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On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects
Few thinkers have been as influential upon current discussions and theoretical practices in the age of media archaeology, philosophy of technology, and digital humanities as the French thinker Gilbert Simondon. Simondon’s prolific intellectual curiosity led his philosophical and scientific reflections to traverse a variety of areas of research, including philosophy, psychology, the beginnings of cybernetics, and the foundations of religion. For Simondon, the human/machine distinction is perhaps not a simple dichotomy. There is much we can learn from our technical objects, and while it has been said that humans have an alienating rapport with technical objects, Simondon takes up the task of a true thinker who sees the potential for humanity to uncover life-affirming modes of technical objects whereby we can discover potentiality for novel, healthful, and dis-alienating rapports with them. For Simondon, by way of studying its genesis, one must grant to the technical object the same ontological status as that of the aesthetic object or even a living being. His work thus opens up exciting new entry points into studying the human’s rapport with its continually changing technical reality. This first complete English-language translation of Gilbert Simondon’s groundbreaking and influential work finally presents to Anglophone readers one of the pinnacle works of France’s most unique thinkers of technics.
310 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1958
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October 24, 2020All posthumanisms are not alike. Whereas the roughly contemporaneous cybernetic paradigm took a broad view of information/negentropy to place human activity (and biology more broadly) under a single rubric of communication and control, Simondon insists on crucial ontological differences between machines and living beings. But, crucially, this does not mean centering humans as a measuring stick for thinking about “modes of existence,” as he calls them—on the contrary, it is by thinking past human being-in-the-world that Simondon is able to sharply define an ontology of technics, shifting from phenomenological categories like interiority or memory or meaning to a structural view of the relationships between elements, individuals, ensembles, and milieux. Tools, instruments, machines, technologies develop diachronically, in stops and starts, from abstracted human functions and gestures into internally coherent and self-containing assemblages of structure and function. It is hard not to read this as a kind of triumphant becoming, a celebration of the unlocking of potential, but we should remember that the notion that coherence is a “good thing” is a human one. This is read best as a value-neutral exploration of the ontology of technology (I think).
If it all sounds arbitrary or unverifiable (and it should, I think), it may be because this paradigm feels designed to be put to use—it feels like more of a means than an end. It is worth noting that Simondon cites almost no one in this work, other than the handful of references to Descartes that appear in literally every work of western philosophy as well as a few self-comparisons to Norbert Wiener. As far as uptake: I get the impression that Simondon’s ideas about assemblage and individuation have been very important to Deleuzian strands of posthumanism. I haven’t read those books, so I can’t vouch for the success or failure of their implementation. But I have found that even slightly generalization-based shakeups of point-of-view in philosophy (the shakeup here being “let’s try and understand existence from the POV of machines”) can be very useful to other writers even when the empirical claims have fallen away. Perhaps that is a sign that this form of “knowledge production” has abdicated its relationship to actually existing objects and phenomena—but I will let someone who has read a lot more than me worry about that claim.
If it all sounds arbitrary or unverifiable (and it should, I think), it may be because this paradigm feels designed to be put to use—it feels like more of a means than an end. It is worth noting that Simondon cites almost no one in this work, other than the handful of references to Descartes that appear in literally every work of western philosophy as well as a few self-comparisons to Norbert Wiener. As far as uptake: I get the impression that Simondon’s ideas about assemblage and individuation have been very important to Deleuzian strands of posthumanism. I haven’t read those books, so I can’t vouch for the success or failure of their implementation. But I have found that even slightly generalization-based shakeups of point-of-view in philosophy (the shakeup here being “let’s try and understand existence from the POV of machines”) can be very useful to other writers even when the empirical claims have fallen away. Perhaps that is a sign that this form of “knowledge production” has abdicated its relationship to actually existing objects and phenomena—but I will let someone who has read a lot more than me worry about that claim.
February 26, 2022
Assigning the ontological status of a technical object is tricky when you consider its historical development. For instance, a 2018 Lenovo ThinkPad X1 laptop has more in common with a 2018 iPhone XR than a 1965 IBM System/360 mainframe computer. Both computers, but one has more in common with an entirely different species than it does with its own genera. This is one of the reasons Simondon says binomial nomenclature doesn't work for technics, as well as his polemic against cybernetics. Classifying objects is tricky.
