Epistemology and Technology

Epistemology, Seeing, and Saying: Core Themes

• Focus on formulating meaningful problems instead of jumping to solutions.
• Avoid the "techno-fix" mindset, where technology being seen as a universal solution.
• Engage critically with technology and understand its broader social, political, and cultural ramifications.

Critical Perspective on Technological Hype

• Historical examples of overhyped technologies include nanotech and biotech.
• Current hype, such as ChatGPT, often overshadows the practical, long-term outcomes.
• Be skeptical of narratives that promise future breakthroughs without present grounding.

Epistemology

• Epistemology examines how knowledge is created, validated, and framed.
• Knowledge is not neutral, it is shaped by context and funding.
• Power dynamics and social relationships also influence how knowledge is shaped.
• Foucault's relational view of power and knowledge challenges the idea of fixed authority figures or dominant systems of thought.

The Nature of Power (Foucault's Perspective)

• Power is relational, not inherent to individuals or objects.
• Visibility and invisibility play a central role in maintaining and redistributing power, such as in Las Meninas painting.
• Examine systems of relations rather than isolated entities or representations.

Technogenesis

• Human evolution and technology are deeply intertwined.
• Technologies influence human behavior, posture, and cognition, like the mouse's impact on fine motor skills.
• Consider the mutual shaping of humans and technology over time.

Culture & Innovation

• Culture originates from agricultural cultivation and evolves through industrialization and social practices.
• Challenge the distinction between high and low culture, emphasizing that culture is everyday, ordinary, and dynamic.
• Innovation should consider sustainability and social responsibility, with examples like material revolutions and participatory design.

Key Concepts

• Discursive practices produce statements, such as texts and spoken language.
• Non-discursive practices create visibility using visuals and systems of arrangement.
• Technological determinism is the fallacy that technology has a predetermined trajectory or inherent purpose.
• Technology's development and impact are shaped by societal needs, power struggles, and cultural practices.
• Visual and relational analysis involves going beyond surface-level descriptions of images or technologies.
• Explore the underlying systems of power, visibility, and relationships that shape what is seen and said.

Foucault's Las Meninas Analysis

• The painting demonstrates the interplay between visibility and invisibility.
• The absent-yet-present king and queen highlight relational power dynamics.
• Representation extends beyond what is immediately visible, inviting deeper critical engagement.

Key Takeaways

• Avoid packaged solutions and simplistic narratives about technology and culture to challenge conventional thinking.
• Critique systems of power and representation with a focus on relational dynamics.
• Use innovative methods, such as zines and visual analysis, to explore and communicate ideas.
• Emphasize the relational and contextual nature of knowledge, culture, and technology.

Rethink Progress & Innovation

• Innovation's impacts depend on its design, implementation, and integration into society.
• Sustainability, inclusivity, and critical awareness are key to meaningful innovation.

Technical Objects & Futurity: Key Concepts

• Technical objects are created within social and cultural contexts and shaped by human decisions, societal norms, and power dynamics
• Considering phones, visible aspects like shape and features are only part of the story and the "invisible" elements include labor, resource extraction, and global supply chains
• Understanding technical objects requires unpacking these hidden layers, described by Foucault's concept of visibility.
• Addressing the alienation caused by cultural misunderstandings of machines requires integrating technical objects into cultural education and sees their value and complexity
• Aligns to Simondon's idea of technical objects as "living organisms" that evolve and interact with humans

Narratives Of Progress

• How progress has historically been tied to technology, like electricity or nuclear power, is critiqued.
• While these innovations improved lives but also created environmental and social problems.
• Progress often serves as a form of "false consciousness," distracting people from present issues by focusing on future promises.
• The internet's early portrayal as a "superhighway" failed to capture complex realities like surveillance or ecological impacts (satellite debris).

Human-Centered vs. Technotopian Futures

• The fourth reading contrasts technotopian futures, which emphasize technological efficiency with human-centered futures.
• Human centered fuctures prioritize empathy, education and dignity.
• Aligns with the Enlightenment idea of Bildung, focusing on holistic development.
• Examined through examples like online education where technology allowed remote learning, while also raising questions about the dehumanizing effects of isolation.

Visions Of The Future & Power Dynamics

• Used to maintain existing power structures, Utopian narratives promoted technology as progress while ignoring social inequalities and dissent
• Stories about progress are tools to persuade or manipulate, often aligning with capitalist or political goals.
• The promotion of new phone models emphasizes innovations while obscuring environmental or ethical concerns.

Core Themes

• Emphasis is laid on the importance of looking beyond the visible features of technical objects, involving exploring their histories, labor practices and environmental impacts.

Cultural Transformation & Education

• The integration of technical awareness into culture and education is crucial for fostering a more informed and balanced relationship with technology.

Questioning Progress

• Progress is neither inherently good nor bad, and requires critical evaluation of who benefits, who is left behind, and what unintended consequences arise.

Balancing Futures

• Prioritizes empathy, equality and sustainability over purely technological efficiency.

Cybernetics: Communication & Control

• Cybernetics is a scientific method to understand how systems operate, adapt, and maintain stability, applying to living beings, machines, and societies.

Key Concepts

• Feedback Loops: A process where a system takes in information, adjusts and responds (e.g., a thermostat).
• Entropy: A natural tendency of systems to move toward disorder, without feedback, a system breaks down.
• Homeostasis: A system can regulate itself and stay stable (e.g., the human body maintains a constant temperature).
• Control: Over time meaning enforcing order or restriction impacting how cybernetics is applied in governance and technology.

Cyberneticians

• Interested in not just what information is, but in what information does.
• Understanding information moving through systems helps predict and influence behaviour.

