework for AI governance, educational technology, and global digital citizenship.​

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Amazon

2. Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility (1979)

Jonas argues for an ethic oriented toward the long-term consequences of technological action, especially given humanity’s new capacity to irreversibly affect the biosphere. His “imperative of responsibility” calls for caution and foresight.

Ethical Precautionism: a normative stance prioritizing responsibility to future generations in technological decision-making.

Current Significance: Directly applies to climate engineering, AI safety, and biotechnology, where irreversible risks demand governance rooted in foresight.

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Amazon

4. Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society (1954)

Ellul defines “technique” as an autonomous, self-perpetuating force that evolves according to its own internal logic, largely independent of cultural or political control. He documents how efficiency becomes the driving criterion for all spheres of life.

Strong Technological Determinism: once a technology is possible, it will be developed and adopted.

Current Significance: Ellul’s framework resonates with current concerns about the seeming inevitability of AI adoption despite unresolved ethical, political, and social challenges.

 

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Amazon

6. Albert Borgmann, Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life (1984)

Borgmann’s “device paradigm” critiques how modern technologies conceal their workings, delivering commodities with minimal engagement, thereby eroding focal practices that anchor meaning in life.

Mild Substantivism (with cultural critique):  technologies embody patterns that shape the character of life.

Current Significance: Borgmann’s analysis applies to today’s on-demand digital services and AI assistants, raising questions about what meaningful practices we lose in the pursuit of convenience.

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Amazon

8. Carl Mitcham, Thinking Through Technology (1994)

Summary: Mitcham surveys and classifies philosophies of technology into instrumental, substantive, and pluralist approaches, providing a meta-framework for understanding the field.

Philosophical Pluralism: multiple conceptual frameworks are needed to grasp the complexity of technology.

Current Significance: Mitcham’s typology equips policymakers, ethicists, and engineers to better navigate competing visions for AI regulation and technological governance.

 

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Amazon

10. Andrew Feenberg, Transforming Technology: A Critical Theory Revisited (2002)

Feenberg applies critical theory to technology, arguing that technological design is socially contested and can be democratically redirected toward humane ends.

 

Critical Constructivism: technology is socially constructed and can be reshaped through political action.

Current Significance: Central to debates on participatory design, AI ethics, and ensuring that technological systems reflect public values rather than solely corporate interests.

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Amazon

12. Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality (1973)

Illich distinguishes between convivial tools, which foster autonomy, creativity, and community, and industrial tools, which centralize power and create dependency. He calls for limits on technological scale to preserve human freedom and mutual care.

Technological Convivialism: technology should be limited and structured to serve human-scale, participatory life.

Current Significance: Illich’s vision resists over-centralized AI systems and advocates for open, transparent, and community-controlled technologies.​

Anthologies

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Amazon

The best overall map of the field. Still the most comprehensive anthology on the philosophy of technology. It combines classic, hard-to-find essays with essential contemporary work, all framed by excellent editorial introductions and summaries. These readings are essential for understanding the philosophy of technology.

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Amazon

The most up-to-date and in-depth collection of leading and emerging voices in the philosophy of technology. Covering everything from ethics and epistemology to aesthetics and political theory, while engaging with engineering, design, computing, and the sciences. It shows how philosophy can help us think about identity, freedom, knowledge, and power in an age shaped by machines. 

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Amazon

Provides many of the most important readings in the philosophy of technology, while also covering areas that other collections often overlook. It offers a strong introduction to how societies, technologies, and environments shape one another, and how technology intersects with ethics, politics, human nature, science, and more.

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Technological Optimism, Pessimism, and Realism
Essential Works 

The Main Evaluative Stances Toward Technology:
Tecno-optimism, Techno-pessimism, and Techno-realism

At the heart of the philosophy of technology lie two enduring questions: What is technology, and how should we evaluate it? Three main stances dominate that evaluation: optimism, pessimism, and realism, each with stronger and weaker forms. These views are often paired with one of five major theoretical frameworks, resulting in a theory of how technology works and why it matters.

For more on this, see my essay Not Just Tools: A Simple Primer on the Philosophy of Technology.

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Technology is humanity’s sharpest ally, the tool of progress. Science can conquer suffering. The optimist sees technology as neutral. Its worth depends on the user's goals.

