Mythologies: The Spirit of Technology in its Cultural Context

With its subtle reflection on the essence of modernity, intellectual alarmism, and counter-positioning of the spiritual and the material, Nikolai Berdyaev‘s essay „Man and Machine“ is a productive point of departure for reflections on the Spirit of Technology in its Cultural Context. A  new translation of Berdyaev’s 1933 essay and two critical commentaries (Trimble, Mitcham) set the stage for seven research articles which examine the spirit of technology from various perspectives and cultural contexts.    The authors work on the problematization of the myth of modern mentality (Böhme), national specificities in the conceptualization of progress and technology (Azarov, Nikiforova, Soentgen), the philosophy of cosmism (Serkova), the politics of technology (Kesarev and Korochkin), and the interaction of technology and religion (Kurtov). The history of electricity in Russia, narratives of resource scarcity in Germany, an intercultural comparison of COVID-tracing apps provide concrete exemplars - complemented by studies of memory in the museum and of the Chinese looking back into the future. A general account is offered in a critique of Yuval Noah Harari‘s juxtaposition of a natural order and an imagined order, of natural science and a social fabric woven merely from stories. This collection of papers closes with a critical juxtaposition of a belief in the inevitability of major breakdowns and a belief in the efficacy of minor repairs.