Technology and the Human Condition - continued from parallel session IV track 2
Philosophy of technology has a rich tradition of analyzing how technologies shape how humans understand and experience themselves and the world around them. Especially postphenomenologists have provided many case-studies of technologies in use, giving rise to an analytic framework for describing human-technology-world relations. In this panel, we intend to augment such analyses in a variety of ways. The main assumption behind this panel is that technologies do not only shape individuals in particular use contexts but that they affect our self-understanding, as well as shape our 'self' and our relationships with the world. The ‘self’ is no pre-existing entity that exists independently of its relationships with technologies but rather is the result of these relationships. This panel explores how humans are shaped in their relationships with technologies in roughly three different ways: (1) how technologies shape us as subjects, (2) how technologies shape us as objects, and (3) how technologies shape our expectations of technologies. Put differently, this panel explores how technological developments shape the human condition.
The first paper proposes a foundation for an ethics of freedom for technological mediation. It is argued that developing such an ethics presupposes self-formation. The metaphor of dance as present in the work of Nietzsche and Deleuzed is used to outline what can be considered desirable forms of self-formation.
The second paper introduces the notion of technological objectification, thereby pointing to how technologies enable one to treat oneself or someone else as an object in a digital environment. The paper analyses how technological objectifications can become part of one’s body schema and hence mediate embodied intentionality.
The third paper focuses on independent wireless ecosystems have the potential to reveal new sensory capabilities such as vision through walls and in the dark. The paper argues that such technologies might interact and chafe against the human umwelt and advocates for the near impossible task of looking beyond our umwelt as a tool for sustainable design.
The fourth paper focuses on sex robots. It investigates how Lacanian psychoanalytic conceptions of (sexual) objectification and subjectivity can help analyzing sexual relations between humans, as well as between humans and robots. The paper introduces Lacan’s notion of the objet a and argues that since sex robots are designed to match the desires of the user and to not resist or disrupt them, sex robots invite a different relation to objet a.
The final paper addresses the issue of technological failure. It argues that an understanding of technological failure is essential to fully appreciate the societal impact of disruptive technologies, as well as what we expect from a given technology. The paper introduces a new theoretical framework called the "artifact lifecycle," emphasizing the importance of breakdowns in technological artifacts' lifespan.
References
Heidegger, M. 1996. Being and Time. New York: Harper & Row.
Bruno, L. 1999. Pandora’s Hope. Camrbridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Verbeek, P.-P. 2005. What Things Do. The Pennsylvania State University Press.