This fairly substantial collection of philosophical dialogues, dating from the winter of 1981-2, begins with an investigation of technology from a transcendental point of view, as though continuing from where John O'Loughlin's previous volume of dialogues, 'The Transcendental Future' (1980) left off, albeit building upon the ensuing philosophical and literary titles, which included a number of philosophical novels, and, having answered its own questions, proceeds to investigate a number of other topics, including kinds of writers, the scope and nature of philosophical truth, the goal of evolution, different types of decadence, and the parallels between Henry Miller and Malcolm Muggeridge, two very different but strangely related authors, from a similar technologically-minded transcendental standpoint. In sum, The Importance of Technology is a far from definitive but, nonetheless, highly engaging and sometimes mind-boggling debate on a variety of controversial or, at the very least, interesting issues with, as per custom for John O'Loughlin at around this period in his literary adventure, an aphoristic appendix, which both subsumes and expands on a number of the subjects under discussion. - A Centretruths Editorial
About the Author: John James O'Loughlin was born in Salthill, County Galway, the Republic of Ireland, of Irish- and British-born parents in 1952. Following a parental split while still a child, he was brought to England by his mother and grandmother (who had initially returned to Ireland with intent to stay) in the mid-50s and subsequently attended schools in Aldershot (Hampshire), and, following the death and repatriation of his grandmother, Carshalton Beeches (Surrey), where, despite an enforced change of denomination from Catholic to Protestant in consequence of having been put into care by his mother, he attended a state school. Graduating in 1970 with an assortment of CSE's (Certificate of Secondary Education) and GCE's (General Certificate of Education), including history and music, he moved the comparatively short distance up to London and went on, via two short-lived jobs, to work at the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music in Bedford Square, WC1, where he eventually became responsible, as a clerical officer, for booking examination venues. After a brief flirtation with Redhill Technical College back in Surrey, where he had enrolled to study history, he returned to his former job in the West End but retired from the ABRSM in 1976 due to a combination of factors, and began to dedicate himself to writing, which, despite a brief spell as a computer tutor at Hornsey Management Agency in the late '80s and early '90s, he has continued with ever since. His novels include Changing Worlds (1976), Cross-Purposes (1979), Thwarted Ambitions (1980), Sublimated Relations (1981), and Deceptive Motives (1982). From the mid-80s Mr O'Loughlin dedicated himself exclusively to philosophy, his true literary vocation, and has penned more than sixty titles of a philosophical order, including Devil and God - The Omega Book (1985-6), Towards the Supernoumenon (1987), Elemental Spectra (1988-9), and Philosophical Truth (1991-2). John O'Loughlin lives in Crouch End, north London, England, UK, where he continues to regard himself as a kind of bohemian intellectual.