Alle Publikationen
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2017
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(2017): Social Transformation and Online Technology. In: Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 21 (1), S. 55-70. DOI: 10.5840/techne20174561
Abstract: The Internet age has seen the influential rise of social media. Consumer culture is tied to this modern phenomenon. This paper begins with an exposition of Herbert Marcuse’s grounding in phenomenology and his subsequent critique of Heidegger’s apolitical Dasein. In explicating Marcuse’s critical theory of technology, this paper will retrace Hegel’s influence on Marcuse in the idea of the dialectic. The dialectic is an integral aspect of social transformation. While modern technology may be value-neutral, it is argued herein that the lack of depth in social media provokes thought and invites critical dissent. Marcuse believes in the capacity of modern tools to effect social reform through adaptation. But emerging pathologies from online technology also have pressing challenges. For instance, social media makes manifest a dominant order that can be manipulative. It can be said that particular interests, notably from business and capitalists, shape the type of consumer culture that online technology promotes. In advancing Marcuse’s relevance in today’s Internet age, the paper will explore how social media as a platform can truly liberate the individual from the ills that consumerism peddles online.
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(2017): Entangled in Digital Media. In: Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 21 (1), S. 106-113. DOI: 10.5840/techne20172111
Abstract: Review of Digital Media: Human-Technology Connection, by Stacey O’Neal Irwin In the first wave of digital studies, between the 1980s and the early 1990s, the term ‘virtual’ used to have at least three meanings. First, it used to indicate a realm apart, a software-based dimension detached from physically existing reality. Second, the virtual was seen as a place where people could experiment, without the risks and the physical, social, and ethical constraints of real life, new possibilities, actions, and choices. This second acceptation is closer to the etymology of the word. In fact, ‘virtual’ comes from the Latin virtus/virtualis, which translates the Greek term ‘dynamis,’ ‘ability,’ ‘potential,’ ‘potency,’ ‘power.’ In his comment on the first three chapters of the ninth book of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Martin Heidegger (1995) rendered ‘dynamis’ with ‘Kraft,’ ‘force,’ and ‘Vermögen', a term that might be translated as ‘ability,’ but also ‘faculty,’ ‘capacity,’ and ‘capability.’ As such, the virtual is not opposed to the real, but rather to the actual – ‘actus’ in Latin, translation of the Greek ‘energheia.’ And this is precisely the third meaning of ‘virtual’ as computer-mediated self- and social-empowerment. In other terms, ‘virtual’ and ‘virtuality’ refer to the effects, positive and negative, of online experimentations on real life.
2016
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(2016): Beyond Technological Mediation. In: Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 20 (3), S. 177-197. DOI: 10.5840/techne201671949
Abstract: Several philosophers of technology have argued that technology mediates human actions. For example, in the branch of post-phenomenology, authors such as Don Ihde and Peter-Paul Verbeek have described the mediating aspects of technology in terms of morality of technology (more prominent in Verbeek) as well as in the sense that technology changes our perception of ourselves and the world (more prominent in Ihde). In this article, different existing types of mediation are presented, critiqued, and enriched. The four types are illustrated by referring to military high-tech environments with a focus on visual data and imaging technologies. These technologies can mediate actions (1) by inviting certain behavior, (2) through amplification and reduction, (3) through built-in norms, and (4) through interpretation. The four types of mediation mainly focus on the technology or technological artifact itself. What these approaches fail to grasp, however, is the specific user practices in which most technologies function. In this article, it is argued that to understand the mediating aspects of technology more fully, attention should be paid to the specific user context in which the technology functions. Therefore, an enriched understanding of the four types of mediation of technology is proposed by taking the lens of normative practices and analyzing the different types of mediation through this lens. The Kunduz airstrike incident, which took place in 2009 in Afghanistan, is a case in which a visual data sharing device called Rover played a prominent role. This case is used in this article to illustrate how technology mediates human actions in military practice.
Keywords: Bürger vs. Staat, Disziplin, Grundlagenreflexion, Im (wissenschaftlichen) Diskurs, Interaktionspartner, Mensch oder Maschine, Mensch-Technik-Relationen (MTR), Militär, Philosophie, Reflexionen über MTR, Sozialer Raum / Kultureller Kontext, Spezifischer Nutzer-Kontext beim Benutzer der Maschine, Technikphilosophie, (Theory of) technological mediation, Verbeek, Zeitschrift: techne -
(2016): Missing Ihde. In: Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 20 (2), S. 95-104. DOI: 10.5840/techne201672551
Abstract: This article investigates how lack of a phenomenology of technology has hurt understanding of the lifeworld. One way, as Ihde has shown, involves a failure to appreciate the instrumental mediation of experience and the extension of perception. But Ihde also fails to notice the background in which these mediations are taking place and which shapes the mediations themselves and our interpretation of them; not even the research of technoscientists takes place in a neutral atmosphere that does not affect how we work. This article also discusses hermeneutic distortion, or the gap in collective interpretive resources that occurs when the technoscientific infrastructure withdraws and becomes all but invisible, encouraging the tendency to treat scientific conclusions as mere opinions, and technoscientific devices as accessory rather than integral to the modern world.
