Atlas of Places
Network Semiotics I
2020
This study is motivated by our desire to raise awareness of the meaning of technical objects. Culture has constituted itself as a defense system against technics; yet this defense presents itself as a defense of man, and presumes that technical objects do not contain a human reality within them. We would like to show that culture ignores a human reality within technical reality and that, in order to fully play its role, culture must incorporate technical beings in the form of knowledge and in the form of a sense of values. Awareness of the modes of existence of technical objects must be brought about through philosophical thought, which must fulfill a duty through this work analogous to the one it fulfilled for the abolition of slavery and the affirmation of the value of the human person.
The opposition drawn between culture and technics, between man and machine, is false and has no foundation; it is merely a sign of ignorance or resentment. Behind a facile humanism, it masks a reality rich in human efforts and natural forces, and which constitutes a world of technical objects as mediators between man and nature.

















Location: France
Text: Gilbert Simondon, On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, 1989
Posted: April 2020
Category: Research