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