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(2016): Reply to My Interlocutors. In: Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 20 (2), S. 168-176. DOI: 10.5840/techne201672855
Abstract: “Reply to My Interlocutors” responds to each contributor, not in order in the text, but in order of issues. Each interlocutor deals with important issues and I situate myself in relation to these. Dealing with Husserl from a twenty-first century position has called for a multiple layered time response, since I find much of his philosophy of science highly outdated. The origins of the various chapters take place over several decades of time.
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(2016): From Interrelational Ontology to Instrumental Ethics. In: Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 20 (2), S. 112-128. DOI: 10.5840/techne20168857
Abstract: Current human/social science research supports Don Ihde’s postphenomenology. In particular, archeology and anthropology support Ihde’s instrumental realism, and history identifies the culture that nourished Platonic and Aristotelian separation of mentality and materiality. Deweyean pragmatism, beginning with his analysis of the reflex arc, supports both instrumental realism and an interrelational ontology that rejects the residual Cartesian dualism in Husserlian phenomenology. Ihde’s acknowledgment of the affinity between postphenomenology and Deweyean pragmatism enables expanding his prevalent epistemological and structural orientation to encompass a normative dimension. Peter-Paul Verbeek’s focus on the ethical dimension of how products are designed and how things interact with humans is an important expansion of pragmatic postphenomenology as well as an expansion of current research on the “4e’s” of cognition—embedded, embodied, enacted, and extended—to include a fifth: ethical.
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(2016): On Technological Rationality and the Lack of Authenticity in the Modern Age. In: Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 20 (1), S. 34-50. DOI: 10.5840/techne201632445
Abstract: I will argue in this paper that Andrew Feenberg has erred in his claim on technological adaptability. Adapting to modern technology may not always be liberating. Drawing from his reflections on Heidegger and Marcuse, I will explain why Feenberg thinks that adaptability has a redemptive role in the midst of technological domination. I will also show why technological domination still characterizes human relations in the modern age. Advanced technologies including social media, have continued to manipulate people and as such, diminish rather than deepen the authenticity of human life. For instance, two people in a café sometimes spend more time on their smartphones rather than valuing their face-to-face encounter; here, one can point out the lack of authenticity in human relations. This clearly manifests how consumer culture has taken over human life. In addition, it can be said that the notion of adaptability also fails to account for the hegemonic social relations created by modern technological innovations, since these gadgets remain beyond the reach of the masses, thus broadening the divide between classes of people in society. In order to address this, I propose that people should use technology in a socially sensitive way in order to truly give meaning to their lives and to effectively resist the totalitarian tendency of the modern age.
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(2016): Dispose After Expiration Date. In: Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 20 (2), S. 129-136. DOI: 10.5840/techne201672753
Abstract: This article argues that there are three key claims of postphenomenology: first, that there is no immediate access to a phenomena that is not always already embodied; second, that there is no science that is not determined by a technology, and that technologies are instances of certain theoretical assumptions and perspectives; third, that all technoscience is enabled and mediated by the embodied perception that takes place in and through instrumentation, which leads to the insight that all scientific evidence is manufactured perception. There is critical engagement with Ihde’s take on pragmatism and it is argued that he makes too severe a distinction between embodied praxis and communicative action, between practices of embodiment and practices of communicating. The argument is that the technoscientific body is a communicative body. The article closes with the consideration of Ihde’s provocative thesis that we ought to think of philosophical systems as having expiration or obsolesce dates. The author recalls the important work of German-Jewish philosopher Günther Anders in order to think through the sense in which it is not so much our technologies that expire, but our ethical worldviews that are made discrepant and incommensurate with the challenges our technologies throw at us. It is argued that we have to make distinction between obsolesce, on the one hand, and error or failure, on the other.
