Introduction to the Philosophy of Technology

Introductionto the Philosophy of Technology

course descriptionIn the early 21st century, technology seems to be everywhere around us, influencing the ways we feel, think, and live together. New information and communication technologies, for instance, allow us to retrieve almost any information in a blink of an eye. Biotechnology and its applications not only lead to the development of new medicines to treat previously untreatable diseases, but also radically rework our under-standing of what it means to be human. Technology clearly matters. In contrast to the philosophy of science, the philosophy of technology, however, is a relatively young field. Having been merely seen as applied scientific knowledge that would inevitably lead to pro-gress, technology was, for a long time, of little interest. Over the last few decades, however, the question of technology has become more and more important for philosophy. The philosophy of technology emerged as a field of study, bringing together knowledge from various disciplines such as anthropology, engineering, science studies, history, political theory, ethics, and feminist theory, to name but a few. In this course, we will discuss philosophical and historical interpretations of technology. We will read works by Herbert Marcuse, Karl Marx, Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, Gilbert Simondon

Simondon, Norbert Wiener, Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway, and others, with the goal of deepening our understanding of the relation between science, technology, and society. We will particularly focus on the ethical and political implications of technologies in the context of the technosciences, biotechnology and medicine, surveillance and control, cybernetics, and information and communication techno-logy. In doing so, we will get introduced to key concepts and ideas in the philosophy of technology. At the heart will be the question of how science and technology shape society, and how they are, in turn, shaped by social, cultural, political, and economic factors. How to theorize the relationship between science and techno-logy? What is technology? What is the nature of scientific facts? How to understand the development of technology, and how are social values embedded in technologies and technical systems? Has technology indeed become autonomous, or even out of control, determin-ing the very ways we think, live, and act? And what does it mean to argue that new technologies, particularly bio- and information technologies change the very meaning of what it means to be human?

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Техника

– молодежи

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“Technological development goes from the abstract mode to the concrete mode.

It tends towards a state at which the technical being becomes a system that is

entirely coherent with itself.” (Gilbert Simondon)

“We're inside of what we make, and it’s inside of us. We're living in a world of

connections—and it matters which ones get made and unmade.” (Donna Haraway)

methods and goalsThis course will provide students with a broad philosophical and historical perspective on different interpretations of the nature of technology and its role in society. The course will be run as a reading and discussion intensive seminar. Preparation for class discussion by careful reading of the week’s literature is required. Through a close reading of the literature, discussions, and group work, participants who take this course will: §  get introduced to major topics and philosophical positions

on the question of technology

§  get an overview of the history of technology and technological change

§  compare and contrast different ideas and traditions in the philosophy of technology

§  develop a broad understanding of the role of technology (and of the technosciences) in modern society

§  critically asses the merit of arguments and develop own ideas

requirementsThe classroom should function as a forum for intellectual exchange wherein participants have read the material, critically reflected upon the content, and are willing to engage in discussion with fellow scholars. Since we will learn together as a group, each participant is expected to a) attend the classes and participate in ongoing discussions, b) present the key arguments of a paper (~30 min.) and lead the class discussion on that paper, c) prepare a short critical commentary (3 pages) as well as 2-3 discussion questions on the presented paper, and d) write a final term paper (15 pages) in which the readings are related to each other or used for a research project. Alternatively, participants can write three short essays (each 5 pages) on the papers to be read for the course.

grading§  Attendance and participation (including short

commentaries, discussion leading, and group work): 20%

§  Co-chairing and presentation of a paper: 25%

§  Short critical commentary (3 pages): 15% §  Final term paper (15 pages) OR three short essays (each 5

pages): 40% All requirements must be met in order to pass the course.

“The worker’s activity, reduced to a mere abstraction of activity, is determined and regulated on all sides by the movementof the machinery, and not the opposite.”

(Karl Marx)

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“Technology is society made durable.” (Bruno Latour)

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class schedule and readings

Introduction: What is TechnologyWeek 1

Science and TechnologyWeek 2

Readings:

Bunge, Mario. 1966. “Technology as Applied Science.” Technology and Culture, 7 (3): 329–347.Hessen. Boris. 2009/1931. “The Social and Economic Roots of Newton’s Principia.” In The Social and Economic Roots of the Scientific Revolution. Eds. Gideon Freudenthal and Peter McLaughlin. Berlin: Springer. 41–102.

Machines and SocietyWeek 3

Readings:

Marx, Karl. 1973/1939.” The Fragment on Machines.” Excerpt from The Grundrisse. New York and Toronto: Random House, 690–712.Heilbroner, Robert. 1967. “Do Machines Make History?” Technology and Culture. 8 (3): 335–345.Raunig, Gerald. 2010. A Thousand Machines: A Concise Philosophy of the Machine as Social Movement. London and Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press. Chapter: “Machine Fragments”, 18–34.

