Against Nature: The Metaphysics of Information Systems (Routledge Focus)

Against Nature: The Metaphysics of Information Systems (Routledge Focus)

by David Kreps (Author)

Synopsis

This book questions the nature of the business and social information systems so ubiquitous in contemporary life. Linking positivism, individualism, and market-fundamentalist economics at the root of these systems, it critiques the philosophical ground of this triumvirate as fundamentally against nature. Connecting counter-philosophies of the subject as a natural part of existence, with more collectivist and ecological economics, it presents a historical critique of the development of the academic field of information systems and offers a complex view of the nature of Nature through which we might reshape our approach to technology and to our economies to overcome the existential threat of climate change. As such, it will appeal to philosophers, social theorists, and scholars of science and technology studies with interests in the environment and ecology, as well as those working in the field of information systems.

$58.60

Quantity

5 in stock

More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 116
Edition: 1
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 18 May 2018

ISBN 10: 0815377754
ISBN 13: 9780815377757

Media Reviews

`Kreps brilliantly demonstrates how strongly IS (information systems) research has been and still is influenced by a positivist view of the world ... Instead, Kreps proposes to borrow from Bergson's and Whitehead's process-relational philosophy, from moral philosophy and from complexity theory, to claim that the libertarian argument for the neoliberal digital capitalist society runs counter to the reality of the natural world of which we are a part.' - Frantz Rowe, European Journal of Information Systems

Author Bio
David Kreps is Reader in the Philosophy of Information Systems at the University of Salford, UK. His books include Bergson, Complexity and Creative Emergence; Technology and Intimacy: Choice or Coercion; and Gramsci and Foucault: A Reassessment.