Simondon's solution to this is a process that he calls Concretization. On the ontological status of the machine in 1932, french philosopher Jacques Lafitte wrote "What is important to determine is less the very form of the organs than the sequence of the functions." which Simondon uses as a basis to form a "philosophy of the machine" as "an organized extension of ourselves." Concretization isn't making something tangible, or bringing something abstract (which Simomdon uses in the sense of primitive) into the Real, it's a method of thinking about the historical evolution of a technological object through time, it deals with the engineering of the object and, as such, is closely concerned about its technical innovations and the evolution of its functions. Concretization deals with "the things themselves."
Simondon says we have to reject Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics model as a method of classification because "technical objects tend towards concretization... one mustn't confuse [that] with... the [ontological] status of entirely concrete."
Simondon's solution to this is a process that he calls Concretization. On the ontological status of the machine in 1932, french philosopher Jacques Lafitte wrote "What is important to determine is less the very form of the organs than the sequence of the functions." which Simondon uses as a basis to form a "philosophy of the machine" as "an organized extension of ourselves." Concretization isn't making something tangible, or bringing something abstract (which Simomdon uses in the sense of primitive) into the Real, it's a method of thinking about the historical evolution of a technological object through time, it deals with the engineering of the object and, as such, is closely concerned about its technical innovations and the evolution of its functions. Concretization deals with "the things themselves."
Simondon says we have to reject Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics model as a method of classification because "technical objects tend towards concretization... one mustn't confuse [that] with... the [ontological] status of entirely concrete."
July 4, 2025
“Culture behaves toward the technical object as man toward a stranger, when he allows himself to be carried away by primitive xenophobia. Misoneism directed against machines is not su much a hatred of novelty as it is a rejection of a strange or foreign reality. However, this strange or foreign being is still human, and a complete culture is one which enables us to discover the foreign or strange as human....We would like to show, precisely, that the robot does not exist, that it is not a machine, no more so than a statue is a living being, but that it is merely a product of the imagination and of fictitious fabrication, of the art of illusion. The notion of the machine as it currently exists in culture, however, incorporates to a great extent this mythical representation of the robot. An educated man would neverdare to speak of objects or figures painted on a canvas as genuine realities, having interiority, good or ill will. However, this same man speaks of machines as threatening man, as if he attributed a soul and a separate, autonomous existence to them, conferring on them the use of sentiment and intention toward man.”
“...since the mode of existence of the concretized technical object is analogous to that of natural spontaneously produced objects, one can legitimately consider them as one would natural objects; in other words, one can submit them to inductive study. They are no longer mere applications of certain prior scientific principles. By existing, they prove the viability and stability of a certain structure that has the same status as a natural structure, even if it might be schematically different from all natural structures. The study of the functioning of concrete technical objects bears scientific value, since its objects are not deduced from a single principle; they are testimony to a certain mode of functioning and compatibility that exists in fact and has been built before having been planned: this compatibility was not contained in each of the separate scientific principles that served to build the object; it was discovered empirically; one can work backward from the acknowledgement of this compatibility to the separate sciences in order to pose the problem of the correlation of their principles and ground a science of correlations and transformations that would be a general technology or mechanology.”
“From then on the most positive, most direct aspect, of the first notion of progress, is no longer experienced. The progress of the eighteenth century is a progress experienced by an individual through the force, speed, and precision of his gestures. The progress of the nineteenth century can no longer be experienced by the individual because it is no longer centralized with the individual as the center of command and perception in the adapted action. The individual becomes the mere spectator of the results of the functioning of the machines, or the one who is responsible for the organization of technical ensembles putting the machines to work.”
https://youtu.be/8JyptY0N2Xc?si=gYPKA...
“...since the mode of existence of the concretized technical object is analogous to that of natural spontaneously produced objects, one can legitimately consider them as one would natural objects; in other words, one can submit them to inductive study. They are no longer mere applications of certain prior scientific principles. By existing, they prove the viability and stability of a certain structure that has the same status as a natural structure, even if it might be schematically different from all natural structures. The study of the functioning of concrete technical objects bears scientific value, since its objects are not deduced from a single principle; they are testimony to a certain mode of functioning and compatibility that exists in fact and has been built before having been planned: this compatibility was not contained in each of the separate scientific principles that served to build the object; it was discovered empirically; one can work backward from the acknowledgement of this compatibility to the separate sciences in order to pose the problem of the correlation of their principles and ground a science of correlations and transformations that would be a general technology or mechanology.”
