Postphenomenological

Methodologies
 Postphenomenology and the Philosophy of Technology

Series Editors: Robert Rosenberger, Peter-Paul Verbeek, Don Ihde

As technologies continue to advance, they correspondingly continue to make fundamental
changes to our lives. Technological changes have effects on everything from our
understandings of ethics, politics, and communication, to gender, science, and selfhood.
Philosophical reflection on technology can help draw out and analyze the nature of these
changes, and help us to understand both the broad patterns of technological effects and the
concrete details. The purpose of this series is to provide a publication outlet for field of the
philosophy of technology in general, and the school of thought called “postphenomenology”
in particular. The field of philosophy of technology applies insights from the history of
philosophy to current issues in technology, and reflects on how technological developments
change our understanding of philosophical issues. Postphenomenology is the name of
an emerging research perspective used by a growing international and interdisciplinary
group of scholars. This perspective utilizes insights from the philosophical tradition of
phenomenology to analyze human relationships with technologies, and also integrates
philosophical commitments of the American pragmatist tradition of thought.

Recent Titles in This Series

Postphenomenological Methodologies: New Ways in Mediating Techno-Human
Relationships, Edited by Jesper Aagaard, Jan Kyrre Berg Friis, Jessica Sorenson,
Oliver Tafdrup, and Cathrine Hasse
Postphenomenological Investigations: Essays on Human-Technology Relations, Edited by
Robert Rosenberger and Peter-Paul Verbeek
Animal Constructions and Technological Knowledge by Ashley Shew
Postphenomenological
Methodologies
New Ways in Mediating
Techno-Human Relationships

Edited by
Jesper Aagaard, Jan Kyrre Berg Friis,
Jessica Sorenson, Oliver Tafdrup, and
Cathrine Hasse
Foreword by Don Ihde

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 Contents

Forewordvii
Don Ihde
An Introduction to Postphenomenological Methodologies xi
Jesper Aagaard, Jan Kyrre Berg Friis, Jessica Sorenson,
Oliver Tafdrup, and Cathrine Hasse

PART I: EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGIES 1

1 Doing Postphenomenology in Education 3
Catherine Adams and Joni Turville
2 Inviting and Interacting: Postphenomenology and the
Microsociology of Education 27
Tobias Röhl
3 Entering the Portal: Media Technologies and Experiential
Transportation45
Jesper Aagaard
PART II: SELF-TRACKING AND IMAGING TECHNOLOGIES 63
4 Human-Technology Relationships in the Digital Age:
The Collapse of Metaphor in Biohacking 65
Moa Petersén
5 Service Interfaces in Human-Technology Relations:
A Case Study of Self-Tracking Technologies 83
Fernando Secomandi

v
vi Contents

6 From Camera Obscura to fMRI: How Brain Imaging

Technologies Mediate Free Will 103
Ciano Aydin
PART III: ROBOTIC TECHNOLOGIES 123
7 Paleoanthropology and Social Robotics: Old and New Ways
in Mediating Alerity Relations 125
Michael Funk
8 Lost in Translation?: Getting to Grips with Multistable
Technology in an Apparently Stable World 151
Lasse Blond and Kasper Schiølin
PART IV: GENERAL METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES 169
9 Why It Takes Both Postphenomenology and STS to Account for
Technological Mediation: The Case of LOVE Park 171
Robert Rosenberger
10 Describing and Valuing Technological Mediation: From
Postphenomenological Bridgeheads to Technoethical Outposts 199
Michel Puech
11 Technological Mediation and Sociocultural Variability 217
Arun Kumar Tripathi
12 Studying the Telescopes of Others: Toward a
Postphenomenological Methodology of Participant Observation 241
Cathrine Hasse
Index259
List of Contributors 265
 Foreword

