This chapter argues that our ambiguity toward renewable technologies arises from our understanding that the nature of the machine is somehow alien and external to us. Historically, we have thought of the machine as lacking cultural signification. As a result, the machine has been relegated to mere utility rather than having any axiological or human reality. Thinking of the machine as utterly other has exercised a certain xenophobia or misoneism as well as an uncritical technophilia. This ambiguity arises from our (...) acceptance that technology is based on the principle of conservation, a sameness underlying change that is traceable to Aristotle’s theory of causality with its implicit ontological distinction between natural and human made objects. To overcome such teleology, we need a different ontological ground on which to consider the concept of technology. Gilbert Simondon gives us such tools. His work is slowly surfacing with thinkers such as Bernard Stiegler and more recently in the English-speaking academy with thinkers such as Elizabeth Grosz and Andrew Feenberg. 1 This chapter will show how both Aristotle’s phenomenology of technology and Simondon’s ontogenesis can help to think though the challenges of renewable technologies associated with climate change. It will outline Aristotle’s phenomenology of technology and illustrate the intersection and departure of Simondon’s ontogenetic epistemology through his three-phase principle of individuation: elemental phase, individual phase, and ensemble phase. For Simondon all objects become whole (sunolos) though a process of individuation, which explains the coming into being and the existence of beings of all kinds. There are three phases: the elemental which is the spontaneous excess of being; individuation is the successive multistability of being where being splits becoming both the individual and the many; and finally the ensemble . (shrink)

This response briefly argues that post-phenomenology has always cut across the transcendental-empirical divide and is able to cultivate a deep respect for technologies in their otherness, without denying their relation to humanity. It does this by revisiting Don Ihde’s genetic phenomenological variations and tracing its relation to Gilbert Simondon’s ontogenesis. Having set up the historical nature of objects, the second part of this paper will take up Yoni Van Den Eede’s call for a more speculative approach.

In recent decades, the internet has become our predominant public space and yet the role of art in this space remains largely unthought. This paper argues that graphic art, and in particular digital graphic art, has great power to shape and transform our thinking and experience. But with that power comes an enormous political and ethical responsibility, a responsibility too often ignored by programmers and computer scientists. This paper uses the work of Denis Schmidt and Jacques Taminiaux as important resources (...) for developing a Heideggerian response to this lack. (shrink)

This article argues that by recognizing the fundamental relationship between praxical time and dwelling as a matrix of interweaving modes of being, society can subvert the potential reification of humanity by technology. This can only be achieved through a democratic process that involves participatory agents not only at the design level but also in the event of naming future innovations. By looking at the work of Alain Badiou, it is shown how a fusion of Heideggerian-inspired phenomenology and speculative ontology is (...) critical for the advancement of social theory, as revolutionary technologies become increasingly immersive. (shrink)

This collection of essays, written by an international group of scholars, provides a more critical and creative contemporary practice of “sustainability.” The book sets this practice free from its reductive interpretations and applies a more thoughtful environmental ethics to the current and emerging technologies that dominate our lives.

In recent decades, the internet has become our predominant public space and yet the role of art in this space remains largely unthought. This paper argues that graphic art, and in particular digital graphic art, has great power to shape and transform our thinking and experience. But with that power comes an enormous political and ethical responsibility, a responsibility too often ignored by programmers and computer scientists. This paper uses the work of Denis Schmidt and Jacques Taminiaux as important resources (...) for developing a Heideggerian response to this lack. (shrink)