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Book Cover
E-book
Author Hanson, F. Allan, 1939-

Title The trouble with culture : how computers are calming the culture wars / F. Allan Hanson
Published Albany : State University of New York Press, ©2007

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Description 1 online resource (ix, 192 pages) : illustrations
Contents Culture gone bad -- Cultural contradiction and compartmentalization -- Fixing the trouble with culture: relativism, postmodernism, and automation -- The human rage to classify -- Classification and the common law -- Automated classification and indexing -- The automated mode in principle -- The automated mode in practice -- The new superorganic -- Opening culture, expanding individuals
Summary "In this book, anthropologist F. Allan Hanson reveals an entirely unanticipated but vital link between two of the most widely discussed features of contemporary American society: the computer revolution and the culture wars. Hanson argues that the culture wars stem from a divergence in the evolutionary paths of society and culture. Societies have evolved significantly over the last few millennia from small bands of farmers or hunter-gatherers into huge, internally diverse nation-states, while cultures - the closed systems of meanings and symbols that kept small, face-to-face societies together - have failed to keep pace. If cultures became more open, Hanson contends, then the maladaptive rupture between society and culture would be healed and the clashes that currently beset us would be greatly diminished. Interweaving analysis with concrete case studies of common law, education, and other areas of contemporary life, Hanson demonstrates how the widespread use of computers is, in fact, encouraging more originality and open-mindedness, with the potential to ease polarization and calm the culture wars."--Jacket
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 173-188) and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject Information technology -- Social aspects
Culture
Classification -- Social aspects
Indexing -- Social aspects
COMPUTERS -- Information Technology.
Culture
Information technology -- Social aspects
Cultuurverandering.
Computers.
Classificatie.
Informationstechnik -- Kultur.
Kultur -- Informationstechnik.
Kultur -- Informationstechnik.
Informationstechnik -- Soziales.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781429471381
1429471387
0791470172
0791470180
9780791470176
9780791470183
9780791480441
0791480445