“From then on the most positive, most direct aspect, of the first notion of progress, is no longer experienced. The progress of the eighteenth century is a progress experienced by an individual through the force, speed, and precision of his gestures. The progress of the nineteenth century can no longer be experienced by the individual because it is no longer centralized with the individual as the center of command and perception in the adapted action. The individual becomes the mere spectator of the results of the functioning of the machines, or the one who is responsible for the organization of technical ensembles putting the machines to work.”
https://youtu.be/8JyptY0N2Xc?si=gYPKA...
June 21, 2016
Dentro de la escasa bibliografía que trata de mediar entre unas humanidades tecnófobas y las fuerzas vivas de la producción, esta tesis doctoral de Simondon se distingue por su intento de replantearse todo con una sinceridad y una candidez casi infantiles. El modo de existencia trata de desarrollar las consecuencias intelectuales de la cibernética, que por entonces no era vista como una ingeniería de sistemas teleológicos (como suelen caracterizarla algunas retrospectivas ingratas) sino como una promesa de diálogo intercientífico. También se entronca con una teoría general de la individuación que Simondon desarrolló en otra parte, y que es el interés principal de la lectura deleuziana que guió esta edición. La individuación viene a ser algo parecido a una ontología evolutiva. Tiene un aire en familia con los órdenes de organización del emergentismo. Es además muy aristotélica: el ser es lo que existe. Se identifica con el "hay" de la lógica. La concretización es el proceso por el cuál el ser humano individualiza objetos técnicos. Al evolucionar, el objeto técnico pierde su artificialidad (es decir, su dependencia a la protección del ser humano) y cobra una mayor autonomía con respecto al medio. Hay también en esta dependencia en un telos otro aspecto muy aristotélico (y cibernético) en Simondon. Este núcleo de su pensamiento parece bastante coherente, pero escaso en originalidad.
Las cosas se van complicando a medida que avanza su tesis, con algunos episodios letárgicos, como las páginas dedicadas a la historia del catódo. Desconozco que tan preciso era su conocimiento sobre ese tema. Este fragmento de la segunda parte permite sospechar que su formación técnica no es impecable: "el funcionamiento de una máquina no tiene sentido, no puede dar lugar a verdaderas señales de información para otra máquina; hace falta un ser viviente como mediador para interpretar un funcionamiento en términos de información, y para reconvertirla en formas para otra máquina". Por supuesto, cabe siempre la defensa de que el lector no entendió los delicados matices que el autor le atribuyó a un término técnico como información. Aparentemente Simondon creyó que podía referir a algo parecido al sentido, lo cuál es completamente falso si nos atenemos a cualquier definición aceptable de información, y bastante miope teniendo en cuenta que estaba escribiéndolo en la época heroica de la computación, máquinas de procesamiento de información.
Hay algo muy importante que rescatar. A diferencia del ensayo ocioso de Sennett sobre el artesano, en esta tesis no hay mala fe sino una confusión fascinada por la técnica. Mientras Sennett trata de enturbiar toda diferencia social, política y técnicamente significativa entre personas que trabajan sobre algo, Simondon extrema las distinciones, llegando incluso al gesto sumamente arriesgado de aislar analíticamente al trabajo de la técnica, pero lo hace señalando las complicaciones políticas de esa operación. A modo de justificación escribe lo siguiente en la última página:
"La adquisición de conocimiento se efectúa a través de la operación, pero operativo no es sinónimo de práctico; la operación técnica no es arbitraria, plegada en todos los sentidos al capricho del sujeto según el azar de la utilidad inmediata; la operación técnica es una operación pura que pone en juego las verdaderas leyes de la realidad natural; lo artificial es lo natural suscitado, no lo falso o lo humano tomado por lo natural."
