Holding On to Reality: The Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millennium

by Albert Borgmann

Holding On to Reality is a brilliant history of information, from its inception in the natural world to its role in the transformation of culture to the current Internet mania and is attendant assets and liabilities. Drawing on the history of ideas, the details of information technology, and the boundaries of the human condition, Borgmann illuminates the relationship between things and signs, between reality and information.

"[Borgmann] has offered a stunningly clear definition of information in Holding On to Reality . . . . He leaves room for little argument, unless one wants to pose the now vogue I guess it depends on what you mean by nothing."—Paul Bennett, Wired

"A superb anecdotal analysis of information for a hype-addled age."— New Scientist

"This insightful and poetic reflection on the changing nature of information is a wonderful antidote to much of the current hype about the 'information revolution.' Borgmann reminds us that whatever the reality of our time, we need 'a balance of signs and things' in our lives."—Margaret Wertheim, LA Weekly

Genres: Philosophy, Technology, Nonfiction, Academic

282 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't normally put my course textbooks on Goodreads, because they rarely seem to be important enough to merit rating, much less reviewing. But Holding On to Reality is not a textbook, and it is important. Borgmann eloquently traces out the history of information -- from natural information like deer tracks, through cultural information like writing, to virtual information like an email -- in order to make a moral point about what we lose as individuals and as a society as we progress along this continuum. The historical component of the book is very strong, and Borgmann's taxonomy of information is compelling. He fails to make his moral point equally compelling, but it's a strong effort, much better than a thirty-second media soundbite about how Google is destroying education. The points he raises are genuinely interesting, and even if he doesn't resolve them to my satisfaction, he at least establishes a framework in which they might be resolvable. I'm glad I didn't skip this reading; it might be the most socially important book in my curriculum!

[Benjamin Lipscomb · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't at first think I'd end up rating the book very highly. Borgmann sometimes writes in a gnomic, oracular style that I found off-putting. He writes that way a lot in the first part of the book.

Even in the most ponderous chapters, though, there are rewards. Borgmann is a deeply *rooted* author. Whenever he wants an illustration of some point he's making about indigenous knowledge, or maps and surveying, or the relationship between natural and cultural signs, or the possibilities of debased things being redeemed, Borgmann reaches for detailed examples from the history, geography and culture of western Montana, where he lived and taught.

Borgmann seriously undersells the potential powers of generative AI, but is otherwise astonishingly prescient, writing just after the turn of the millennium, predicting with near-perfect accuracy e.g. the advent of smartphones, what would happen with distance learning, the coming gate-keeping and monetization of online content, and more.

His overarching thesis is very like Andy Crouch's in The Life We're Looking For (indeed, Crouch draws on him): devices that unnecessarily detach us from a multidimensional engagement with the real promise more than they can deliver and make our lives worse.

The most disturbing and most instructive section is the one on education in the final chapter. Borgmann sketches ideal types promoted by successive technological environments: the artisan in a pre-literate culture, the scholar in a literate culture, and the "learner" in contemporary culture. "Learner" sounds like a term of praise, but it's not for Borgmann. The learner is one who, like a computer, retains as little as possible in working memory. He or she is an empty vessel, with skills of quickly finding out and temporarily retaining whatever he or she needs for some task.

*Is* that now the ideally equipped adult--ideally equipped, that is, for most influential and remunerative roles in our society? If so, then those of us doing tertiary education probably should at least help students cultivate *comparable* skills. But no version of liberal education has ever aimed at this type. And what if being ideally equipped in this way is also bad for us?

[Mark]

Read prior to 2010 probably

[Rainier Moreno-Lacalle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone interested in technology and philosophy should read this book.

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

Relevant.

[Craig · Rating 2 out of 5]

An elaborate genealogy of information tracing a path of increasing abstraction from the readings of landscapes preliterate societies found themselves embedded in to the present information age (late nineties at the time of publication).

Imagine Sherry Turkle and Hubert Dreyfus coauthoring a book (laid out with loads of formers and latters) and you pretty much get the drift of Holding On to Reality. Borgmann’s definitive stance on AI and virtual environments (“Ease of constructing photorealistic settings and depth of artificial intelligence are unavailable, the former for the time being, the latter forever.”) is substantiated with an endnote citation of Dreyfus’ What Computers Still Can’t Do .

Not that it reads with excessive slant. But in spite of the intricate scholarship the genealogy falls flat because it never leaves the human scale. Humans perceive the landscape (self-created and natural); humans perceive their printed symbols, humans perceive their computer-housed virtual environments. It’s a trajectory taking us further and further from “reality,” from “the real world,” where meaning diffuses as we stray from this real base into symbol and abstraction—into mediated realms.

“Perspicuity,” “eloquence,” “contingency,” “ambiguity,” “reality” (“the real world”), “meaning,” are terms that come up so regularly and systematically that their lack of definition becomes a tripping point. It’s never clear what beyond colloquial usage is intended. The reality Borgmann has us losing hold on is somehow an indivisible stratum. As a result, human meaning—becoming denser as it is more and more contiguous with “reality”—is provided a primordial base. That is, meaning (via “reality”) is primal to information, where a physicist would have it the other way around. Information is examined through every conceivable lens but the physicist’s.

Borgmann doesn’t advocate a return to the land, to “our roots,” or anything like that. He acknowledges the momentum of information technology and offers a strained bright-side-of-things view with a few poetic praises for the wonders of the modern world. The verdict is ultimately constrained by the model. When reality is a base not malleable to human action, not subdivided by information, pattern recognition and IT, we’re advised simply and simply advised to seek balance between mediation and reality.

[Krystal · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little dated now but interesting ideas to think about, even if you don't agree with some of the basic premises (which I did not!)