Category:P2P Technology Theory
How to think about the relation between technological and social change, specifically from the point of view of a 'peer to peer transition' ?
Status: ported from Technology section: A to C.
Introduction
Thinking about the role of technology and social change
An introduction to competing philosophical schools by Pieter Lemmens:
"In the philosophy of technology one distinguishes roughly between two opposing views about the relationship between technology and society: on the one hand technological determinism, the thesis that it is technology and technological change which determines the structure of society and/or culture, and on the other hand social or cultural determinism, the thesis that it is society and/or culture that determines the shape and character of technologies and technological change. This last view, which is held by the many Latour- and Callon-inspired social-constructivists in the Netherlands, is also referred to as the ‘social shaping of technology’ thesis. The first view is held for instance by Jacques Ellul but is also attributed sometimes to Marx.
Another broad opposition is that between the so-called autonomy theory of technology (also known as technological substantivism), and the instrumentalist view of technology. The first holds to the idea that technology and technological change have a logic of their own and are outside of human control and decision, the second claims that technology is a neutral means used by autonomously acting human beings for a variety of ends, to which technologies are indifferent. This view is also sometimes referred to as the humanist view. Substantivism is most often associated with Heidegger and Ellul, whereas liberal conceptions of technology are generally perceived as being instrumental and typically subscribing to social and/or economic determinism."
(http://www.krisis.eu/content/2011-1/krisis-2011-1-05-lemmens.pdf)
Andrew Feenberg's Quadrant of Four Technology Theories
- Technology can be: Autonomous vs Human Controlled
- and Neutral (means and ends are separated) vs Value Laden (means and end are related)
This gives us four possibilities:
- Neutral + Autonomous: Determinism (modernization theory) - Neutral + Humanly Controlled: Instrumentalism (liberal faith in progress) - Value-laden + Autonomous: Substantivism (means and ends linked in through systems) - Value-Laden and Human Controlled: Critical Theory (choice of alternative means-ends systems)
The philosophy of technology has emerged as a critique. The four quadrants (see box) exemplify these current trends.
- Instrumentalism is the dominant view: we choose our purpose then make value-neutral tools to get there. - Determinism says that we have no control because technology has its own logic as an expression of human knowledge. - Substantivism argues that technology is a value in itself, that it functions like a religious choice, excluding other alternatives.
Once a society chooses a technological path, it will be dedicated to values such as efficiency and power, and traditional values can not survive. Determinism and substantivism are closely related but the former are usually optimists (such as Marx), while the latter are usually pessimists.
Key Quotes
Technology is about designing subjects
"Today, technology allows us a new form of design: one that designs subjects, not objects; people, not things. By designing the information someone consumes, we can frame their opinions. By designing the interactions they have with digital devices, we can frame their thinking. This is known by not only tech giants but by military intelligence. And now, it is time that it becomes known by designers - especially those at the vanguard of dying paradigms. Our environments, our tools and even our ideas are extensions of ourselves. Our clothes extend our skin’s ability to keep our body warm, and our glasses improve our eye’s ability to see. This is simple enough. But what about language, or the internet? What does it do to us? How do they extend our humanity? More importantly: can we design that extension? In this century, algorithmically powered ontological design will radically reinvent what “human” means. It will not only be used to create “better” humans, but to redesign the very concepts of “better” itself, disrupting the values of the old world order and kickstarting a struggle for the new. Creatively terrifying designs are becoming possible."
- Daniel Fraga [1]
What the Hyperreal World Demands from Us Is Our Participation in its Mode of Production
A crucial essay on what it means to be a 'peer':
"The cultural attitude of the early 21st century may perhaps one day be known as “the assault on concentration.” In an endless stream of information, the “new” is what counts. And when the “new” is endlessly replenished, concentration is superfluous. One does not need concentration when reality effortlessly floats by like a series of fragments, images, stimuli, informational content, episodes of a TV series, or handy slogans " ... "The proliferation of individual, yet acceptable viewpoints obfuscate a vantage point that becomes less visible over time: namely, that as an individual, one can generate universal insights. To deny this is to fully accept and internalize the postmodern assumption and its associated nihilism. To hold that one’s position “is just another narrative” is to submit oneself already to the postmodern mode of cultural production, and thereby succumbing to its oppressive and invasive logic of production. To treat one’s own convictions as mere narratives devoid of universality is to internalize the postmodern mode of cultural production, severing oneself from the exercise of one’s autonomy. If anything, a renewed and radicalized subjectivism is not the ultimate weapon of postmodernity, but against it. It is an attitudinal disposition that refuses to regard itself as a mere cog in the machine, and that actualizes the power of its own autonomy and validity through the liberating power of its subjective determinations. It does away with the bland relativism that reality is the sum total of viewpoints, thereby overcoming the postmodern, projected fear that one reasons “just from one’s own privileged perspective”, and that therefore one has to distance oneself from one’s innermost convictions. I use the term “subjectivism” as a deliberate provocation. The philosophy of high modernity abhorred subjectivism because it was seen as a nonsensical aberration that would have no place in the project of modernity. In postmodern culture, the only type of subjectivism on offer is the watered-down and marketable variety. In both cases, the exercise of individual autonomy is deeply mistrusted and undermined. Nevertheless, what appears from the viewpoint of high modern and postmodern culture as a cultural dead end appears from the viewpoint of radical subjectivism as the way forward—and more importantly, as the road to liberation and the free exercise of autonomy."
