Abstract
The concept of multistability is pertinent today in our technology-intensive world for its ability to indicate how a given technology has different meanings to different people at different times. In this chapter I claim that multistability should be subjected to its own principles, and hence it should acquire the plural form of multistabilities. The various usages and implementations of the notion are placed along an axis according to the number of stabilities and the goals of the analysis. When scientists study a multistable phenomenon, they collect data from several sources to reach one “truth.” This is the “modern scientific” region. Designers and other material culture specialists produce a high number of stabilities. This is the “modern evolutionary” region, inspired by Darwinian evolution. It is applicable to fashion items, cellphones models and street benches, to name a few. Lastly, innovators—may they be engineers, designers, or artists—look for numerous stabilities of a given phenomenon, whose collection may yield a new meta-stability. This is the “postmodern” region. The last region is applicable to sustainability, urging us to exceed the “climate change” and “global warming” phrases, and take into account other aspects such as deforestation, acidification of the oceans, etc.
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Notes
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No wonder, then, that at the 2015 4S conference, many papers in the postphenomenological track (including my own) discussed multistability from various perspectives (see Ihde, 2016b).
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The first pivot is Ihde’s “practical multistability” in which different modes of embodiment reveal the multistability of a given phenomenon. Whyte’s example for this pivot is Ihde’s archery analysis where the same principle of operation of a tension bow and an arrow is implemented in a variety of arches: each requires a different embodiment.
The second pivot is functional, and here Whyte cites Rosenberger’s example of a glass bottle. The bottle can serve not only to hold liquid but also as a vase, as a launching base for fireworks, as a musical instrument when blown into, or as a sharp weapon when broken. The bottle remains the same for most uses, but the exerted functions of the bottle vary to a large extent.
The third pivot aims at the human-technology entanglement. Like the functional pivot, in this pivot the technology remains the same throughout the stabilities, and it is even used in the same way. What changes is the relations the users develop toward the technology and the world. The stabilities move to the relations between the users and the technology and the postphenomenological analysis describes how they co-shape each other. An example for this pivot is Verbeek’s analysis of obstetric ultrasound technology and the relations co-shaped with the expecting parents, the unborn child and the doctor. For instance, the fetus can become a bearer of rights through the imaging technologies used in the screening process. Verbeek shows how the moral intuitions of the expecting parents and the doctor are entangled with the ultrasound imaging technologies.
The fourth pivot refers to the assessment methodologies of the practices and the related technologies. It is an examination of the entanglements of humans and technologies through economic assessments. Whyte founds this pivot on Selinger’s analysis of the Grameen Phone Project in Bangladesh in which micro-loans were given to women in poor families in rural areas to finance the purchase of cell phones in order to empower them and help their families improve their financial situation. Selinger investigates the various analyses that economically assessed the relations quantitatively and qualitatively, yielding different results as per the question of the success of the project.
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This is Rosenberger’s list, which is not exhaustive and offered in no particular order: The first form concerns positive or negative uses of multistability. The second form is termed “structural edification” The third form is “Whytian pivots.” Rosenberger’s fourth form of multistability is termed “relational strategies” The fifth form entitled “local stabilization” the sixth form is termed “variational cross-examination” The seventh form is the feminist.
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The term closing is borrowed from Social Construction of Technology (SCOT). The first to link between the two theories at this point is Rosenberger who compares multistability and SCOT’s notion of “interpretive flexibility” in order to show how the two complement each other: interpretive flexibility focuses on early stages of the life cycle of a technology and hence examines what designers and early adapters do and say; multistability, by contrast, applies throughout the whole life cycle. As a result, SCOT is more historical in its approach while postphenomenology is future-looking. Another difference between the two theories is rooted in different understandings of technology: in SCOT the underlying assumption is that technology tends to reach a “closure,” which reflects a common usage pattern, which runs parallel to the scientific orientation of looking for “the truth.” Postphenomenology, however, “allows” technologies to change, constantly and endlessly, as will be demonstrated in the other regions of multistability.
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Acknowledgements
This paper is based on a paper presented in the 4S conference in Denver, Colorado (USA) in November 2015. Thanks to the postphenomenology community for enabling me to present this paper in one of the postphenomenology panels, for their good comments, and for their encouragement which helped me to develop these ideas into this chapter.
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Wellner, G. (2020). The Multiplicity of Multistabilities: Turning Multistability into a Multistable Concept. In: Miller, G., Shew, A. (eds) Reimagining Philosophy and Technology, Reinventing Ihde. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 33. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35967-6_7
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