It was obvious from its beginnings that postphenomenology was deeply

interdisciplinary. It is clearly the case in this anthology, in which I see a wel-
come expansion of the field of postphenomenology, with researchers from
many fields developing postphenomenological methodologies. My interest in
human-technology relations began to take serious philosophical interest from
the early 1970s, with the first articles getting to print by 1974 or 1975. One
assignment I called for back then was for each student to do a daily diary of
which technological objects each used during a day. Diligent students some-
times came up with a hundred or more per day! This was a very mundane
way of noting that technological objects play roles in every nook and cranny
of our daily lives. For students then, classroom objects were usually pens,
pencils, notepads—today laptops, computer tablets, or iPads, much more to
the professor’s irritation. However, all this could be noticed with ordinary
experience, although even that could help one become aware of one’s mate-
rial immersion in technologies.
Of course, classical phenomenology could sharpen this awareness, but on
the subsurface, more was going on. Take the simple pencil and yellow lined
writing pad: the student takes up the pencil, it feels like Merleau-Ponty’s
blind man’s cane, the graphite touches the paper and as the pencil draws its
letters and the writer feels this juncture, the letters appear as dark and nar-
row—very unlike the French student’s dip pen with flexible nib dipped in
ink—the line of the pencil remains the same width, thus just as the student
“uses” the pencil, the pencil is “using” the student, demanding the same width
of line throughout.
This user-used relation is two-way, reciprocal, and interactive. The writ-
ing experience is relational. The sensitive classical phenomenologist will,
of course, note that this relationality is what makes up intentionality, but

vii
viii Foreword

as suggested, in a distinctly bodily, material, Merleau-Pontean way. But

also, this is a materially mediated experience—the student writes, but so
does the pencil, both determining what appears on the notepad. Then, too,
as Heidegger noted, the material pencil “withdraws” and becomes quasi-
transparent in use. Clearly, the pencil is not the object, more the means of the
writing. This is clearly not a Cartesian representation or “object” experience,
but a praxical in-action experience. Much of this anthology takes precisely
this praxis turn, in the field of educational experience. From blackboards to
screens, the classroom technologies take their places.
Back in the time of Technics and Praxis (1979), what was new was pre-
cisely this praxis turn: modeled upon intentionality, but showing the rela-
tionality of human and technology in a relational experience. But to take
materiality into intentionality, this was different, too. Much later, in Hus-
serl’s Missing Technologies (2016), I showed how Husserl retained a notion
of a technology-thing, missing the dynamic in-use nature of instrument use.
Something, however, remained missing in his classical phenomenology.
This was the first recognition that one needed a materially sensitive post-
phenomenology. A second change, however, was also underway, its begin-
nings showing up in the 19th century, although it did not fully appear until it
became obvious that all science was technoscience. Indeed, I now argue that
science has always been technoscience—at least as far back as the Ice Age!
If science—perhaps we should call Ice Age science “archeoscience”—is the
tracing and inscription of patterns of regularity in nature, then archeoscience
can be found from the Ice Age. Let’s take astronomy as a paradigm ancient
science. Human experience, perceptual observation, is evidenced from at
least 25,000 BP when humans became aware of the 28+ day lunar cycle and
recorded it on reindeer antlers and inscribed stones, in many places around
the world. Archeoscience evidenced. But this was also technoscience, which
involved “technologies” or material implementation. For example, there was
an inscription technology, the reindeer antler or inscribed stone, which made
the knowledge permanent. But I argue more: there needed also to be a per-
ceptual standardizing technology. In astronomy, this could be something as
simple as a gnomen (stick in the ground) or, much more elaborately, a set of
stones set in a circle to mark various celestial movements—and these too are
ancient and are widespread in the Ice/Stone age.
Of course, this archeo-technoscience was limited; limited both by the
limits of human perception, and by the then simple material instrumentation.
Again, I take astronomy as my example. The primary difference between
ancient astronomy and what became known as early modern science was its
revolutionary technological change—optics. Post-Renaissance science saw
telescopes and microscopes change human macro- and micro-perception; the
new worlds of celestial and microscopic phenomena could now be perceived,
 Foreword ix

