Xin Wei Sha
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780262019514
- eISBN:
- 9780262318914
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262019514.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
Movement, and in particular, gesture are arguably essential aspects of engendering human experience. But rather than taking “the body” or “cognition” for granted as conceptual starting points, we ...
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Movement, and in particular, gesture are arguably essential aspects of engendering human experience. But rather than taking “the body” or “cognition” for granted as conceptual starting points, we attend to the substrate matter in which gesture takes shape and place. An experimental approach to such questions motivates the exploration of responsive, and in particular, computational media created for sustaining experientially rich, improvisational activity. This book explores rehearsed as well as unrehearsed activity in distributed, continuous fields of responsive media—topological matter. This philosophical and interdisciplinary investigation reworks our understanding of embodiment and the formation of subjective experience. The investigation also puts in play notions such as interaction, responsive media and performativity, contributing to contemporary exchanges between art and philosophy. This draws on emerging techniques in computational video, realtime gestural sound, sensors, and active textiles, as well as experimental techniques in performance, movement, and visual arts. It also offers insights and inspirations for designers, media artists, musicians, movement artists, architects, researchers in multimedia, interaction design, interactive and responsive environments, architecture, science and technology studies, philosophy and cultural studies.Less
Movement, and in particular, gesture are arguably essential aspects of engendering human experience. But rather than taking “the body” or “cognition” for granted as conceptual starting points, we attend to the substrate matter in which gesture takes shape and place. An experimental approach to such questions motivates the exploration of responsive, and in particular, computational media created for sustaining experientially rich, improvisational activity. This book explores rehearsed as well as unrehearsed activity in distributed, continuous fields of responsive media—topological matter. This philosophical and interdisciplinary investigation reworks our understanding of embodiment and the formation of subjective experience. The investigation also puts in play notions such as interaction, responsive media and performativity, contributing to contemporary exchanges between art and philosophy. This draws on emerging techniques in computational video, realtime gestural sound, sensors, and active textiles, as well as experimental techniques in performance, movement, and visual arts. It also offers insights and inspirations for designers, media artists, musicians, movement artists, architects, researchers in multimedia, interaction design, interactive and responsive environments, architecture, science and technology studies, philosophy and cultural studies.
Kyle Powys Whyte, Ryan Gunderson, and Brett Clark
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262035668
- eISBN:
- 9780262337991
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262035668.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
Kyle Whyte, Ryan Gunderson, and Brett Clark compare and contrast the notion of insidiousness in the philosophy of technology and environmental philosophy, the idea that the adoption of a new ...
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Kyle Whyte, Ryan Gunderson, and Brett Clark compare and contrast the notion of insidiousness in the philosophy of technology and environmental philosophy, the idea that the adoption of a new technology erodes intimate relationships with the environment. The authors reject the idea that technologies are neutral or disinterested but instead embody values, preferences, and lifestyles. The authors argue that technologies can indeed sometimes transform our social and environmental relationships in insidious ways. They conclude with five questions philosophers and social scientists should consider when examining different technology-society-environment interfaces: 1) What social and social-environmental relations give rise a technology and how does it reproduce or transform these relations? 2) Who is in control of the design and application of the given technology? 3) How is the given technology governed? Which social groups and environments benefit from it? 4) Which social groups and environments are harmed by it? 5) Which values, interests, and politics are reflected in the design an application of the given technology? The answers to these questions may not determine that technology is insidious but they will likely counter the view that it is neutral and disinterested.Less
Kyle Whyte, Ryan Gunderson, and Brett Clark compare and contrast the notion of insidiousness in the philosophy of technology and environmental philosophy, the idea that the adoption of a new technology erodes intimate relationships with the environment. The authors reject the idea that technologies are neutral or disinterested but instead embody values, preferences, and lifestyles. The authors argue that technologies can indeed sometimes transform our social and environmental relationships in insidious ways. They conclude with five questions philosophers and social scientists should consider when examining different technology-society-environment interfaces: 1) What social and social-environmental relations give rise a technology and how does it reproduce or transform these relations? 2) Who is in control of the design and application of the given technology? 3) How is the given technology governed? Which social groups and environments benefit from it? 4) Which social groups and environments are harmed by it? 5) Which values, interests, and politics are reflected in the design an application of the given technology? The answers to these questions may not determine that technology is insidious but they will likely counter the view that it is neutral and disinterested.
