Reviewed by Eric Higgs and Sundeep Sahay.
American philosopher Albert Borgmann develops a theory of information ethics by focussing our attention on the multi-layered relationship between information and reality. An appropriate balance is required, he argues, between three primary layers of information: natural, cultural and technological. These three layers, respectively, illuminate, transform and displace reality. While elegant, this formulation is not at first startling. In Borgmann’s subtle and scholarly way, the book makes a significant contribution by extending our understanding of the relationship between information and reality, and in particular showing how choices about information reflect moral choices about reality. Borgmann also provides an extensive history and description of information, this being perhaps the most comprehensive scholarly philosophical work available on information. Moreover, his ideas are grounded firmly in previous studies—Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life (University of Chicago Press, 1984) and Crossing the Postmodern Divide (University of Chicago Press, 1992)—that have made him one of the most widely-read and significant contemporary thinkers about technology. Holding On To Reality is vital reading for those concerned with the consequences of information technology.