Critical Philosophy of the Postdigital

• In Event: 63.068 - Postdigital Science and Education

Abstract

The postdigital does not describe a situation, condition or event after the digital (Cramer, 2015; Jandrić et al., 2018). It is not a chronological term but rather a critical attitude (or philosophy) that inquires into the digital world, examining and critiquing its constitution, its theoretical orientation and its consequences. In particular, it addresses the conditions of digitality and the ideology of digitalism, the idea that everything can be understood without loss of meaning in digital terms. We call this the ‘critique of digital reason’ that has application not only in terms of social theory and theory of hyper-control but also in music, art and aesthetics. The critique of digital reason has two elements: first, the mathmatico-technical control systems that are part of the emerging global digital infrastructure within which we now exist, and second, the political economy of these systems – their ownership, acquisition, structure and ownership. It also refers to the convergence and marriage of the two dominant world historical forces of digital and biological systems and the ways in which together they constitute the unsurpassable horizon for existence and becoming – the species evolution of homo sapiens and life in general, and the colonization of space.
A critical philosophy starts from the rejection of a purely mechanistic universe—the universe of classical mechanics that is echoed by a traditional deterministic computing. The move to something new – to a philosophy that emphasizes nondeterministic states, also might find solace in the concept of reality and philosophy as process or a web of interrelated processes as developed by Whitehead in his Harvard Lectures (1927-28) that was published as Process and Reality (1929).
Process philosophy provides us with what Whitehead called ‘a philosophy of the organism’ – it is a form of speculative metaphysics that privileges the event and processes over and above substance with the consequence that we are released from the mechanistic, deterministic universe that is a product of classical physics. It is also a clear rejection of scientific realism substituting a relation process ontology that points towards a indeterministic universe at the sub-atomic level and a form of quantum philosophy based on quantum mechanics and computing characterising an era we are just entering. It will be transformative, dynamic, system-built ontology very different from our understanding of the digital, which itself has only got underway. A critical philosophy of the postdigital must be able to understand the processes of quantum computing, complexity science, and deep learning as they constitute the emerging techno-science global system and its place within a capitalist system that itself is transformed by these developments.
References
Cramer, F. (2015). What is ‘post-digital’? In D. M. Berry & M. Dieter (Eds.), Postdigital aesthetics: Art, computation and design (pp. 12–26). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1057/9781137437204
Jandrić, P., Knox, J., Besley, T., Ryberg, T., Suoranta, J., & Hayes, S. (2018). Postdigital science and education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 50(10): 893 – 899.
Whitehead, A. N. (1929). Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. New York: Macmillan & Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Authors

• Michael A. Peters, Beijing Normal University

• Tina Besley, Beijing Normal University