Taylor Dotson
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262036382
- eISBN:
- 9780262340861
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036382.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Movements and Social Change
This book provides an account of community through the lens of the politics of technology. That is, how do the artifacts, infrastructures, sociotechnical systems and techniques that constitute ...
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This book provides an account of community through the lens of the politics of technology. That is, how do the artifacts, infrastructures, sociotechnical systems and techniques that constitute everyday life influence the answer to “who gets what community, when and how?” This book responds with a conceptualization of community as a multidimensional phenomenon, which aids in the illustration of how different techniques, artifacts, organizational technologies and infrastructures encourage or constrain the enactment of the various dimensions of communality. Later chapters build upon this analysis, asking “How might everyday technologies better support a thicker practice of community life?” In order to describe how more community-supportive technological societies might be possible, the various social barriers to thick communitarian technologies are explored. In other words, what policies, subsidies, institutional arrangements and patterns of thought would need to change in order to enable more citizens to strive toward thicker local communities? The book ends with a proposal for an “intelligent trial-and-error” approach to governing innovation so that any risks posed to thick community are reduced. Intelligent trial-and-error, however, is not merely a means for ensuring that technical innovations are properly assessed prior to adoption according to their effects on community life but also constitutes a set of strategies that can help assure the success of communitarian technologies. This book, as a result, contributes to the “reconstructivist” school of science and technology studies and extends the political philosophy of technology toward the good of community.Less
This book provides an account of community through the lens of the politics of technology. That is, how do the artifacts, infrastructures, sociotechnical systems and techniques that constitute everyday life influence the answer to “who gets what community, when and how?” This book responds with a conceptualization of community as a multidimensional phenomenon, which aids in the illustration of how different techniques, artifacts, organizational technologies and infrastructures encourage or constrain the enactment of the various dimensions of communality. Later chapters build upon this analysis, asking “How might everyday technologies better support a thicker practice of community life?” In order to describe how more community-supportive technological societies might be possible, the various social barriers to thick communitarian technologies are explored. In other words, what policies, subsidies, institutional arrangements and patterns of thought would need to change in order to enable more citizens to strive toward thicker local communities? The book ends with a proposal for an “intelligent trial-and-error” approach to governing innovation so that any risks posed to thick community are reduced. Intelligent trial-and-error, however, is not merely a means for ensuring that technical innovations are properly assessed prior to adoption according to their effects on community life but also constitutes a set of strategies that can help assure the success of communitarian technologies. This book, as a result, contributes to the “reconstructivist” school of science and technology studies and extends the political philosophy of technology toward the good of community.
Philip Brey
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262035668
- eISBN:
- 9780262337991
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262035668.003.0012
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
Philip Brey focuses on the role technologies play in the relationship between sustainable development and consumerism in light of ecological modernization, the development practice that aims at ...
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Philip Brey focuses on the role technologies play in the relationship between sustainable development and consumerism in light of ecological modernization, the development practice that aims at greening production and global economy in ways that leave existing economic and political institutions intact. He agrees with critics who claim that sustainable development is incompatible with modernization’s ideal of unlimited growth. A more fundamental reform of development must also transform patterns of consumption and challenge the values and beliefs that underlie consumerism and materialism. The development of sustainable consumer products should promote sustainable behaviors and lifestyles, as well as reduce or eliminate consumer products that are unsustainable. In addition to these ecologically designed green products are persuasive technologies designed to change the attitudes or behaviors of users. But Brey worries that the redesign of technologies will be not sufficient to engender sustainable systems of consumption. Technological reform will certainly be of great help in the move towards sustainable patterns of consumption but it should be seen as part of a comprehensive strategy that also includes social and economic incentives and public debates about values, lifestyles, and the very future of the planet.Less
Philip Brey focuses on the role technologies play in the relationship between sustainable development and consumerism in light of ecological modernization, the development practice that aims at greening production and global economy in ways that leave existing economic and political institutions intact. He agrees with critics who claim that sustainable development is incompatible with modernization’s ideal of unlimited growth. A more fundamental reform of development must also transform patterns of consumption and challenge the values and beliefs that underlie consumerism and materialism. The development of sustainable consumer products should promote sustainable behaviors and lifestyles, as well as reduce or eliminate consumer products that are unsustainable. In addition to these ecologically designed green products are persuasive technologies designed to change the attitudes or behaviors of users. But Brey worries that the redesign of technologies will be not sufficient to engender sustainable systems of consumption. Technological reform will certainly be of great help in the move towards sustainable patterns of consumption but it should be seen as part of a comprehensive strategy that also includes social and economic incentives and public debates about values, lifestyles, and the very future of the planet.
