Technical power and human impotence

The article presents an overview of a five-volume study of the transition of our civilization from a primary reliance on approaches to human knowing and doing based on symbolization and culture to a primary reliance on approaches organizing this knowing and doing by means of disciplines, which has taken us well beyond rationality and technique as a result of desymbolization. It is undermining our being a symbolic species by reifying human lives and communities while creating ways of life that cannot be sustained by the biosphere. These developments have significantly affected the roles of the old and new media in our lives.