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Postphenomenology - II: Technological Otherness

Fri, September 6, 4:30 to 6:00pm, Sheraton New Orleans Hotel, Floor: Four, Bayside A

Abstract

As our technologies continue to advance, it has become time to reconsider the ways in which our sense of “otherness” is undergoing corresponding changes. Advanced robots are only the clearest example of how our conception of the nature of a significant alternative presence -- and alterity or an Other -- must change in the face of new and emerging technologies. Ideas from the postphenomenological framework of concepts may be able to help us meet this challenge.

Postphenomenology is a school of thought bringing together insights into human experience of technology from American pragmatism, STS, and the classical phenomenological tradition. It builds on Don Ihde’s work, and carries through the research of others, including Peter-Paul Verbeek, to offer distinct tools for investigating the ways technological mediation shapes human life.

In this panel, Ciano Aydin challenges what at first may seem to be the separate and simply instrumental character of technology, and he instead works to conceive of its “extimate” nature, exploring this through the case of smart homes and the elderly. Hidekazu Kanemitsu explores whether robots truly should be understood as a kind of “quasi-other,” or if some new conception is needed. Next, a paper by Jan Peter Bergen considers how human experience is mediated by sexual technologies, from teledildonics to sex robots, and how this shapes our experience of quasi-otherness. Finally, Shoji Nagataki explores what kind of intersubjectivity should be understood to occur between robots and human beings, and what this means for our understanding of humanity itself.

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