Ashley Shew

A manifesto exploding what we think we know about disability, and arguing that disabled people are the real experts when it comes to technology and disability.

Rethinking Who Needs Improvement

Against Technoableism

A manifesto exploding what we think we know about disability, and arguing that disabled people are the real experts when it comes to technology and disability. When bioethicist and professor Ashley Shew became a self-described “hard-of-hearing chemobrained amputee with Crohn’s disease and tinnitus,” there was no returning to “normal.” Suddenly well-meaning people called her an “inspiration” while grocery shopping or viewed her as a needy recipient of technological wizardry. Most disabled people don’t want what the abled assume they want—nor are they generally asked. Almost everyone will experience disability at some point in their lives, yet the abled persistently frame disability as an individual’s problem rather than a social one. In a warm, feisty voice and vibrant prose, Shew shows how we can create better narratives and more accessible futures by drawing from the insights of the cross-disability community. To forge a more equitable world, Shew argues that we must eliminate “technoableism”—the harmful belief that technology is a “solution” for disability; that the disabled simply await being “fixed” by technological wizardry; that making society more accessible and equitable is somehow a lesser priority. This badly needed introduction to disability expertise considers mobility devices, medical infrastructure, neurodivergence, and the crucial relationship between disability and race. The future, Shew points out, is surely disabled—whether through changing climate, new diseases, or even through space travel. It’s time we looked closely at how we all think about disability technologies and learn to envision disabilities not as liabilities, but as skill sets enabling all of us to navigate a challenging world.

Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement (A Norton Short)

Glen Miller

This volume includes eleven original essays that explore and expand on the work of Don Ihde, bookended by two chapters by Ihde himself. Ihde, the recipient of the first Society for Philosophy and Technology's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017, is best known for his development of postphenomenology, a blend of pragmatism and phenomenology that incorporates insights into the ways technology mediates human perception and action. The book contains contributions from academics from Europe, North America, and Asia, which demonstrates the global impact of Ihde’s work. Essays in the book explore the relationship between Ihde's work and its origins in phenomenology (especially Husserl and Heidegger) and American pragmatism; integrate his philosophical work within the embodied experience of radical architecture and imagine the possibility of a future philosophy of technology after postphenomenology; develop central ideas of postphenomenology and expand the resources present in postphenomenology to ethics and politics; and extend the influence of Ihde's ideas to mobile media and engineering, and comprehensively assess the influence of his work in China. The book includes a reprint of the Introduction of Sense and Significance, one of Ihde's first books; "Hawk: Predatory Vision," a new chapter that blends his biographical experience with feminism, technoscience, and environmental observation; and an appendix that lists all of Ihde's books as well as secondary sources annotated by Ihde himself. Starting with an Editors' Introduction that offers an overview of the central ideas in Ihde's corpus and concluding with an index that facilitates research across the various chapters, this book is of interest to a diverse academic community that includes philosophers, STS scholars, anthropologists, historians, and sociologists.

Reimagining Philosophy and Technology, Reinventing Ihde

Animal studies literature, and its public consumption have sparked interest in questions about humanity. Most scholars aim these studies to help us sort out how we should regard other creatures and how we should understand ourselves in light of their capacities. This book offers something a little different, investigating the conceptual limits of tool-use and technology through the lens of technological knowledge. Making sense of animal studies can be tricky because of long-held and culturally pervasive beliefs and messages about human triumph over nature (where animals are considered to be part of nature). Animal Constructions and Technological Knowledge, considers animal tool use, techniques, and construction within the context of theories about what constitutes technology and what constitutes knowledge. With reference to an engaging variety of animal case studies, primarily from research on apes, dolphins, and crows, this book shows how concepts from philosophy of technology can be used to make better sense of the animal cases. These animal cases also help us to refine our philosophical concepts, creating more careful distinction and uniting different accounts of technological knowledge.

Animal Constructions and Technological Knowledge

Joseph C. Pitt

Focused on mapping out contemporary and future domains in philosophy of technology, this volume serves as an excellent, forward-looking resource in the field and in cognate areas of study. The 32 chapters, all of them appearing in print here for the first time, were written by both established scholars and fresh voices. They cover topics ranging from data discrimination and engineering design, to art and technology, space junk, and beyond. Spaces for the Future: A Companion to Philosophy of Technology is structured in six parts: (1) Ethical Space and Experience; (2) Political Space and Agency; (3) Virtual Space and Property; (4) Personal Space and Design; (5) Inner Space and Environment; and (6) Outer Space and Imagination. The organization maps out current and emerging spaces of activity in the field and anticipates the big issues that we soon will face.

Ashley Shew

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