Technological artifice and the object-subject relationship

Theodore John Rivers

Technology in Society, 2019, vol. 59, issue C

Abstract: Because we habitually project our potentialities upon technology, its response as a system leads to objectification, which is a logical consequence of technology's influence on being. This understanding is true not only for the beings that are evident as technological artifacts such as tools and machines, but also for ourselves. Since objectification describes the process by which something is rendered as an object, technology is acutely qualified as a system to achieve this result. It is by means of objects that a technological artifice has a bearing on being. Although it is commonly acknowledged that technology encumbers being and achieves this encumbrance by objectifying everything, it is less commonly acknowledged that it is by means of objectification that we have any hope of intensifying our subjectivity, which seems contradictory to technology's relationship to objectification. Nevertheless, there is no other opportunity for us to assert our being unless it is by means of objectification; that is, the presence and influence of objects reverts back to us thereby enabling us to define who we are and what we do. Because objects are meaningful due to their worldliness, the recognition and manipulation of this relationship indicates how they are meaningful to us.

Keywords: Objectification; Subjectification; Technological artifice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:teinso:v:59:y:2019:i:c:s0160791x18300307

DOI: 10.1016/j.techsoc.2019.101178

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