and because intentionality is relational, so, too, the world expands. And, this
became for me a second rationale for postphenomenology.
New technical mediations made human perception open to macro and
micro phenomena never before possible. But now to push this early modern
radicalization farther, one can note that in spite of the revolutionary quality
of new technical mediation, all astronomy remained “eyeball optical,” or
limited to the ordinary bodily perceivability of “white light.” This remained
the case until yet again there was a “second scientific revolution” which took
human perception past its classical limits of white light. The 19th century
laid this groundwork when it slowly discovered what it first called “rays”
which exceeded those of unmediated perception. Beginning with infrared
and ultraviolet, it spread to the limits of what today is known as the electro-
magnetic spectrum of rays or waves—from gamma (very micro-) to radio
(very macro-) which humans cannot directly, but can mediatedly experience
through technologies or instruments. This second revolution is discussed in
my book Acoustic Technics (published by Lexington, 2015). This, too, is part
of the rationale for postphenomenology. As it turns out, what I am calling a
second scientific revolution—clearly fully technoscientific, now in a re-dou-
bled sense since all the phenomena revealed are revealed through mediating
technologies—poses even more difficult problems for classical phenomenol-
ogy, since all such phenomena lie beyond ordinary human experience, and
can only be mediatedly experienced.
I must say, I was pleased to see that this anthology does avoid the tempta-
tion, which arises at the juncture of the second revolution—the temptation to
fall into the non-phenomenological traps of “post-” and “trans-humanism,” or
presumed super-human trajectories. From my perspective, hybrid or cyborg
mixes are clearly possible, but these do not slide slippery-slopishly into the
super-human technofantasies of actually very ancient wishes—all of which
deny contingency and mortality. I prefer an existential postphenomenology.
Mentioned in this volume are blackboards, but laptops, the Internet, digital
technologies are now all common. Rather, the focus of this anthology is upon
practices, and many are related to intersubjective and ethnographic practices,
which long have been sensitive to postphenomenology. Several of the chap-
ters are focused upon imaging technologies (Positron Emission Tomography
(PET), telescopes, fMRI, etc.)—again, a long, deep interest of postphenom-
enologists. Yes, it is time for multiple disciplines to adapt postphenomeno-
logical praxes, and here we see this happening. What these novel approaches
add is, maybe most of all, new questions to be dealt with empirically as well
as philosophically.
I do note that since the very early days of visiting scholars and participants
in the now decade-old postphenomenology research panels at the major STS
conferences (begun in 2007 and continuing today), there have been many
x Foreword

anthropologists who have added the ethnographic methods of interviews and

field observations to postphenomenological practices. My contribution to this
expansion of methodology is to help anthropologists become sensitive to a
phenomenological way of interviewing.
The contributors to this volume bring their own senses of observation and
method into play, often into dialogue with already known and published post-
phenomenologists, enriching the already multiple-perspectivism of postphe-
nomenology. Just as in the established practice of presenting empirical cases
in postphenomenology at STS conferences, presenters from many disciplines
participate. Here I want to point out that under the strong influence of the
European philosopher, Peter-Paul Verbeek, ethical considerations have been
raised to major concern. Yet, one worry that so many European postphenom-
enologists have not (as much as our American participants) taken to heart the
strong appreciation of Pragmatist emphasis, particularly that which relates to
ethics. From John Dewey, to the analytic neo-pragmatism of Richard Rorty,
for example, is the pragmatist resistance to what Anglo-American philosophy
takes as established, a fact/value difference. Pragmatism—to which I would
add postphenomenology—rejects this distinction, and this makes for a very
different perspective upon ethics and materiality.
Yet, it has to be healthy for philosophy as the discipline from which post-
phenomenology originates, to meet and mix with the plethora of other related
disciplines, such as those in this volume. It is indeed both postphenomeno-
logical and pragmatic experimentality that is called for.
Don Ihde, September 2017
 An Introduction to
Postphenomenological Methodologies
Jesper Aagaard, Jan Kyrre Berg Friis,
Jessica Sorenson, Oliver Tafdrup,
and Cathrine Hasse

The purpose of this book is to explore the idea of a postphenomenological

research methodology: What does it mean for the field of postphenomenol-
ogy to become empirically based and how might researchers go out and study
human-technology relations? This discussion is an important contribution
to the postphenomenological literature. Previous publications, including the
Lexington book series Postphenomenology and the Philosophy of Technol-
ogy (e.g., Friis & Crease, 2015; Wellner, 2015; Ihde, 2015; Irwin, 2016) have
offered sophisticated analyses of technologies from guns and cell phones to
synthesizers and earbuds, but have not dealt with the issue of methodology.
Rosenberger and Verbeek’s (2015) field guide does argue that postphenom-
enologists tend to employ case studies when studying human-technology-
relations, but it also establishes that no distinctly postphenomenological
methodology exists. The authors further note that the distinction between
“theoretical” and “empirical” contributions may be misleading, since theo-
retical contributions draw on concrete examples and empirical contributions
offer theoretical discussions. In this anthology, we hope to expand this point
by exploring how empirical postphenomenologists may disclose new theo-
retical issues, motivate further theoretical development, and perhaps even
produce novel insights. When conducting such empirical studies, research-
ers may be tempted to consult previous publications on phenomenological
research methodologies (e.g., van Manen, 1990; Giorgi, 2009; Smith, Flow-
ers, & Larkin, 2009). While such publications offer helpful guides to conduct
phenomenological inquiry, they are often based on epistemological assump-
tions that run counter to key postphenomenological tenets like multistability
(Ihde, 2009; Aagaard, 2017; Rosenberger, 2014; Hasse, 2008).