- Otto Paans [2]
Key Resources
Key Articles
- A rigorous Periodization of Big History. Robert Aunger. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Volume 74, Issue 8, October 2007, Pages 1164-1178 [3]
"Accelerating rates of historical change are achieved during the Terrestrial Eon by the invention of information inheritance processes. Second, eras can also be defined within Earth history by differences in the scaling of energy flow. This is because each era is based on a different kind of energy source: the material era depends on nuclear fusion, the biological era on metabolism, the cultural era on tools, and the technological era on machines."
Key Books
- as recommended by Venkatesch Rao: "The Lever of Riches by Joel Mokyr, probably the most compelling model and account of how technological change drives the evolution of civilizations, through monotonic, path-dependent accumulation of changes."
- Technology, Modernity, and Democracy. Essays by Andrew Feenberg. Rowman and Littlefield, 2018. MB: I have found Feenberg to be important as a synthesis of both the critique of technology, while remaining open to a constructive usage of technology. This entry contains my reading notes.
- Ivan Illich. Tools for Conviviality: "The capacity to promote autonomy is a fundament characteristic of a convivial tool".
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Key Thinkers
Pages in category "P2P Technology Theory"
The following 200 pages are in this category, out of 293 total.
(previous page) (next page)A
- Abolition of Man
- Abre Fournier on the Emergence of the Metamind and the Metaself
- Acknowledging Christ in Technology and Science
- Adoption of New Technologies Is Accompanied by an Increase in Energy Use which Trigger Social Transformations
- After the Internet
- Age of Spiritual Machines
- AI and the Advent of the Age of the Brahmin Workers
- AI as a Subject of Democratic Governance
- Alexander Bard on Syntheism the Creation of God in the Internet Age
- Algorithmic Culture
- Algorithms
- Algorithms and the Making of Our Digital Selves
- Andrew Feenberg
- Anthropo-Technogenesis
- Anti-Tech Collective Library of Technology Criticism
- Antikythera
- Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Capitalism
- Asian Moral Methaphysics vs Western Metaphysics of Morals
- Assembly Theory of Community Technology
- Atechnogenesis
- Authoritarian and Democratic Technics
- Automation and the Future of Work
- Axiological Design
B
- Being and Technology
- Benefits of the Second Industrial Revolution vs the Benefits of the Third Industrial Revolution
- Bernard Stiegler
- Bernard Stiegler and the Question of Technics
- Bernard Stiegler on Social Networking As the New Political Question
- Better Without AI
- Bibliography on Planetary Computation
- Binarius
- Binarius as the Spiritual Archetype of Digital Technology
- Biomimicry Movement
- Blockchain Through the Lens of Philosophy
- Brains Are Not Computers
C
- Carrier Bag Theory of Human Technological History
- Cathedral and the Bazaar
- Citations on Underestimating the Impact of New Technologies
- Civilization, Information Technology and Societal Development
- Collective Individuation as the Future of the Social Web
- Coming of the Machine as Seen by Contemporary Observers
- Coming Wave
- Comparison of Organism and Algorithmic Capabilities
- Computation
- Computers and Socialism
- Confucian Proposal of Robots as Rites-Bearers Not Rights-Bearers
- Cosmic Evolutionary Philosophy and a Dialectical Approach to Technological Singularity
- Cosmo-Technics
- Cosmotechnics
- Creating and Transforming the Twentieth Century Through Technical Innovations
- Criteria for Determining the Ethics of Artefacts
- Critique of the Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics
- Crossing the Threshold of Cyborgization
- Crypto Nomads
- Crypto-Colonialism
- Cultural Evolution in the Digital Age
- Cybernetic Hypothesis
- Cybernetic Revolution
- Cybernetics History
- Cybernetics Valuable to the Commons and for Understanding AI
- Cyborgization
- Cypherpunk Movement Bibliography
D
- Daniel Schmachtenberger on Artificial Intelligence and the Superorganism
- Daniel Schmachtenberger on the History and Future of Progress
- Data Rules
- Decomputing
- Definition and Criticism of Cybercommunism
- Digital Constellation
- Digital De-Objectification of the World