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Technology is never neutral. It carries within it a logic that reshapes life. The harms are not accidents but revelations: technology creates new problems as fast as it solves old ones.

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Technology is value-laden but not destiny. Like language, it opens possibilities and closes others. Our task is to discern which will likely lead to good or harm.

Technological Optimism

 

Technology as promise: progress, liberation, flourishing

  1. Francis Bacon, Novum Organum (1620). 

    • ​​Lays out the Baconian method: an inductive, empirical approach to knowledge to relieve human suffering.

    • Optimism: technology and reason as engines of progress and power.

  2. Peter H. Diamandis & Steven Kotler, Abundance (2012). 

    • ​​Claims that exponential technologies can overcome global scarcities.

    • Optimism: technological solutions to humanity’s biggest challenges. 

  3. Chris Anderson, Makers (2012). 

    • ​​Celebrates digital fabrication and open-source innovation as democratizing forces.

    • Optimism: empowerment through technology. 

  4. Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable (2016). 

    • ​​Maps twelve technological trends that broaden human capability.

    • Optimism: progress as near-inevitable benefit. 

  5. Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Nearer (2024). 

    • ​​Predicts AI’s acceleration toward human-level merging; sees it as a positive transformation.

    • Optimism: technology as a transcendent future.

Technological Pessimism

 

Technology as threat: autonomy, dehumanization, domination

  1. Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (1934). 

    • ​​Argues the “megamachine” centralizes authority, stifling human creativity.

    • Pessimism: technology as domination. 

  2. Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society (1964). 

    • ​​Claims “la technique” advances by its own logic, indifferent to human values.

    • Pessimism: autonomous tech as erosion of freedom.

  3. Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology (1954). 

    • ​​Describes how technology “enframes” being, shaping perception. 

    • Pessimism: technology alters humanity’s relation to being.

  4. Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (1964). 

    • Argues that advanced industrial societies suppress critical thought via technological rationality.  

    • Pessimism: tech as ideological subordination. 

  5. Neil Postman, Technopoly (1992). 

    • ​​Warns that technology replaces culture’s deeper purposes.

    • Pessimism: cultural capitulation to efficiency. 

  6. Evgeny Morozov, To Save Everything, Click Here (2013). 

    • ​​Critiques the belief that technology is a cure-all.

    • Pessimism: techno‑solutionism is superficial. 

  7. Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019). 

    • ​​Analyzes how platforms exploit user data for control. 

    • Pessimism: structural threats from platform power.

Technological Realism

 

Neither fully pessimistic nor optimistic; emphasize mediation, governance, or co-construction

  1. John Dewey, Democracy and Education (1916).

    • Connects democratic learning and technical change as co-shaping social life.

    • Realism: democratic guidance of technology. â€‹

  2. Langdon Winner, The Whale and the Reactor (1986).

    • Argues that artifacts embody political values and should be critically shaped.

    • Realism: design and politics intertwined. 

  3. Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (1991).

    • Blurs nature and technoscience: everything is hybrid.

    • Realism: socio-technical hybrids define our world. 

  4. Andrew Feenberg, Transforming Technology (2002).

    • Expands his critique into how the public can shape technics.

    • Realism: steering technology through social design. 

  5. Peter‑Paul Verbeek, Moralizing Technology (2011).

    • Shows how design embeds morality; argues for ethical design.

    • Realism: mediated ethics through artifacts. 

  6. Sheila Jasanoff, The Ethics of Invention (2016).

    • Explores how law, culture, and ethics must co-evolve with technology.

    • Realism: technology needs cultural and legal framing. 

  7. Nicholas Agar, The Sceptical Optimist (2015).

    • Promotes smart optimism tempered by caution about enhancement.

    • Realism: hope moderated by ethics. 

  8. Nick Bostrom, Deep Utopia (2024).

    • Envisions a post-scarcity techno-utopia while questioning meaning and values.

    • Realism: utopia needs moral landscaping. 

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Philosophy of Technology 

Research Bibliography 

Last update: August 28, 2025
This Bibliography with grow significantly. It is scheduled to be complete by the end of 2025.

The Problem of Defining Technology

​Ontological Approaches​

Technology as tool, technique, system, or way of being; essentialist vs. instrumentalist; technology as culture-shaping medium.

