"Human beings have taken one thing for granted since our earliest days: we are bodily creatures dealing with one another on a face-to-face basis. The internet has shattered this fundamental feature of human existence. We are suddenly living our lives in two worlds at once--shifting endlessly from virtual to physical reality as we reach out to others. Worse yet, we are developing different personal identities in our two worlds. We say and do things in virtual reality that flatly contradict our face-to-face commitments to family, friends, and fellow-workers--and vice versa. The Postmodern Predicament explores these dilemmas at each phase of the life cycle, beginning at the moment a young child picks up a cell phone. The existentialist tradition of the twentieth century provides a precious perspective on our postmodern dilemmas. Thinkers and doers like Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre considered the fragmentation of modern life as a central source of contemporary anxieties. Like them, Ackerman views the challenges of the internet age as a political, no less than personal, problem--and proposes concrete reforms that that could mobilize broad-based support for democracy against demagogic assaults on its very foundations"--

Tiré du site Internet de Printed Matter: "Consisting entirely of questions, Gregg Bordowitz's "Volition" is 142 pages of active, mind-bending engagement with the reader, who is led down paths of inquiry involving art, meaning, philosophy, choice, happiness, and identity. Bordowitz organizes his questions into lists, paragraphs, and stanzas, which are themselves organized into five chapters : Questions, Topics, Aesthetics, Beliefs, and Morals. The resulting text is something like a spiritual guide crossed with an epic poem crossed with a transcription of the meandering thoughts of a philosophic insomniac, kept awake by such questions as "How can I touch creation as a principle without reproach ?" and "How does gratitude unfold from virtue ?""