Jacques Ellul

Religion and technology have always been at the heart of any civilization, says Newman, and the changing relations between them have and will continue to have a powerful influence on social and personal development. Newman begins with a look at religious criticism of technology, most specifically the view that technology undermines religious world views, religious practices, and spirituality in general. But what the religious antitechnologist might be misunderstanding, he argues, are the essence of technology, its relation to progress, and its significance as a religious endeavor. Indeed, religion may be a form of technology, or both may be the same as culture itself.

Mass media ethics and the classical liberal ideal of the autonomous individual are historically linked and professionally dominant--yet the authors of this work feel this is intrinsically flawed. They show how recent research in philosophy and social science--together with a longer tradition in theological inquiry--insist that community, mutuality, and relationship are fundamental to a full concept of personhood. The authors argue that "persons-in-community" provides a more defensible grounding for journalists' professional moral decison-making in crucial areas such as truthtelling, privacy, organizational culture, and balanced coverage. With numerous examples drawn from life as well as from theory, this book will interest journalists, editors, and professionals in media management as well as students and scholars of media ethics, reporting, and media law.

This impassioned critique of contemporary mass culture argues that media, particularly television as the spearhead of the electronic media, contributes to the pervasive demoralization of the American public. By sending the public a stream of enticing, essentially unattainable illusions, the media produces what Shrader calls the "experiential bind," a phenomenon rooted in the incongruity between the two realms of vicarious and first-hand experience. The internalized bind causes a chronically irritated self-ideal--producing morbid guilt. This condition is familiar to mental health specialists, and is frequently invoked to explain the erratic and socially destructive behavior patterns of the mentally ill.

This work provides an introduction to some important social theorists whose work has considerable relevance to today's brave new world of information and communication technologies.