Autonomy of TechnologyWeek 4

Readings:

Heidegger. Martin. 1977/1962. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. New York: Harper & Row. Chapter: “The Questions Concerning Technology”, 3–35.Ellul, Jacques. “‘The Autonomy’ of the Technological Phenomenon.” In Philosophy of Technology. The Technological Condition: An Anthology. eds. Robert C. Scharff and Val Dusek. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell, 430–441.

Technology Between Authoritarianism and DemocracyWeek 5

Readings:

Marcuse. Herbert. 2004/1941. “Some Implications of Modern Technology.” In Herbert Marcuse. Technology, War and Fascism. Ed. Douglas Kellner. London and New York: Routledge, 39–65. Feenberg. Andrew. 2014. “Democratic Rationalization: Technology, Power, and Freedom.” In Philosophy of Technology. The Technological Condition: An Anthology. Eds. Robert C. Scharff and Val Dusek. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell, 706–719.

Readings:

Aristotle. 2014/350 BCE. “On ‘Technē’ and ‘Epistēmē’.” In Philosophy of Technology. The Technological Condition: An Anthology. Eds. Robert C. Scharff and Val Dusek. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell, 19–24.Dusek, Val. 2006. Philosophy of Technology. An Introduction. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell Chapter: “What is Technology? Defining or Characterizing Technology”, 26–37.Scharff, Robert G., and Val Dusek. Eds. 2014. Philosophy of Technology. The Technological Condition: An Anthology. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell. Chapter: “Introduction”, 3–7.

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Technology and PoliticsWeek 6

Readings:

Pinch, Trevor J., and Wiebe E. Bijker. 1993. “The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts: Or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other.” In The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology. Eds. Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas O. Hughes, and Trevor Pinch. Cambridge Mass. and London: MIT Press, 17–50.Winner, Langdon. 1980. “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” Daedalus, 190 (1): 121–136.

Technology and GenderWeek 7

Readings:

Berg, Anne-Jorunn, and Merete Lie. 1995. “Feminism and Constructivism: Do Artifacts Have Gender?” Science, Technology, and Human Values , 20 (3): 332–351.Wajcman, Judy. 2007. “From Women and Technology to Gendered Technoscience.” Information, Communication and Society, 10 (3): 287–298.

Technology, Art, and MediaWeek 8

Readings:

Benjamin, Walter. 2007/1935. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In Walter Benjamin. Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. ed. Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken Books, 217–251.

Kittler, Friedrich. 2013. “There is No Software.” In Essays on the Genealogy of Presence: The Truth of the Technological World. eds. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 219–229.

Technology, Society, and CultureWeek 9

Readings:

Latour, Bruno. 1991. “The Berlin Key Or How to Do Words With Things.” In Matter, Materiality and Modern Culture. Ed. Paul Graves-Brown. London: Routledge, 10–21.s

Simondon, Gilbert. 2010. “The Limits of Human Progress: A Critical Study.” Cultural Politics, 6 (2): 229–236.

CyberneticsWeek 10

Readings:

de la Mettrie, Julien Offray. 1996/1760. Machine Man and Other Writings. Cambridge Mass.: Cambridge University Press. Chapter: “Machine Man”, 1–39.Wiener, Norbert. 1995/1955. “Men, Machines, and About the World.” In The New Media Reader. Eds. Nick Montfort and Noah Wardrip-Fruin. Cambridge, Mass. and London: MIT Press, 65–72.Clynes, Manfred E., and Nathan S. Kline 1960. “Cyborgs and Space.” Astronautics, September 1960, 26–27 & 74–76.

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Surveillance and ControlWeek 11

Readings:

Foucault, Michel. 1995/1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books. Chapter: “Panopticism”, 195 – 228.Deleuze, Gilles. 1992. “Postscript on the Societies of Control.” October, 59 (Winter 1992): 3–7.

Transhumanism and PosthumanismWeek 12

Readings:

Bostrom, Nick. 2005. A History of Transhumanist Thought. <http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/ history.pdf/>.More, Max. 2013. “The Philosophy of Transhumanism.” In The Transhumanist Reader. Eds. Max More and Natasha Vita-More. Malden and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 3–17.Hayles, Katherine N. 1999. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Chapter: “Toward Embodied Virtuality” & “What Does it Mean to be Posthuman”, 1–24 & 283–291.

Hayles, Katherine N. “Wrestling With Transhumanism.” In H± Transhumanism and ist Critics. Eds. Gregory R. Hansell and William Grassie. Philadelphia: Metanexus, 215–226.

Course Wrap-Up and ReflectionWeek 13

Final remarks and discussion.