“The tool isn’t separate from you. It’s part of you.” #Heidegger #technology #perception #tools

This year saw the invasion of telepresence robots—electromechanical avatars that allow you to be there without actually being there. Today, half a dozen companies are selling, or will start selling, these robots. I’ve tested two of the robots myself, discussing at length their technical merits as well as their practical shortcomings, and even helped a colleague build his own robotic self.

Although the technology behind these robots is fascinating, I’m also interested in the historical and philosophical aspects of telepresence. Telepresence robots didn’t come out of nowhere; they stem from a convergence of different technologies, each with its own history. The advent of robotic telepresence also reflects a moment in time when many of us are becoming ever more connected and available.

So what made these robots possible now? What’s so appealing about roaming around as a machine in a remote place? And where is this technology taking us, literally and figuratively?

To explore these theme

Will we ever be able to think of Hannah Arendt in the same way again? Two new and damning critiques, one of Arendt and one of her longtime Nazi-sycophant lover, the philosopher Martin Heidegger, were published within 10 days of each other last month. The pieces cast further doubt on the overinflated, underexamined reputations of both figures and shed new light on their intellectually toxic relationship. Print This ArticlePRINTDiscuss in the FrayDISCUSSEmail to a FriendE-MAILGet Slate RSS FeedsRSSShare This ArticleRECOMMEND...Single PageSINGLE PAGE Yahoo! BuzzFacebook FacebookPost to MySpace!MySpaceMixx MixxDigg DiggReddit RedditDel.icio.us del.icio.usFurl FurlMa.gnolia.com Ma.gnoliaSphere SphereStumble UponStumbleUponCLOSE

My hope is that these revelations will encourage a further discrediting of the most overused, misused, abused pseudo-intellectual phrase in our language: the banality of evil. The banality of the banality of evil, the fatuousness of it, has long been fathomless, but

In his article, Heidegger explains the essence of art in terms of the concepts of being and truth. He argues that art is not only a way of expressing the element of truth in a culture, but the means of creating it and providing a springboard from which "that which is" can be revealed. Works of art are not merely representations of the way things are, but actually produce a community's shared understanding. Each time a new artwork is added to any culture, the meaning of what it is to exist is inherently changed.

The phenomenology / ontology of text: has anyone examined this issue directly in philosophical, literary and/or critical terms? I am interested in the experience and perception of text, both within readership and on an abstract (more holistic level perhaps) as the archetypical mediator and virtual-archive of human culture. I wish to explore it via its mediums (e.g. book, computer screen), its modes (e.g. semiotics, translation) and its means (e.g. poetry, fiction, encryption).

I came at this problem through Heidegger (most specifically in his re-appropriation of the term 'techné'), looking at text as a technology.

I have since come upon the writings of D.C. Greetham and a couple of other bits and pieces.

I feel that this is an area not much covered by the critical fields, especially in these times of ever encompassing digital/web-based mediums. I'm interested in following through some of this to a PhD proposal.

What paths should I be taking?

Your help, as always, is much appreciated.

“There was a time when it was not technology alone that bore the name techné... Once there was a time when the bringing-forth of the true into the beautiful was called techné. And the poïesis of the fine arts also was called techné.”

Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology (1954) For Martin Heidegger the essence of technology is to be understood as distinct from technology itself. Etymologically the word technology stems from the Greek techné, "the name not only for the activities and skills of the craftsman but also for the arts of the mind and the fine arts". Techné is to be understood as craft: a “bringing-forth” / a “revealing”:

“Bringing-forth brings out of concealment into unconcealment... The Greeks have the word aletheia for revealing. The Romans translate this with veritas. We say “truth” and usually understand it as correctness of representation.”

Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology (1954) This unconcealment of truth is a poïetic process, a bringing about of presence in the craft of creative engagement. This concept of the techné seems to emerge naturally when we look at art, at text, as palimpsestic. The essence of the x-ray as it peers under the surface of the painting reveals - brings-forth - a greater truth to the painting, e.g. what the painter sketched before she layered the oil upon the canvas. Our root in the present, as entities only capable of engaging with art as it appears to us now, is mediated by the essence of technology. The past becomes revitalised as a cross-section through the present.

“By going back to its own root and almost beyond it, technology is made to disclose its revealing and concealing gesture, and further yet, its deep complicity with poetic creation.”

Jean-Michel Rabaté, The Future of Theory - 2002 Any engagement with art that effectively realigns its perceived surface with its palimpsest can be understood as poïetic: as techné.

This essential mode of technology does not rest naturally with our modern view, yet in the negative of essence, one finds a boundary via which to re-define technology yet further:

“The product of technology is not a function of a mutual context of making and use. It works to make invisible the labor that produced it, to appear as its own object, and thus to be self-perpetuating. Both the electric toaster and Finnegans Wake turn their makers into absent and invisible fictions.”

Susan Stewart, On Longing (1984) The idea of technology as labour towards product is intrinsic to our modern comprehension. But what of the technology of text? of the written or printed word? The labour which produced the technology of text is irrelevant to the essence of text itself. The essence of Finnegans Wake is in the crafting labour of readership – an active reversal of traditional perceptions. Text as techné reveals nothing less than the boundaries of consciousness, of truth, of humankind:

“For man, as Julian Huxley observes, unlike merely biological creatures, possesses an apparatus of transmission and transformation based on his power to store experience. And his power to store, as in language itself, is also a means of transformation of experience.”

Marshall Mcluhan, Understanding Media (1964) Language is revealed through text as the mode of our conscious experience – a truth which furthermore transforms the very capacities of the thoughts which think it. Once text, in its essence, is transmitted and elucidated via readership there is transformation “of the process of coming-into-being of the world” :

“From a phenomenological standpoint... the world emerges with its properties alongside the emergence of the perceiver in person, against a background of involved activity. Since the person is a being-in-the-world, the coming-into-being of the person is part and parcel of the process of coming-into-being of the world.”

Tim Ingold, The Perception of the Environment (2000) [ Note: This is an extract from my MA thesis, which is still in the process of being revealed. I hope you enjoyed it. ]