This dissertation reports a phenomenological investigation of human activity called "innovation", the process by which new technology is created. The dissertation’s central, interlocking, themes are authenticity and different worlds. Its conceptual foundation is Martin Heidegger’s account of being human. It explores the ironic possibility that innovation as it is don’t today (as integrated craft work) can encourage "authentic" human existence. The dissertation synthesises original research on innovators working in a commercial innovation consultancy with Heidegger’s thinking on authenticity, science and technology, and with contemporary innovation scholarship and social studies of science and technology. It uses a Heideggerian phenomenological method and includes two chapters written in an unusual fragmentary style to signify the momentary nature of understanding. Original aspects of the dissertation include (1) an interpretation of Heidegger’s concept of fore-structure as self-understanding in the sense of understanding ones role in how the world is understood and (2) the ironic suggestion that pressure for commercial success has transformed innovation from a scientific process to a techne process and has encouraged authenticity. I suggest the self-understanding of scientists is different from the self-understanding of innovators. I suggest innovators, at least some of the time (in their magic moments), understand themselves as "partners with Being," as modest but important witnesses to what being grants rather than as masters of the "reality" with which they work.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/245240 |
| Creators | Steiner, Carol Jean |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Detected Language | English |
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