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(2009) New waves in philosophy of technology, Dordrecht, Springer.
Narrative theory takes the "story' or "narrative' to be the basic unit of meaning for understanding and explaining human action. Philosophers such as Arthur Danto (1968), Alasdair MacIntyre (1982) and Paul Ricoeur (1984, 1986, 1988) claim that narratives capture the temporal, historical and contextual character of human experience better than shorter linguistic units of meaning, like the "utterance' or the "sentence'. A narrative creates the most comprehensive interpretation possible by synthesizing diverse plot elements into a meaningful story. Both non-fictional and fictional stories relate episodes of human experience, the former as they actually happened, the latter as if they happened. Yet traditional narrative theories are prejudiced in favour of persons over things.1 They treat people as if only they deserve to have their stories told; non-humans, natural events and things are props or circumstances to be dealt with but never themselves the subject of their own stories. Mere things get explanations; persons get stories. As a result, the "narrative turn' has had far less of an effect on the philosophy of technology as elsewhere in the humanities and social sciences. Philosophical frameworks prejudiced against things are not particularly helpful when it comes to understanding the philosophical dimensions of technologies.
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Full citation:
Kaplan, (2009)., How to read technology critically, in J. K. Berg Olsen, E. Selinger & S. Riis (eds.), New waves in philosophy of technology, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 83-99.
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