El valor de ese fragmento no es puramente intelectual. No depende únicamente de lo que podría contribuir a una teoría del conocimiento. Es una reivindicación, muy rara entre intelectuales, de la alegría de lograr que algo funcione. "Hice esto. Funciona. No necesita tu interpretación ni la mía". En eso hay un gérmen de emancipación, un reconocimiento en la cosa de una autonomía que podría ser propia. Algo que no se le escapa al esclavo, al siervo o al asalariado. Tampoco al Oblomov fatigado por el ocio.
Las cosas se van complicando a medida que avanza su tesis, con algunos episodios letárgicos, como las páginas dedicadas a la historia del catódo. Desconozco que tan preciso era su conocimiento sobre ese tema. Este fragmento de la segunda parte permite sospechar que su formación técnica no es impecable: "el funcionamiento de una máquina no tiene sentido, no puede dar lugar a verdaderas señales de información para otra máquina; hace falta un ser viviente como mediador para interpretar un funcionamiento en términos de información, y para reconvertirla en formas para otra máquina". Por supuesto, cabe siempre la defensa de que el lector no entendió los delicados matices que el autor le atribuyó a un término técnico como información. Aparentemente Simondon creyó que podía referir a algo parecido al sentido, lo cuál es completamente falso si nos atenemos a cualquier definición aceptable de información, y bastante miope teniendo en cuenta que estaba escribiéndolo en la época heroica de la computación, máquinas de procesamiento de información.
Hay algo muy importante que rescatar. A diferencia del ensayo ocioso de Sennett sobre el artesano, en esta tesis no hay mala fe sino una confusión fascinada por la técnica. Mientras Sennett trata de enturbiar toda diferencia social, política y técnicamente significativa entre personas que trabajan sobre algo, Simondon extrema las distinciones, llegando incluso al gesto sumamente arriesgado de aislar analíticamente al trabajo de la técnica, pero lo hace señalando las complicaciones políticas de esa operación. A modo de justificación escribe lo siguiente en la última página:
"La adquisición de conocimiento se efectúa a través de la operación, pero operativo no es sinónimo de práctico; la operación técnica no es arbitraria, plegada en todos los sentidos al capricho del sujeto según el azar de la utilidad inmediata; la operación técnica es una operación pura que pone en juego las verdaderas leyes de la realidad natural; lo artificial es lo natural suscitado, no lo falso o lo humano tomado por lo natural."
El valor de ese fragmento no es puramente intelectual. No depende únicamente de lo que podría contribuir a una teoría del conocimiento. Es una reivindicación, muy rara entre intelectuales, de la alegría de lograr que algo funcione. "Hice esto. Funciona. No necesita tu interpretación ni la mía". En eso hay un gérmen de emancipación, un reconocimiento en la cosa de una autonomía que podría ser propia. Algo que no se le escapa al esclavo, al siervo o al asalariado. Tampoco al Oblomov fatigado por el ocio.
August 2, 2023
A poetics of machines. When Heidegger proposed to explore the essence of technology, matters and technics were still masked with so many etymologies and significations. The experience of the being of technics had to make it appear through a long lost searching of the past essence. But with Simondon we find a very different kind of discourse of technics. Rather than searching for original or authentic experience,we find ourselves already submerged in a pre-individualistic notions of being. More like the Hegelian becoming of the subject. But not in dialectic way. In Simondon's glance human society, culture,machines,knowledge everything maintains a process of individuation. A genetic way of becoming. And here when Simondon's technicalities are done with we find a poetics of being.
Once there was the world of magic. Then it diverged oversaturated with its own meaning. It diverged or split into two different currents of becoming. Technic and religion. But there is a neutral point. Aesthetic. And later it can be philosophy. We find thus all sorts of becomings and subjects in our world. They become separate. But art, philosophy must do the work of converging these separate elements and regulating or incorporating a technical being or sensibility in our culture. For technology is not something alein or inhuman. There is more human in technology than we can realise. A different kind of mediation is needed.
Once there was the world of magic. Then it diverged oversaturated with its own meaning. It diverged or split into two different currents of becoming. Technic and religion. But there is a neutral point. Aesthetic. And later it can be philosophy. We find thus all sorts of becomings and subjects in our world. They become separate. But art, philosophy must do the work of converging these separate elements and regulating or incorporating a technical being or sensibility in our culture. For technology is not something alein or inhuman. There is more human in technology than we can realise. A different kind of mediation is needed.