Mark Coeckelbergh
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262035460
- eISBN:
- 9780262343084
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262035460.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
Most people assume that technology and romanticism are opposed. They share this assumption with many contemporary philosophers of technology, who tend to reduce romanticism to nostalgia. This book ...
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Most people assume that technology and romanticism are opposed. They share this assumption with many contemporary philosophers of technology, who tend to reduce romanticism to nostalgia. This book questions these assumptions and shows that the relation between romanticism and technology is much more complex.
For this purpose it delves into the history of technology and thinking about technology, from the early Romantics to hippie computing and today’s romantic cyborgs. The book updates the literature on technoromanticism, but also raises a new question: it seems that as machines become more human-like and informational, they disappear from view or merge with the human. Do we witness the end of the machine?
The author then discusses criticisms of romanticism and of “the end of the machine” vision he constructed. Yet the author avoids a simplistic rejection or defence of technoromantic visions; when it comes to understanding technology, the romantic tradition is more ambiguous and also more resourceful that we might suppose.
The book ends with the question if and how we could ever move beyond romanticism and beyond machine thinking. It turns out that, given the persistence of our modern-romantic form of life including language and technologies, the end of the machine is not even in sight. In the meantime, we have to live with our romantic machines, with our new cyborgs. That is, we have to live with ourselves as cyborgs: living meetings, mergers, and hybrids of romanticism and technology.Less
Most people assume that technology and romanticism are opposed. They share this assumption with many contemporary philosophers of technology, who tend to reduce romanticism to nostalgia. This book questions these assumptions and shows that the relation between romanticism and technology is much more complex.
For this purpose it delves into the history of technology and thinking about technology, from the early Romantics to hippie computing and today’s romantic cyborgs. The book updates the literature on technoromanticism, but also raises a new question: it seems that as machines become more human-like and informational, they disappear from view or merge with the human. Do we witness the end of the machine?
The author then discusses criticisms of romanticism and of “the end of the machine” vision he constructed. Yet the author avoids a simplistic rejection or defence of technoromantic visions; when it comes to understanding technology, the romantic tradition is more ambiguous and also more resourceful that we might suppose.
The book ends with the question if and how we could ever move beyond romanticism and beyond machine thinking. It turns out that, given the persistence of our modern-romantic form of life including language and technologies, the end of the machine is not even in sight. In the meantime, we have to live with our romantic machines, with our new cyborgs. That is, we have to live with ourselves as cyborgs: living meetings, mergers, and hybrids of romanticism and technology.
Don Ihde
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262035668
- eISBN:
- 9780262337991
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262035668.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
Don Ihde examines the “congenital dystopianism” shared by environmentalists, environmental philosophers, and philosophers of technology. Each group employs a “rhetoric of alarm” that connects the use ...
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Don Ihde examines the “congenital dystopianism” shared by environmentalists, environmental philosophers, and philosophers of technology. Each group employs a “rhetoric of alarm” that connects the use of technologies with environmental degradations. Ihde calls attention to how excessive rhetorical strategies have locked us into a false dichotomy: either technological-environmental utopianism or dystopianism. The problem is that we have not yet fully diagnosed either what our technologies can or should do, or what the environmental crises actually are. So long as we continue to accept either utopian or dystopian forecasts we are unlikely to bring either technologies or ecosystems into appropriate focus. Techno-environmental problems are complex, ambiguous, and interwoven; they rarely lend themselves either to an easy techno-fix or simple solution. The hardest problem of them all is how to turn major actors in the economy green: large scale development projects and multinational corporations. The challenge for a proactive philosopher is to get on the ground floor of technological research and development in order to help figure out how to green the economy itself.Less
Don Ihde examines the “congenital dystopianism” shared by environmentalists, environmental philosophers, and philosophers of technology. Each group employs a “rhetoric of alarm” that connects the use of technologies with environmental degradations. Ihde calls attention to how excessive rhetorical strategies have locked us into a false dichotomy: either technological-environmental utopianism or dystopianism. The problem is that we have not yet fully diagnosed either what our technologies can or should do, or what the environmental crises actually are. So long as we continue to accept either utopian or dystopian forecasts we are unlikely to bring either technologies or ecosystems into appropriate focus. Techno-environmental problems are complex, ambiguous, and interwoven; they rarely lend themselves either to an easy techno-fix or simple solution. The hardest problem of them all is how to turn major actors in the economy green: large scale development projects and multinational corporations. The challenge for a proactive philosopher is to get on the ground floor of technological research and development in order to help figure out how to green the economy itself.