  1. Simondon, Gilbert. 2017 (orig. 1958). On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects. Univ. of Minnesota Press.
    • Develops an ontology of technical individuation, situating artifacts within ongoing processes and milieux.

  2. Borgmann, Albert. 1984. Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life. Univ. of Chicago Press. 

    • Introduces the “device paradigm,” showing how modern devices reorganize focal practices and reality disclosure.

  3. Mitcham, Carl. 1994. Thinking Through Technology: The Path Between Engineering and Philosophy. Univ. of Chicago Press.

    • Systematic map of technology’s definitions (as object, knowledge, activity, volition) across traditions.

  4. Verbeek, Peter-Paul. 2005. What Things Do: Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design. Penn State Press. 

    • Postphenomenological account of technological mediation and artifact agency in shaping human–world relations.

  5. Stiegler, Bernard. 1998. Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus. Stanford Univ. Press. 

    • Argues technics is originary to the human (exteriorization of memory), reframing human temporality.

  6. Winner, Langdon. 1986. The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology. Univ. of Chicago Press.

    • Shows how artifacts embody forms of life and political order, challenging neutralist ontologies.

  7. Mumford, Lewis. 1934. Technics and Civilization. Harcourt/Mariner; reprint Univ. of Chicago Press.

    • Grand narrative (eotechnic–paleotechnic–neotechnic) linking technics to cultural forms.

  8. Feenberg, Andrew. 1999. Questioning Technology. Routledge.

    • Critical constructivist ontology: technologies are socially designed and thus transformable.

  9. McLuhan, Marshall. 1964. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. McGraw-Hill; MIT Press reprint. 

    • Media (technologies) as extensions of human faculties, recasting tech as environment and “message.” Technology as culture-shaping medium (McLuhan, Ellul)​

 

Epistemological Dimensions

Mediation of knowing; tacit/embodied knowledge; scientific vs. technological epistemologies.

 

  1. Polanyi, Michael. 1966. The Tacit Dimension. Univ. of Chicago Press.

    • Classic thesis that knowing is partly inarticulate and skill-like, foundational for technological knowledge. 

  2. Polanyi, Michael. 1958. Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. Univ. of Chicago Press. 

    • Argues all knowledge is personal, fiduciary, and skill-laden, challenging objectivist models.

  3. Vincenti, Walter G. 1990. What Engineers Know and How They Know It. Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.

    • Empirical study of engineering epistemology (design methods, normal configurations, standards).

  4. Hacking, Ian. 1983. Representing and Intervening. Cambridge Univ. Press.

    • Shows experiment and intervention as knowledge-constituting, bridging science and technology.

  5. Baird, Davis. 2004. Thing Knowledge: A Philosophy of Scientific Instruments. Univ. of California Press.

    • Argues artifacts and instruments embody knowledge as much as propositions do.

  6. Collins, Harry. 2010. Tacit and Explicit Knowledge. Univ. of Chicago Press.

    • Typology of tacit knowledge (relational, somatic, collective) and its transmission in technical practice.

  7. Latour, Bruno, and Steve Woolgar. 1986 (orig. 1979). Laboratory Life. Princeton Univ. Press.

    • Ethnography of scientific practice, foregrounding inscription devices and material mediation.

  8. Pinch, Trevor, and Wiebe E. Bijker. 1984. “The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts.” Social Studies of Science 14(3): 399–441.

    • Introduces SCOT, showing how social groups shape technological “closure.”

  9. Meijers, Anthonie, ed. 2009. Philosophy of Technology and Engineering Sciences. Elsevier Handbook.

    • Comprehensive reference on epistemic issues in engineering and technology.

​

 Ethical Grounding

Moral neutrality debate; value-ladenness of artifacts; responsibility in design and use.

​

  1. Jonas, Hans. 1984 (orig. 1979). The Imperative of Responsibility. Univ. of Chicago Press.

    • Extends ethics to long-range technological power and unknown risks; “act so that effects are compatible with genuine human life.” 

  2. Winner, Langdon. 1980. “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” Daedalus 109(1): 121–136.

    • Seminal argument that design choices can embody and enforce political arrangements. 

  3. Verbeek, Peter-Paul. 2011. Moralizing Technology: Understanding and Designing the Morality of Things. Univ. of Chicago Press.