June 22, 2020
Fascinating account of technical objects as possessing an unprecedented level of agency. A core text for the modern philosopher.
November 26, 2024
Banger
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 20, 2025
In this book, Gilbert Simondon unfolds out a new philosophy of technology. Perhaps most interestingly, this relates to the methodology by which he proposes to study technology. Moreover, his project is political insofar as it tries to tackle what he describes as an state of alienation between "man [sic]" and technics. Although the concept of alienation suggests a Marxist approach, Simondon actually takes quite a different approach. More on that below.
The book's initial summary nicely explain what this book is about. We learn that, according to Simondon, the technical object has never adequately become the concern of philosophical inquiry. Taking seriously the existence of technical objects will help lift "the burden of alienated human reality which is enclosed within the technical object" (p. xiii). What must be done is to introduce into culture a "representation and scale of values" that is adequate to the essence of technical objects. Methodologically, this will mean an analysis of the genesis of technical objects, which is to be located in a process of "concretization": a genesis that is particular to the technical object.
The prospectus, on the other hand, lays out how we can become aware of the mode of existence of technical objects; this entails three phases. The first of these seeks "to grasp the genesis of technical objects"; that is, the process of its concretization. The second phase envisions the "rapport between man and the technical object". This relates to the need for a deeper awareness of the ways in which humans and technical objects interrelate. Finally, in the third phase, we place the "technical object back into the ensemble of the real", which means that we seek to know the object according to its proper essence. Here, we will see Simondon unfold a theory that presupposes "the existence of a primitive mode of man's relation with the world, which is the magical mode" (p. xvii). The author stipulates that it is only philosophical thought that can introduce into culture an adequate representation of the technical object.
The introduction lays out these points in more detail, arguing against common understandings of technics as either mere assemblages of matter or as automata with hostile intentions against humans (p. 17); Simondon's project will be to formualte a more adequate account of the relation between humans and technics. His project is also political in the sense that he is interest in fostering new and better relations between humans and technics. His basic conceptual apparatus will distinguish between elements (tiny parts of machines), individuals (singular machines), and ensembles (the environments of machines); where he argues that technicity, today, emanates from ensembles.
In chapter 1, Simondon tackles the question of the genesis of technical objects as well as the process of concretization; he contrasts here abstract and concrete technical objects. The process of concretization is that process by which the elements in technical individuals come to function increasingly well together; a process by which an abstract technical object becomes increasingly concrete. Technical objects progress in this sense - their concretization increases - as a consequence of "the discovery of functional synergies" (p. 40). Importantly, the genesis of technical objects occurs not due to minor improvements, but as a consequence of "essential, discontinuous improvements, as a result of which the internal schema of the technical object is modified in leaps rather than following a continuous line" (p. 43). In fact, Simondon suggests that minor improvements are often merely a commercial trick to make it seem as though there were constant improvement of technics. He then goes on to suggest that there exists such a thing as "absolute origins" (p. 44) to technical objects; in such moments of absolute origin, there are new technical essences (p. 45) being created. Hence, he suggests: "The beginning of lineage of technical objects is marked by this synthetic act of invention constitutive of technical essence" (p. 46). He develops an interesting juxtaposition between abstract and concrete technical objects (p. 49), eventually likening concrete technical objects to the "mode of existence of natural objects" insofar as they are "tending toward internal coherence"; moreover, " as it evolves, this object loses its artificial character: the essential artificiality of an object resides in the fact that man must intervene to maintain the existence of this object by protecting it against the natural world, giving it a status of existence that stands apart." (p. 49). He elaborates on the likeness between concrete technical objects and natural objects in the following pages (p. 50). Methodologically, Simondon suggests the necessity to study the evolution of technical objects so as to discern the "Processes of concretization" as a tendency; yet only as a tendency that is never perfected.
The second chapter is on the "Evolution of Technical Reality: Element, Individual, Ensemble". [...].
[...].
