Towards a Phenomenology of Computation

Abstract

Having suggested how the materiality of code might be subjected to critical analysis, I now want to focus on the experience of ‘forgetting’ technology. This raises the question of whether the experience of ‘backgrounded’ computational technology is as complete as we might think. Indeed, I want to explore the idea that technology is actually only ever partially forgotten or ‘withdrawn’, forcing us into a rather strange experience of reliance, but never complete finesse or virtuosity with the technology. Indeed, this forgetting, or ‘being that goes missing’, is for Heidegger ‘the very condition of appearance (vanishing) of worldhood (Stiegler 1998: 244). Whilst I will go on to argue that there is something specific about the relationship that is set up between our use of digital devices and our experience of the world, I want to be clear that this is not merely to argue for a vulgar technological determinism. Such an approach was criticised by Raymond Williams (2003) who argued that,

We have to think of determination not as a single force, or a single abstraction of forces, but as a process in which real determining factors — the distribution of power or of capital, social and physical inheritance, relations of scale and size between groups — set limits and exert pressures, but neither wholly control nor wholly predict the outcome of complex activity within or at these limits, and under or against these pressures (Williams 2003: 133).