    • Proposes technologically mediated responsibility and designing for morality.

  4. van den Hoven, Jeroen, Pieter Vermaas, and Ibo van de Poel, eds. 2015. Handbook of Ethics, Values, and Technological Design. Springer.

    • Authoritative reference on values-by-design, responsible innovation, and ethical governance.

  5. Floridi, Luciano. 2013. The Ethics of Information. Oxford Univ. Press.

    • Develops information ethics with distributed moral agency and stewardship of the infosphere.

  6. van de Poel, Ibo, and Lambèr Royakkers. 2011. Ethics, Technology, and Engineering. Wiley-Blackwell.

    • Integrates ethical theory with engineering cases (risk, safety, responsibility).

  7. Douglas, Heather. 2009. Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal. Univ. of Pittsburgh Press. 

    • Argues non-epistemic values legitimately guide risk assessment under uncertainty, informing technology ethics.

  8. Friedman, Batya, and David G. Hendry. 2019. Value Sensitive Design: Shaping Technology with Moral Imagination. MIT Press.

    • Methodological framework for integrating stakeholder values throughout design.

  9. May, Joshua, and Patrick Lin, eds. 2022. Robot Ethics 2.0: From Autonomous Cars to Artificial Intelligence. Oxford Univ. Press.

    • Updated anthology connecting classic responsibility debates to contemporary AI deployments.

Major Philosophical Traditions in Philosophy of Technology

​

1. Analytic Tradition

Engineering ethics, risk analysis, design theory; AI ethics and computational epistemology.

 

  1. Bostrom, Nick, and Eliezer Yudkowsky. 2014. “The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence.” In The Cambridge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence, edited by Keith Frankish and William M. Ramsey, 316–334. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521691911.

    • Landmark analytic survey of AI moral status, responsibility, and long-term risk.

  2. Douglas, Heather. 2009. Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. ISBN 9780822960263.

    • Shows how non-epistemic values rightly guide risk-laden judgments, informing engineering/AI ethics.

  3. Floridi, Luciano. 2011. The Philosophy of Information. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199232383.

    1. Lays the analytic groundwork for informational ontology and epistemology central to computing and AI.

  4. Floridi, Luciano. 2013. The Ethics of Information. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199641321.

    • Develops an information ethics framework for evaluating digital artifacts and environments.

  5. Friedman, Batya, and David G. Hendry. 2019. Value Sensitive Design: Shaping Technology with Moral Imagination. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 9780262039536.

    • A rigorous, practice-oriented method to incorporate human values into technical design.

  6. Hansson, Sven Ove. 2013. The Ethics of Risk. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781137289179.

    • Analytic treatment of risk assessment, acceptability, and distribution in technological systems.

  7. Leveson, Nancy. 2012. Engineering a Safer World: Systems Thinking Applied to Safety. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 9780262533690.

    • STAMP framework reframes accidents as control problems, now influential in AI safety analogies.

  8. Lin, Patrick, Keith Abney, and George A. Bekey, eds. 2012. Robot Ethics: The Ethical and Social Implications of Robotics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 9780262526005.

    • Foundational analytic collection on machine morality, warfare, care, and responsibility.

  9. Meijers, Anthonie, ed. 2009. Philosophy of Technology and Engineering Sciences. Amsterdam: Elsevier. ISBN 9780444516671. Authoritative reference on analytic debates in artifact ontology, design, functions, and engineering epistemology.

  10. Mitcham, Carl. 1994. Thinking Through Technology: The Path between Engineering and Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226531984.

    1. Maps analytic vs. humanities approaches, clarifying “technology as objects/knowledge/activity/volition.”

  11. Nissenbaum, Helen. 2009. Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ISBN 9780804752371.

    • Defines privacy as contextual integrity, now standard in analytic treatments of information systems.

  12. Simon, Herbert A. 1996 (orig. 1969). The Sciences of the Artificial, 3rd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 9780262691918.

    • Canonical analytic account of artifacts, design, and bounded rationality shaping how technology counts as knowledge.

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2. Phenomenological / Continental Tradition

Engineering Heidegger, Ellul, Simondon, Stiegler; technology as revealing/alienation; postphenomenology and critical theory.

​

  1. Debord, Guy. 1995 (orig. 1967). The Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone Books. ISBN 9780942299793.