The book's initial summary nicely explain what this book is about. We learn that, according to Simondon, the technical object has never adequately become the concern of philosophical inquiry. Taking seriously the existence of technical objects will help lift "the burden of alienated human reality which is enclosed within the technical object" (p. xiii). What must be done is to introduce into culture a "representation and scale of values" that is adequate to the essence of technical objects. Methodologically, this will mean an analysis of the genesis of technical objects, which is to be located in a process of "concretization": a genesis that is particular to the technical object.
The prospectus, on the other hand, lays out how we can become aware of the mode of existence of technical objects; this entails three phases. The first of these seeks "to grasp the genesis of technical objects"; that is, the process of its concretization. The second phase envisions the "rapport between man and the technical object". This relates to the need for a deeper awareness of the ways in which humans and technical objects interrelate. Finally, in the third phase, we place the "technical object back into the ensemble of the real", which means that we seek to know the object according to its proper essence. Here, we will see Simondon unfold a theory that presupposes "the existence of a primitive mode of man's relation with the world, which is the magical mode" (p. xvii). The author stipulates that it is only philosophical thought that can introduce into culture an adequate representation of the technical object.
The introduction lays out these points in more detail, arguing against common understandings of technics as either mere assemblages of matter or as automata with hostile intentions against humans (p. 17); Simondon's project will be to formualte a more adequate account of the relation between humans and technics. His project is also political in the sense that he is interest in fostering new and better relations between humans and technics. His basic conceptual apparatus will distinguish between elements (tiny parts of machines), individuals (singular machines), and ensembles (the environments of machines); where he argues that technicity, today, emanates from ensembles.
In chapter 1, Simondon tackles the question of the genesis of technical objects as well as the process of concretization; he contrasts here abstract and concrete technical objects. The process of concretization is that process by which the elements in technical individuals come to function increasingly well together; a process by which an abstract technical object becomes increasingly concrete. Technical objects progress in this sense - their concretization increases - as a consequence of "the discovery of functional synergies" (p. 40). Importantly, the genesis of technical objects occurs not due to minor improvements, but as a consequence of "essential, discontinuous improvements, as a result of which the internal schema of the technical object is modified in leaps rather than following a continuous line" (p. 43). In fact, Simondon suggests that minor improvements are often merely a commercial trick to make it seem as though there were constant improvement of technics. He then goes on to suggest that there exists such a thing as "absolute origins" (p. 44) to technical objects; in such moments of absolute origin, there are new technical essences (p. 45) being created. Hence, he suggests: "The beginning of lineage of technical objects is marked by this synthetic act of invention constitutive of technical essence" (p. 46). He develops an interesting juxtaposition between abstract and concrete technical objects (p. 49), eventually likening concrete technical objects to the "mode of existence of natural objects" insofar as they are "tending toward internal coherence"; moreover, " as it evolves, this object loses its artificial character: the essential artificiality of an object resides in the fact that man must intervene to maintain the existence of this object by protecting it against the natural world, giving it a status of existence that stands apart." (p. 49). He elaborates on the likeness between concrete technical objects and natural objects in the following pages (p. 50). Methodologically, Simondon suggests the necessity to study the evolution of technical objects so as to discern the "Processes of concretization" as a tendency; yet only as a tendency that is never perfected.
The second chapter is on the "Evolution of Technical Reality: Element, Individual, Ensemble". [...].
[...].
Read
July 3, 2025maquinas abiertas, pensamiento mágico, génesis natural, el corazón del bosque... buen librete la verdad Simondon es bastante bueno. Es muy interesante el concepto de evolución a través de la coherencia interna que maneja. La apertura nos mantiene inherentemente conectados, la indeterminación como virtud (es decir, devenir con el mundo, que tampoco se puede evitar). Ontología y epistemología bastante bastante top.
July 23, 2024
1st Reading for the monograph. Oh boy, what a trip! Very enlightening for sure.
