THE TECHNOLOGICAL IMAGINATION TERRY SCHENOLD / HS 260 / FALL 2015
LOOKING BACK, LOOKING FORWARD
- Icarusian Condition: difficulty thinking technology
- Western idealism, humanism: the subordination of things
Post-WW II technological imagination -
the Memex, the mouse, and cybernetics -
THE “ICARUSIAN CONDITION”
DAEDALUS -Homerian figure of art, craft
-A master designer, artist…
-A proto technologist (technē)
ICARUS -Ovid’s Metamorphoses
-A figure of the naïve,
exuberant user of tech
-The standard lesson: hubris
-Alternative interpretations?
-How are WE like Icarus?
HISTORY OF A VEXED RELATION
“How are we to get out of the maelstrom created by our
own ingenuity?” (Marshall McLuhan)
TWO FRAME STORIES 1. Our inherited Platonism (the subordination of things)
2. The struggles of Humanism (Western idealisms about
self/society)
FROM COGITOS TO PROSTHETIC BEINGS
17thC, Descartes: humans are “thinking substances”
20thC, Stiegler: humans are “prosthetic beings”
THE NEEDFUL: A SECOND ORDER LITERACY
THE ICARUSIAN CONDITION It is hard to gain a theoritical / critical view of technology
and media and maintain creative agency because they
form our environment, structure and reinforce our habits of
thinking and doing
ICARUS’S PARACHUTE Expand and develop our
technological imagination…
LOGISTICS: WEBSITE & EXPERIMENTS
EXPERIMENTS
TETRAD PROJECT 1. Tetrad Image
2. Four-Fold Commentary
TECHNOLOGY SELF-EXPERIMENT 1. Prospectus
2. Journal
3. Microsoft SWAY
4. Informal Sharing (Week15)
FRAMING MNEMONIC
Every Day the Same Dream
BREAK
KELLY: THE TECHNIUM
FROM TECHNOLOGY TO EXOTROPY 1. “My Question”
Understanding “technology,” the “technium”
2. “Inventing Ourselves”
Coevolution of humans and technium
3. “History of the Seventh Kingdom”
Evolution of the technium
4. “Rise of Exotropy”
Cosmic / philosophical significance of technium
KELLY: THE TECHNIUM
LISTENING TO TECHNOLOGY/THE TECHNIUM “The technium is now as great a force in our world as
nature, and our response to the technium should be similar
to our response to nature. We can’t demand that
technology obey us any more than we can demand that
life obey us. Sometimes we should surrender to its lead and
bask in abundance, and sometimes we should try to bend
its natural course to meet our own. We don’t have to do
everything that the technium demands, but we can learn
to work with this force rather than against it.” (17)
When have you basked, and when have you bended?
Can you think of examples from your own life?
KELLY: THE TECHNIUM
LANGUAGE: THE EPICH TECH “Language is a trick that allows
the mind to question itself; a
magic mirror that reveals to the
mind what the mind thinks; a handle that turns a mind
into a tool”
Language:
Faster than a speeding Gene!
NEXT TIME: SIGNIFICANCE OF TECHNOLOGY
THE MACROLOGICAL: TECHNOLOGY & EVOLUTION, 2
1. Bernard Stiegler (video x2) – technics, prosthetic being
2. David Nye (recommended) – 3 approaches to
technology, soft determinism
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