Abstract
Postphenomenology was envisaged to lay bare the black box of technology through a phenomenological approach. The vision, in this sense, was to identify how technology might mediate both the subjectivity of its immediate user and the world around her. In this paper I will argue that to cognize technology’s effects fully, we need to enrich postphenomenology with further insights. In particular, SCOT and ANT may be integrated into postphenomenology. While the former can provide a historical narrative of how technology has evolved throughout time, the latter may embed technology within a network where the interplay of the technology, the first user, other individuals and the society, on the whole, can be depicted. After a preliminary theoretical discussion, I will go through some case studies to articulate how SCOT and ANT can make a contribution to a systematic investigation of technology.
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Notes
I will discuss the differences between them later.
Elsewhere, Rosenberger speaks about ‘relational strategy’ to mean “the understandings and the bodily habits a user develops in order to take up a technology for a particular purpose” (2012: 289). In other words, by this term he refers to the process of learning how to relate bodily and perceptually to a specific interface, and how it is relevant to our experience and perception. ‘Relational ontology’ has nothing to do with ‘relational strategy’.
‘Relational ontology’ should not be confused with a ‘relativist ontology’. Postphenomenologists are not relativist.
In the following sections I will have more to say about the mediating role of technology in the reconfiguration of subject and object.
Jesper Aagaard and others, in their book ‘Postphenomenological Methodologies’ argue for similar criteria in order for a study to be qualified as postphenomenological (2018: xviii). According to them every postphenomenological inquiry should “be anchored in an anti-essentialist, relational ontology (the ‘post-’ part) and it must take departure in embodied experience (the ‘phenomenology’ part)’.
This characteristic of technology, as being multistable, may yet serve a further function. The phenomenon of the multiple stabilities of technology, made visible by variational analyses, may also serve as an argument against overly deterministic accounts of human-technology relations (Rosenberger, 2014: 373). As Verbeek notes, ‘technology is never purely determinative, for in principle other cultural relations with a given artifact are always possible. But neither is it purely instrumental, for when an artifact receives a particular definition within a cultural context—and thus becomes stable rather than multistable—it still contributes to shape that context’ (Verbeek, 2005: 138).
For example, Tobias Röhl (in Aagaard et al. eds., 2018) proposes four new methods for postphenomenological investigations: (1) maximally contrasting artifacts, (2) minimally contrasting artifacts, (3) contrasting contexts of use, and (4) auto-ethnographic observations. In a similar vein, Aagaard (in Aagaard et al. eds., 2018) proposes two extra methods, namely ‘researcher reflexivity’ and ‘analytical validity’.
Hass (in Aagaard et al. eds., 2018), in a similar vein, develops an anthropological method called ‘participant observation’ to run a postphenomenological research while participating in an activity and taking other’s anecdotes into account.
Other than the notions of mediation and variational analysis, while exploring case studies in the “Mediation Beyond Individuals; Toward a Comprehensive Account of Mediation” section, I will also draw upon further postphenomenological aspects.
On the subject of political dimensions of the technology development, one may find the observations of Feenberg illuminating. His ideas of technology as being the result of social and technical components, rather than merely technical, are insightful. See, for example, Feenberg (1999).
In this vein, there are two further notions, within SCOT (Pinch & Bijker, 1984): Closure Mechanism and Social Groups. The closure mechanism refers to the stabilisation process of a technology, which comprises the rhetorical process of agreement on the nature of a technology, as well as the way technology functions in society. And the notion of social groups is meant to refer to those whose interpretive frameworks and negotiation determine, to a large extent, properties of a technology.
There is a difference between the notion of interpretive flexibility and that of multistability. While within SCOT interpretation of a technology is predominantly social, for postphenomenology multistability is not merely social. Rather, the materiality of a technology plays a crucial role too. It means that the latter is meant to refer to the interaction of a technology and society.
For a more extensive treatment of the relationship between communication technologies (CT) and terrorism, see, for instance, Mahmood and Jetter (2019). There they provide a model as to how the level of free flow of information through CT is tightly linked with the level of terrorism in different countries.
Actant is a substitution for the word actor. The reason for introducing the term is that Latour is reluctant to give humans priority over technology in generating outcomes. The term ‘actant’ is indifferent to being human or nonhuman, whereas actor connotes a humanistic meaning.
According to studies, ISIS has recruited from around 85 countries across the world through such endeavours. See, e.g., Benmelech and Klor (2018).
For an extensive treatment of the application of postphenomenology and ANT insights on radicalism and fundamentalism studies see Arzroomchilar (forthcoming).