July 24, 2024
MY BRAIN HURTS SO MUCH
Want to read
July 20, 2025Bergson and Deleuze preferred Simondon over Husserl and Heidegger respectively to format their theories on the virtual
August 12, 2024
(Having read this more thoroughly, I have a parable: what is the difference between a guitar and a guitarfish? whatever you make of it. Okay, that was stupid but it just came to mind for some reason. But it's about establishling similarities between disparate things. I would never forgive myself, seriously, for wounding animal life and so I hope that is clear that dumb parable of mine is just talking about the potentialities of both and not animal experimentation )
My (probably terrible) metaphor for Simondon is like if Jung was inspired not by comparative religion, folklore, and medieval alchemy to search for those symbols which illuminate the human being, but rather in engineering and chemistry textbooks, a deep study of the works of provençal craftsman, and cybernetics. However, far from being an extremely geeky explication (well, it is a little geeky) of cathode ray tubes and their successive evolutions, Simondon is rather interested in technics as it interweaves with the living world and the natural spirit of innovation, as well as it's relation to our alienation and our feeling of belonging. The technological object has itself become alienated through it's universalization: A chair, A computer, A keyboard, etc. The only way to get past the alienation of these objects we hole ourselves up with in our day-to-day lives it to truly hyperadapt them to our lives and environments. Inventing a keyboard that maps letters to temperatures, or microscopic bacteria. A medical keyboard, a healing keyboard, a synesthesiac keyboard (for those without synesthesia). Whatever helps you make sense of your own environment. We are sick and tired of the blandness, the universality of what surrounds us! It makes us feel crazy!
I sense a little playfulness in Simondon and a little inventiveness, and although my perspective is not the most well-read, I still feel in Simondon an inspiring force that truly dived deep into the poetics of a cathode ray tube, and I think he is one we should be looking at in our STEAM enamored days.
My (probably terrible) metaphor for Simondon is like if Jung was inspired not by comparative religion, folklore, and medieval alchemy to search for those symbols which illuminate the human being, but rather in engineering and chemistry textbooks, a deep study of the works of provençal craftsman, and cybernetics. However, far from being an extremely geeky explication (well, it is a little geeky) of cathode ray tubes and their successive evolutions, Simondon is rather interested in technics as it interweaves with the living world and the natural spirit of innovation, as well as it's relation to our alienation and our feeling of belonging. The technological object has itself become alienated through it's universalization: A chair, A computer, A keyboard, etc. The only way to get past the alienation of these objects we hole ourselves up with in our day-to-day lives it to truly hyperadapt them to our lives and environments. Inventing a keyboard that maps letters to temperatures, or microscopic bacteria. A medical keyboard, a healing keyboard, a synesthesiac keyboard (for those without synesthesia). Whatever helps you make sense of your own environment. We are sick and tired of the blandness, the universality of what surrounds us! It makes us feel crazy!
I sense a little playfulness in Simondon and a little inventiveness, and although my perspective is not the most well-read, I still feel in Simondon an inspiring force that truly dived deep into the poetics of a cathode ray tube, and I think he is one we should be looking at in our STEAM enamored days.
January 19, 2017
Ma joie ne fait qu'augmenter de savoir que cet auteur commence de faire école, commence de revenir sur de devant de la scènette philosophique.
C'est une lecture extrêmement stimulante, qui propose une approche radicalement inédite de la technique qui redéfinit à son tour tout un édifice regroupant magie, esthétique, sciences, techniques et philosophie dans un réseau et un enjeu. Il constitue par là une nouvelle approche de ce qu'est la société, de ce qui constitue la société, nos rapports aux objets techniques, et à tout le champ de la culture.
Je ne vais pas me lancer dans un compte-rendu critique, les travaux universitaires dont j'ai à mon tour contribué à épaissir le dossier manquent de moins en moins. Je ne peux qu'en recommander la lecture.
C'est une lecture extrêmement stimulante, qui propose une approche radicalement inédite de la technique qui redéfinit à son tour tout un édifice regroupant magie, esthétique, sciences, techniques et philosophie dans un réseau et un enjeu. Il constitue par là une nouvelle approche de ce qu'est la société, de ce qui constitue la société, nos rapports aux objets techniques, et à tout le champ de la culture.
Je ne vais pas me lancer dans un compte-rendu critique, les travaux universitaires dont j'ai à mon tour contribué à épaissir le dossier manquent de moins en moins. Je ne peux qu'en recommander la lecture.
March 6, 2015
well read most of this in drafts of translations.
July 9, 2016
read this book in an unpublished translation. it was wonderful.
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