J. Baird Callicott
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262035668
- eISBN:
- 9780262337991
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262035668.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
J. Baird Callicott questions the basic premise of Lynn White Jr.’s essay “The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis,” where White attributes the environmental crisis to Genesis where God created ...
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J. Baird Callicott questions the basic premise of Lynn White Jr.’s essay “The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis,” where White attributes the environmental crisis to Genesis where God created man in his image, gave man dominion over the rest of creation, and commands him to subdue the Earth. Callicott examines White’s very epistemic assumption: that what we do depends on what we think. On this reckoning, we need to rethink the nature of nature, human nature, and the relationship between humans and nature in order to save the world from ecological disaster. But Callicott reminds us that the Lynn White Jr. of Medieval Technology and Social Change (1962) also proposes a theory of technological determinism to explain the fate of the West. So which is it? Is the mechanistic worldview of Descartes and Newton the product of Christian theology or mechanical technologies? Perhaps nature is more affected by things than ideas. If so, environmental philosophers have to give up the pretense that they alone can save the world from environmental destruction because they alone are expert at uncovering underlying conceptual presuppositions. Revolutionary developments in real material things are just as important as revolutionary ideas.Less
J. Baird Callicott questions the basic premise of Lynn White Jr.’s essay “The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis,” where White attributes the environmental crisis to Genesis where God created man in his image, gave man dominion over the rest of creation, and commands him to subdue the Earth. Callicott examines White’s very epistemic assumption: that what we do depends on what we think. On this reckoning, we need to rethink the nature of nature, human nature, and the relationship between humans and nature in order to save the world from ecological disaster. But Callicott reminds us that the Lynn White Jr. of Medieval Technology and Social Change (1962) also proposes a theory of technological determinism to explain the fate of the West. So which is it? Is the mechanistic worldview of Descartes and Newton the product of Christian theology or mechanical technologies? Perhaps nature is more affected by things than ideas. If so, environmental philosophers have to give up the pretense that they alone can save the world from environmental destruction because they alone are expert at uncovering underlying conceptual presuppositions. Revolutionary developments in real material things are just as important as revolutionary ideas.
Zhang Wei
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262035668
- eISBN:
- 9780262337991
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262035668.003.0010
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
Zhang Wei examines the role of design in environmentally sustainable products. Most models of sustainable design focus too much on the environmental impacts of products and too little on their ...
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Zhang Wei examines the role of design in environmentally sustainable products. Most models of sustainable design focus too much on the environmental impacts of products and too little on their interactions with users. The result can be paradoxical consequences in which undesired effects can offset any environmental impacts, for example, energy saving lights installed (and left on) in places there were no lights before, such as a garden or garage. Or the unintended effects of symbolic consumption, where perfectly functioning goods are discarded when their social use value ends. Current approaches to eco-design do not really help make sense of these unintended consequences because they focus on physical properties of thing at the expense of their psychological impacts. The key, according to Zhang, is to design not only sustainable products but also sustainable behaviors -- a “both/and approach” to eco-design. The goal of both/and eco-design is not just to create green products but also to design sustainable behaviors, particularly lasting attachments that can overcome the pull of symbolic consumption and waste. Successful eco-design creates relations between humans and products for the sake of the environment.Less
Zhang Wei examines the role of design in environmentally sustainable products. Most models of sustainable design focus too much on the environmental impacts of products and too little on their interactions with users. The result can be paradoxical consequences in which undesired effects can offset any environmental impacts, for example, energy saving lights installed (and left on) in places there were no lights before, such as a garden or garage. Or the unintended effects of symbolic consumption, where perfectly functioning goods are discarded when their social use value ends. Current approaches to eco-design do not really help make sense of these unintended consequences because they focus on physical properties of thing at the expense of their psychological impacts. The key, according to Zhang, is to design not only sustainable products but also sustainable behaviors -- a “both/and approach” to eco-design. The goal of both/and eco-design is not just to create green products but also to design sustainable behaviors, particularly lasting attachments that can overcome the pull of symbolic consumption and waste. Successful eco-design creates relations between humans and products for the sake of the environment.