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(2016): Husserl's Missing Multistability. In: Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 20 (2), S. 153-167. DOI: 10.5840/techne20168356
Abstract: The notion of “multistability” is a central fixture of the postphenomenological framework of thought, one of the central ideas that enables this perspective to avoid both shallow determinism and instrumentalism. While this notion has been put to use in numerous case studies and theoretical treatments, here I argue that the work of following out the philosophical implications of technological multistability has only just begun. Don Ihde’s new book, Husserl’s Missing Technologies, provides a helpful jumping off point as he provides a leading-edge formulation of this idea. I continue with an attempt to sketch out the vast philosophical ground opened up by this concept, and review the contemporary work by postphenomenologists that is just starting to explore this new terrain.
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(2016): Ihde and Husserl. In: Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 20 (2), S. 84-89. DOI: 10.5840/techne201620247
Abstract: A Symposium on Don Ihde's Husserl's Missing Technologies The contributions to this special issue of Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology have asembled together to use the publication of Don Ihde's newest book, Husserl's Missing Technologies, as a jumping-off point for a wide-ranging discussion about the phenomenology of technology. The following contributions reflect Ihde's own interdisciplinarity, philosophical pluralism, and empirical orientation. And they touch on an assortment of issues and themes, including acoustic technologies, Galileo's biography, American pragmatism, the lifespan of philosophical ideas, big data, and philosophical methodology.
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(2016): Ihde’s Missing Sciences. In: Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 20 (2), S. 137-152. DOI: 10.5840/techne201672754
Abstract: In Husserl’s Missing Technologies, Don Ihde urges us to think deeply and critically about the ways in which the technologies utilized in contemporary science structure the way we perceive and understand the natural world. In this paper, I argue that we ought to extend Ihde’s analysis to consider how such technologies are changing the way we perceive and understand ourselves too. For it is not only the natural or “hard” sciences which are turning to advanced technologies for help in carrying out their work, but also the social and “human” sciences. One set of tools in particular is rapidly being adopted—the family of information technologies that fall under the umbrella of “big data.” As in the natural sciences, big data is giving researchers in the human sciences access to phenomena which they would otherwise be unable to experience and investigate. And like the former, the latter thereby shape the ways those scientists perceive and understand who and what we are. Looking at two case studies of big data-driven research in the human sciences, I begin in this paper to suggest how we might understand these phenomenological and hermeneutic changes.
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(2016): Ihde, Technoscience, and the Resilience of Phenomenology. In: Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 20 (2), S. 90-94. DOI: 10.5840/techne201672550
Abstract: My review of Don Ihde’s new book, Husserl’s Missing Technologies begins by identifying a thematic link binding its chapters: specifically, the exploration of alternative histories for the trajectory of classical Husserlian phenomenology. Ihde’s book can be seen as a meditation on questions like the following: “What might phenomenology have been had Husserl paid more attention to the essential role of instrumentation and experiment in science, or to the mediating role of technologies in perception? What road might phenomenology have taken had Husserl traveled it in conversation with John Dewey, rather than the ghost of Descartes?” The book ably demonstrates how such alternative paths might have enriched philosophy, in ways that closely mirror Ihde’s own contributions to postphenomenological thought. In particular, Ihde exposes Husserl’s failure to grasp technoscience as an activity that does not only reduce materiality to mathematical formalisms, but produces new material forms and sensibilities. Yet I resist the book’s implied charge that Husserlian phenomenology is a moribund tradition that has largely exhausted its power. Instead, I argue that the progressive force and intrinsic elasticity of the phenomenological method endures in spite of the inevitable limits of Husserl’s philosophical imagination, allowing his assumptions and results (and ours) to be remade again and again in the light of the ‘things themselves.’ Moreover, the relevance of Husserl’s critique of reductive scientism has enduring relevance today; while modern science may be a practice far richer than Husserl understood, the science of our day is far from rich enough.
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(2016): Variations upon Ihde’s Husserl’s Missing Technologies. In: Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 20 (2), S. 105-111. DOI: 10.5840/techne201672752
Abstract: In his new book, Husserl’s Missing Technologies, Don Ihde provides yet another, and highly enriching, iteration of postphenomenology. My comments here concern a couple of observations that he makes along the way with regard to the “scientific” status of philosophy and the question of whether philosophies, like technologies, have “use-lifes.” These remarks actually pierce through to the core of the postphenomenological theoretical corpus. In particular, there are consequences for the concept of multistability that need to be discussed: Are some stabilities better than others? In asking that question, which deserves the most emphasis: actuality or potentiality? And to what extent is there a continuity between “ideas” (i.e., theories) and technologies?
