cyberdiva.org » Blog Archive » what is “technology”?

I was just reading Rad’s cyberdiva.org » Blog Archive » what is “technology”?

And had my own mid-ranting moment, while working on my year end report… so I thought I’d post it.

You should dig up “computer as furuoshiki” by bruce stirling from decade or so ago, in wired.

What is technology?

eco-theologian thomas berry said that technology is that which separates us from nature… and cited the automobile windshield as a more dangerous invention to humans than the nuclear bomb, as I remember it. The windshield was the final step that allowed us to permanently shut ourselves off from the world.

I consider the disposable diaper to be the most important piece of technology in the 20th C. I got the idea somewhere, but can’t remember. They represent a technology that retards human growth and development, IMHO, because if they’re that comfortable why would children want to become toilet trained and take control of their own bodily functions.

As for when… I’ve always relied on arthur C Danto’s notions of art and apply it to tech… in the transfiguration of the commonplace, he got this shift from what to when happening particularly when we talk about the relocalization of technologies from one cultural context to another… often losing their purpose and becoming art in the process.

Technology is anything we use that isn’t of our own bodies, even if we use our own bodies to create it… like language and ideas vs toe nail clippings.

“Who do we name a cyborg and when? and so I go back to a re-reading of the Hobbes and Boyle story in Latour’s “We have never been modern”…” Hee heee heee… The question is really which modern are we really talking about. Latour’s notion of modern is a modern-come-lately, imho. And I’d counter it by saying that we have never not been virtual. That is, when were we ever fully present without the mediating technologies of conscious thought and language?

Just me…