Despite (Ihde, 2011) is meant to put forth an objection toward Husserlian treatment of Galileo and in this sense its primary vision diverges from mine, the work may provide a frame to explore Galileo’s discovery from a postphenomenological point of view.
Husserl, in the ‘crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology,’ pretends to have discerned a notorious turning point in the history of physical science by the Galileo’s work. According to him the crisis of modern science lies in the gap between ‘Lifeworld’ and ‘world of science’ initiated by Galileo (Ihde, 2011: 69–82). While the latter is the world of ‘mathematical idealization’ the former is filled with imprecision and vagueness. Importantly, the Lifeworld is always presupposed as the ‘fundament’ according to Husserl in every scientific endeavor. If so, we cannot accept concomitantly both the realistic scientific description of the world and the description of the Lifeworld where the latter, unlike to former, is directly and non-inferentially perceived by us, as the inhabitants.
Having said this though, Ihde takes an issue that not only Husserl portraits a ‘reductionist version of Galileo’ but he ‘got science itself wrong’ (Ihde, 2011: 75). Ihde, takes the Husserl’s formulation to be ‘self-fabricated pseudo-problem’ that arises from a reduced and distorted depiction of Galileo. The mistake lies in the fact that, according to Ihde, Husserl did not adequately pay attention to the role of the Galileo’s telescope. The telescope links the ‘Lifeworld’ and ‘world of science’.
To continue the postphenomenological analysis, one may also notice for example that both the interpretation of the pictures Galileo was receiving through the telescope, and using the telescope itself, would have needed developing some skills and familiarity in prior. As with the latter Ihde notes that ‘users hand holding ancient telescopes have to learn how to ‘fix’ the Moon, and that is part of Galileo’s instruction. A tripod helps, but that magnifies the apparent speed of Moon motion and one has to constantly adjust the telescope to the moving location of the Moon (Ihde, 2011: 80)’. As with the former on the other hand one may appeal to the notions such as ‘visual hermeneutic’ or ‘hermeneutic strategy’ within the postphenomenology tradition (see, e.g., Ihde, 1998; Rosenberger, 2008, 2009, 2011a, 2011b, 2013). Images provided by imaging technologies are coherently open to a multitude of interpretations, that is, they are multistable. Each interpretation, moreover, depends on a specific hermeneutic strategy, that is, ‘a specific framework for interpreting the content of the images’. Here one can explore how Galileo saw the thing he saw, rather than otherwise which could have been coherently said to be seen.
In his book ‘Politics of Nature—How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy’ Latour explicitly calls for a new politics for dealing with ecological problems. There he develops a new framework for politics within which one needs to reconceptualise how ‘nature, science, and politics have to do with one another' (Latour, 2004: 6). The new politics should not consider nature distinct from society, value from fact, he argues. That is to say, we need a cosmopolitics, a politics comprising a heterogeneity of entities rather than sole humans and their affairs. He even explicitly proposes that ‘the question of democracy be extended to nonhumans' (Latour, 2004: 223). For more, see the abovementioned book and also his ‘We have never been modern’. In the latter, Latour speaks of ‘a Parliament of Things’ in this respect, to stress taking non-humans into our political considerations. The reader may find the ideas in his book interesting.
My work is in line with several authors’ works suggesting an amalgamation of STS (SCOT and ANT) and postphenomenology. Among others, one may look up Verbeek (2005) and Rosenberger (2018). Mine is different, I think, on two grounds. First, I am suggesting an integration of STS (both SCOT and ANT) into postphenomenology rather than exclusively ANT, as has been proposed by the foregoing authors. Second, my work is more systematic than the others, I believe. By this I mean, I am drawing on a larger portion of ANT teachings than others. While for Verbeek, as an example, there are just a few relevant terms like translation, network, black box and … for me there are more concepts to draw in.
The truth is that there is actually some sort of symmetry in SCOT too. The specific symmetry common within Social Constructivism is a principle of methodological symmetry or methodological relativism, which implies that the analyst remains impartial as to the real properties of the objects of analysis.
There is also another meaning for the notion of symmetry in the literature according to which when analysing a particular case of scientific controversy, one should apply symmetrically the same form of social explanation to all sides of the dispute (Bloor, 1976). Neither of these two conception is relevant here.
In the more recent writings, there seems to be a shift in some respects within SCOT teachings. In particular, Bijker (2010) discusses the need for the development of a unit of analysis to explore the force of technology to reshape human activities and their meanings.
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Arzroomchilar, E. Some Suggestions to Improve Postphenomenology. Hum Stud 45, 65–92 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-021-09615-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-021-09615-1