Orders Of Cybernetics

• First-Order Cybernetics (Control & Feedback): Focuses on controlling systems from an external perspective
• Norbert Weiner studied how machines and living beings use feedback to maintain stability.
• Second-Order Cybernetics (Observation & Self-regulation): Looks at systems that observe and adjust themselves.
• Heinz von Foerster emphasized that observers (humans, organizations) are also part of the system they study.
• Third-Order Cybernetics? (Social & Economical Systems): Idea links cybernetics with major corporations and global networks.
• Google, Amazon, and Facebook use AI and data feedback to predict and influence behaviour on a massive scale.

Critiques Of Cybernetics (Tigqun)

• Cybernetics as Social Control: Governments and corporations use cybernetics to regulate people, like machines regulating temperature.
• Surveillance capitalism: Online behavior is tracked to predict choices.
• Commodity Fetishism (Marxist Critique): Valuing objects for their exchange value (money) rather than their actual usefulness.
• Cybernetics plays into this by optimizing digital advertising and consumer tracking.
• Capitalism & Life Sciences: Cybernetics influences how we see biological life - organisms are treated like programmable systems.
• Genetic engineering views DNA as "code" that can be edited like software.

Cybernetics: Innovation & Creativity

• STS challenges that science is purely objective and separate from culture by arguing that it is a social practice influenced by cultural norms, politics, and human decision-making.
• Andrew Pickering argues scientific knowledge isn't just about accurately representing the world; it's shaped by the conditions in which it's produced.
• STS sees scientists as part of a cultural process, not as gods who uncover truth.
• Bruno Latour showed scientists' discoveries were shaped by interactions, discussions, and mundane things like coffee breaks.
• Science isn't just discovering facts and it is about how people create and shape knowledge together.

Representational vs Performative Knowledge

• Traditionally science followed the representational model that it intends to create accurate maps of the world.
• Cybernetics believes it focuses on a performative model, where knowledge is created through interaction, action and adaptation.
• Representational Model assumes that world is static and completely mapped.
• Performative Model assumes that world is dynamic and constantly changing

Dance of Agency

• A key concept which was introduced by Andrew Pickering describes the way humans and machines interact.

Gordon Pask and Learning Machines

• Gordon Pask was a cybernetician who explored how machines and humans learn together, thinking of machines as partners in a learning process.
• Musicolour: A system responded in real time, forcing musicians to adapt their style.
• Self-Adaptive Keyboard Trainer (SAKI): Adjusted the difficulty of typing exercises based on the student's speed and accuracy which adapted to the students needs.

Why Is This Important?

• Technology can engage in conversations with users, adjusting and responding to their actions.
• Systems created spaces for creativity and improvisation.

Stafford Beer And Adaptive Management

• Challenged rigid hierarchical structures and believed organizations should work as living systems, adapting dynamically rather than following strict bureaucratic rules.
• Project Cybersyn (Chile): An experiment where real-time data was used to manage the economy more fluidly, reducing delays
• Organizations should function as feedback systems where information flows in multiple directions, not just from top to bottom.
• Many businesses today use real-time analytics to make decisions dynamically instead of following fixed five-year plans following the Modern Connection.

Social media

• TikTok constantly adjusts user feeds based on engagement, following cybernetic principles.

Cybernetics, AI, and the Human Brain

• Should we model intelligence?
• Traditional AI is based on the idea that the brain is a thinking machine that processes information like a computer.
• Cybernetics views: the brain is not only a computer it is an acting machine adapting to the environment.
• People who suffer brain injuries suddenly develop new abilities, intelligence is about real-time adaptation.
• Should AI is built to adapt and react to the world dynamically which has the potential to be transformative.

Cybernetics, Innovation, and Society

• Cybernetics offers a way of thinking about technology and society where open-ended experimentation and adaptation and experimentation is recommended

Conclusion: What Cybernetics Teaches Us About Creativity

• Instead of replacing humans, humans work alongside technology
• Instead of having strict control, machines go through negotiation, feedback and adaptation
• Instead of treating knowledge as a map, knowledge emerges through acton and interaction

Sociotechnical Futures

• Sociotechnical futures refer to the way technology and society shape each other over time.
• This perspective recognizes that people, cultures, and power structures influence how technologies are designed and used. The technologies also shape how we think, act, and interact with the world.
• Focuses on whose voices are included and excluded in discussions about the future, especially in areas like AI, digital capitalism, and science fiction.

Digital Capitalism & Its Impact On The Future

• Digital capitalism is a system where technology, data, and digital platforms are used to create wealth and control markets.
• Communicative Capitalism where digital platforms turn communication itself into a way to make money, with the need to keep people engaged.
• Big Data & Surveillance Capitalism compare companies collecting vast amounts of data from online actions, often without consent. Uses the data to predict and influence behaviour.
• Every time we use digital technology, we leave behind data traces that are turned into valuable information in Data Exhaust.
• Digital platforms shift responsibility onto individuals rather than institutions in Responsibilization with workers needing to manage their own schedules and risks, while the platform profits.

Who Gets To Shape The Future

• Whose perspectives are included in designing future technologies and societies and that futuristic ideas come from wealthy, Western, and elite institutions, leaving out marginalized communities.

Key Themes

• Afrofuturism: Imagines futures where Black people and cultures play a role and challenges the idea that the future belongs only to dominant groups.
• Futures Dreaming: Encourages thinking about the future in ways that don't just reflect Western technological progress and includes different cultural and historical perspectives.
• Indigenous Protocols for AI: Emphasize relationships between humans nature and technology.
• Queering the Future: Questions rigid categories like race, gender and class imagining more inclusive and flexible future possibilities.

Science Fiction & The Politics Of The Future

• Has shaped how people think about the future
• Should reflect the beliefs and biases of their creators
• Often portrays the future as a world driven by the advanced technology and industrial progress