2015
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(2015): Transcendence in Technology in advance. In: Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology, S. 291-313. DOI: 10.5840/techne2015121742
Abstract: According to Max Weber, the “fate of our times” is characterized by a “disenchantment of the world.” The scientific ambition of rationalization and intellectualization, as well as the attempt to master nature through technology, will greatly limit experiences of and openness for the transcendent, i.e. that which is beyond our control. Insofar as transcendence is a central aspect of virtually every religion and all religious experiences, the development of science and technology will, according to the Weberian assertion, also limit the scope of religion. In this paper, we will reflect on the relations between technology and transcendence from the perspective of technological mediation theory. We will show that the fact that we are able to technologically intervene in the world and ourselves does not imply that we can completely control the rules of life. Technological interference in nature is only possible if the structures and laws that enable us to do that are recognized and to a certain extent obeyed, which indicates that technological power cannot exist without accepting a transcendent order in which one operates. Rather than excluding transcendence, technology mediates our relation to it.
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(2015): Critical Proximity as a Methodological Move in Techno-Anthropology. In: Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 19 (2), S. 266-290. DOI: 10.5840/techne201591138
Abstract: Techno-Anthropology is a new field, operating with a broad range of methodologies and approaches. This gives rise to the question: What does it mean for Techno-Anthropological research to be critical? In this paper, we discuss this question by developing and specifying the notion of ‘critical proximity.’ Critical proximity offers an alternative to critical distance, especially with respect to avoiding premature references to abstract panoramas such as democratization and capitalist exploitation in the quest to conduct ‘critical’ analysis. Critical proximity implies, instead, granting the beings, fields, and objects we study their own rights and abilities to problematize grand scale claims. Critical proximity further entails that we as researchers are implicated in issues and their formation in ways that allow us to register these critiques and methods, and to emphasize or supplement them. We work through two cases—one on the involvement of users in innovation projects and another on commercial web technologies for tracing issues—to show how critical proximity may be practiced. We sum up the lessons derived in four methodological guidelines for doing research with critical proximity.
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(2015): Post-Normal Techno-Anthropology. In: Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 19 (2), S. 233-265. DOI: 10.5840/techne20159937
Abstract: This paper identifies, explains, and illustrates the meaning of Post-Normal Techno-Anthropology as a two-step methodological strategy for analyzing policy-relevant scientific dissent in different segments of science, techno-science, and technological innovation. The first step focuses on epistemological and ethical analyses of the dissenting parties’ positions, and identifies conflicting arguments and assumptions on different levels. The second step involves scholarly discussions on how the analyses of policy-relevant scientific dissent can inform decision-makers and science advisors’ phronetic judgments. Dissenting views on climate change of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change is used as an illustrative example.
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(2015): Ontological Assumptions in Techno-Anthropological Explorations of Online Dialogue through Information Systems. In: Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 19 (2), S. 125-142. DOI: 10.5840/techne201571031
Abstract: With the widespread infusion of online technology there has been an increase in various studies investigating the practices in online communities including also philosophical perspectives. What those debates have in common is that they call for more critical thinking about the theory of online communication. Drawing on Techno-Anthropological research perspectives, our interest is placed on exploring and identifying human interactions and technology in intersectional spaces. This article explores information systems that allow for interchanges of different users. We discuss ontological assumptions that focus on understanding the kind of dialogue that can be captured between different expert groups when they utilize information systems. We present the notion of ‘dialogic’ by Mikhail Bakhtin and contextualize it through an analysis of online dialogue. Dialogic or ‘conversation and inquiry’ is discussed as being mediated through human relationships. Acknowledging the existence of at least two voices the underlying differences between dialogue partners are highlighted.
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(2015): Datafied Life. In: Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 19 (2), S. 191-210. DOI: 10.5840/techne20159935
Abstract: Techno-Anthropology recognizes the intertwining of technology with aims, needs, practices, and skills; ‘the techno’ and ‘the anthro’ are not only interconnected, but historically co-constituted. In this paper developments in ‘personal analytics’ are examined with the aim of proposing epistemological and methodological directions for Techno-Anthropological exploration. Personal analytics refers to the field of interactions that surrounds tracking various bodily and mental functions, including the analysis, visualization, and distribution of the data, thereby encompassing people’s involvements with measuring devices and data movements. By discussing findings from a self-tracking study that focused on heart-rate variability measurement, the article opens for scrutiny ways in which personal data can translate people’s selves into a format that is engaging and actionable. This, in turn, enables researchers to witness and critically assess a terrain where bodily and mental capacities, and life itself, are not taken as given, but become part of the processes of everyday sense-making and contestation.
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