- Diome
- Distributed Consciousness
- Dynamics of Technological Growth Rate
E
F
- Fettering Thesis
- Five Approaches to Technological Metamodernism
- Fragments on the Machines
- Free Digital Labor as a New Form of Exploitation
- From Bitcoin to Burning Man and Beyond
- From Ephemeralization and Stigmergy to the Global Brain
- From Neuropower to Noopolitics
- From the First Enlightenment of Reason To the Second Enlightenment of Beauty
- Fully Automated Luxury Communism
G
H
- Hemispheral Stacks
- Historical Prototypes for the Internet
- History of the Soviet Internet
- Holistic Cultural Materialism
- Homo Artifex
- Hou Ziran
- How Berdyaev Foresaw Our Reliance on Machines
- How Hegemonic Leadership Transitions Are Linked to Kondratieff Wave Technology Innovation Clusters
- How Technological Design Incorporates Social Values
- How the Resistance to Crypto Created More Innovation
- Human Web
I
J
- Jacques Ellul
- Jacques Ellul on Politics, Technology, and Christianity
- John David Ebert on Gianni Vattimo's Nihilism and Emancipation Book on Postmodernity and Technology
- John David Ebert on Heidegger's Question Concerning Technology
- John David Ebert on Marshall McLuhan
- John David Ebert on Marshall McLuhan's Culture Without Literacy
- John David Ebert on Oswald Spengler's Man and Technics
- John David Ebert on Paul Virilio
- John David Ebert on Walter Benjamin's Work of Art in the Age of its Reproducibility
- Jordan Hall on AI, the Commons, and the Church
K
L
- Layers of the Civilizational Tech-Stack
- Left Critiques of Cryptocurrencies
- Legacy of Alexander Bogdanov
- Lewis Mumford
- Lewis Mumford on Authoritarian vs Democratic Technics
- Lewis Mumford on the Evolution of Technology from Eotechnic to Paleotechnic and Neotechnic
- Life in the Digital Dark Ages
- Longtermism
M
- Maintaining Earth-Life into the Distant Future
- Man and Technics
- Man and the Machines
- Manuel Castells’s Analysis of the Breakdown of Soviet Statism
- Mark Stahlman on the Contending Three Spheres of Civilization after Peak Globalization
- Marshall McLuhan on Cold vs Hot Media
- Marshall McLuhan on the Evolution of Media Epochs
- Mary Harrington on the Feminism We Need in the Cyborg Era Tech Transition
- Mary Harrington's Class Analysis of Transhumanism
- Materials-Energy-Information Model
- Mathematical Models to Calculate the Acceleration of Innovation Across Time
- Matteo Pasquinelli on Artificial Intelligence and Algorithms
- Matthew Fuller and Graham Harwood on the Invisible Power of Algorithms
- Matthew Segall on How Both Technology and Human Consciousness Are Part of One Cosmic Evolution
- McLuhan's Phases of Media History
- Mechanization Takes Command
- Media and Formal Cause
- Meditations on Moloch the Machine God
- Medium Is the Massage
- Metaman
- Metaphysics Behind Quantum Mechanics in German Thinking
- Michael Martin on Ahrimanic Technology vs. Sophianic Tools
- Mid-Tech Approach
- My First Recession
- Mónica Belevan on Bataille, NFTs, and Crypto-Sovereignty
N
- Naomi Klein on Why AI is not a Panacea
- Nature of Technology and How It Evolves
- Neri Oxman on the Teleology of Mediated Matter
- Nesting Anthropocene Rupture Within the Process of Noosphere Formation
- New Desires of Post-Capitalism
- New Forms of Web3-Enabled Nation-Statehood
- Nick Srnicek’s Model of Platform Capitalism
- Nikolas Berdyaev on the Five Historical Periods of Humanity, as Related to Nature and Technology
- Noosphere as a Evolutionary Transition
- Noospheric Consciousness
O
P
- P2P and Human Evolution Ch 2
- Paul Kingsnorth on the Technological Machine and How We Can Overcome It's Influence
- Periodization of Big History
- Periodization of Technological History
- Periodization of the Techno-Economic Phases of Capitalism
- Peter Sloterdijk on Allotechnologies vs Homeotechnologies
- Philosophy of Simondon
- Planetarity of Computation
- Planetary Computation
- Planetary Engineering and the Politics of Gaia
- Political Economy of the Smallest Things
- Political Theory of the Digital Age
- Politics in the Age of Ecology
- Positive vs Normative Techno-Optimism
- Post-Individual
- Post-Truth
- Postmodernity and the Politics of Fragmentation
- Power and Progress
- Prehistory of the Computer and the Evolution of Consciousness
- Probabilistic Infrastructural Determinism
- Production of Subjectivity from Transindividuality to the Commons