    • Media-technical “spectacularization” as a social totality.

  2. Ellul, Jacques. 1964 (orig. 1954). The Technological Society. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 9780394703909.

    • Argues technique is autonomous and totalizing, reordering society and meaning.

  3. Habermas, Jürgen. 1987 (orig. 1981). The Theory of Communicative Action, Vols. 1–2. Boston: Beacon Press. ISBN 9780807015074 (Vol. 1), 9780807014008 (Vol. 2).

    • ​​System vs. lifeworld: instrumental rationality colonizes everyday meaning.

  4. Haraway, Donna. 1991. “A Cyborg Manifesto.” In Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415903875.

    • The cyborg as hybrid ontology disrupting dualisms of human/machine, nature/culture.

  5. Heidegger, Martin. 1977 (orig. 1954). The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 9780061319693.

    • Defines technology’s essence as Gestell (enframing), a world-disclosing structure.

  6. Ihde, Don. 1990. Technology and the Lifeworld: From Garden to Earth. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 9780253205607.

    • Postphenomenology of human–technology relations (embodiment, hermeneutic, alterity, background).

  7. Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199256051.

    • Actor–network theory: artifacts as actants in socio-technical networks.

  8. Marcuse, Herbert. 1964. One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. Boston: Beacon Press. ISBN 9780807014176.

    • Critique of technological rationality as a mode of domination and pacification.

  9. Simondon, Gilbert. 2017 (orig. 1958). On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 9780816691324.

    • Technical individuation and associated milieus as the key to artifact ontology.

  10. Stiegler, Bernard. 1998–2011. Technics and Time, Vols. 1–3. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 9780804730413(Vol. 1), 9780804738631 (Vol. 2), 9780804753740 (Vol. 3).

    • Technics as exteriorization of memory; technicity as constitutive of the human.

  11. Verbeek, Peter-Paul. 2005. What Things Do: Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 9780271025401.

    • Mediation theory: artifacts co-shape human perception, action, and moral experience.

​

​

3. Pragmatist Tradition

Dewey on tools, inquiry, and democracy; critical and democratic rationalization; design for the good life.

​

  1. Brey, Philip, Adam Briggle, and Edward Spence, eds. 2012. The Good Life in a Technological Age. New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415887024.

    • Pragmatist-inflected essays on how design can support human flourishing.

  2. Dewey, John. 1927. The Public and Its Problems. New York: Henry Holt. (Later editions: Athens: Ohio University Press.) ISBN 9780804002544.

    • Democratic publics emerge around consequences of technology-mediated action.

  3. Dewey, John. 1934. Art as Experience. New York: Minton, Balch; later editions, New York: Penguin/Perigee. ISBN 9780399531972.

    • Aesthetics of making and use; experiential criteria for meaningful technologies.

  4. Dewey, John. 1938. Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. New York: Henry Holt; later editions, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 9780809328229.

    • Technology models inquiry as experimental problem-solving in and for the world.

  5. Feenberg, Andrew. 1999. Questioning Technology. New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415197550.

    • Critical constructivism: democratizing design to realize alternative technological rationalities.

  6. Feenberg, Andrew. 2002. Transforming Technology: A Critical Theory Revisited. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195146158.

    • Case-based argument for democratic interventions in technical codes.

  7. Fesmire, Steven. 2003. John Dewey and Moral Imagination: Pragmatism in Ethics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 9780253216083.

    • Shows how imaginative rehearsal guides ethical technological decision-making.

  8. Hickman, Larry A. 1990. John Dewey’s Pragmatic Technology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 9780253205667.

    • Classic study of Dewey’s toolkit for critiquing and redirecting technological culture.

  9. Hickman, Larry A. 2001. Philosophical Tools for Technological Culture: Putting Pragmatism to Work. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 9780253339096.

    • Expands Deweyan method toward contemporary design and policy.

  10. Pitt, Joseph C. 2000. Thinking About Technology: Foundations of the Philosophy of Technology. New York: Seven Bridges Press. ISBN 9781889119228.

    • Argues technology is fundamentally human action; clarifies foundational categories in a pragmatic vein.

  11. Rorty, Richard. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691178158 (40th anniversary edition).

    • Anti-representationalist backdrop for pragmatic, tool-centered knowledge and design.​

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