xi
xii An Introduction to Postphenomenological Methodologies

The present anthology is the first publication to tackle the issue of

researching human-technology relations from a methodological postphenom-
enological perspective. Methodology refers to different things in different
disciplines. In a discipline like anthropology, it refers to reflections over the
methods researchers use to approach an empirical field (i.e., the sites of peo-
ple’s everyday lives, their lifeworlds in for instance schools or villages [e.g.,
Hasse, 2015]). Methods can include interviews of different kinds—partici-
pant observations, surveys, auto-ethnography. Furthermore methodology can
include ethical issues tied to doing research in an empirical field. These are
not separated from but rather connected to theoretical approaches. In many
other disciplines, methodology refers to the analytical approach taken—for
example, the analytical concepts you employ to make an analysis; in post-
phenomenology, these might include concepts such as multistability, varia-
tion, or mediation. As a consequence of this complexity, we have produced
this book with a pressing awareness of the daunting task, but also with an
exhilarating feeling of entering uncharted territory. Ultimately, if this book
generates more interest in postphenomenological research and perhaps even
inspires others to analyze the flaws and limitations of our approaches, we’ll
consider our mission to be accomplished. The goal of this anthology is not to
provide cookbook recipes or to offer definitive rules for conducting postphe-
nomenological research. Rather than providing such simple answers, we seek
to kick-start the conversation on empirical postphenomenological research by
raising some important questions: What does an empirically based postphe-
nomenological investigation look like? How can it be designed? What kind
of data does it produce and how might that data be analyzed? Is it always
qualitative? Are qualitative interviews and participant observation equally
viable? And, finally, what are the social, political, and ethical impacts of such
empirically driven research?
If Heidegger has taught us one thing, however, it is that prior to rais-
ing such difficult questions, it is important to situate one’s inquiry in the
philosophical landscape. The next part of this introduction is devoted to this
endeavor. A proper introduction to phenomenology is clearly outside the
scope of this introduction, and even retracing the origins of postphenomenol-
ogy is an ambitious endeavor best left to other publications (Ihde, 2009).
What follows in the next outlines are a few watersheds in the transition from
“classical” to “post” phenomenology that specifically focuses on methodol-
ogy and concepts of use to the ensuing chapters. This narrative invariably
leaves out important figures, glosses over crucial nuances, and portrays the
history of phenomenology in a slightly Whiggish manner. With these caveats
in mind, however, let us proceed.
 An Introduction to Postphenomenological Methodologies xiii

INTENTIONALITY AND VARIATIONS

Husserl founded phenomenology in opposition to scientific approaches

that sought to explain the world in terms of brute, physicalistic interac-
tions. Against such naturalist reductionism, Husserl, drawing inspiration
from Franz Brentano, argued that consciousness has an existence that dif-
fers radically from physical causality: Consciousness is characterized by
intentionality, which means that it is directed toward its objects, whether
real or imagined. Consciousness, in other words, is always consciousness-
of-something and things appear to us only as correlates of consciousness.
As a result, the task of phenomenology is to describe things exactly as they
are given to consciousness. This task formed the basis of the famous motto:
“To the things themselves!” What is decisive in this process, Husserl insisted
(1983), is the “absolutely faithful description of what is actually present in
phenomenological purity and in keeping at a distance all the interpretations
transcending the given” (p. 218). To achieve such phenomenological purity,
the phenomenologist must first secure freedom from prejudice by bracketing
her everyday consciousness or “natural attitude.” Borrowing a term from the
Greek Sceptics, Husserl called this maneuver the “epoché,” which means
“cessation” or “suspension.” After performing the epoché, the phenomenolo-
gist carefully describes an exemplary singular of a phenomenon, reduces this
description to its essence, and, finally, employs a variational analysis that
alters aspects of this preliminary definition in order to see which elements
withstand such variations. Using this method, the essence of a phenomenon
is abstracted from its contingent, factual features. Although Ihde (2016) has
critiqued, deconstructed, and reappropriated Husserl’s phenomenology in
numerous ways, postphenomenology adopts Husserl’s idea of intentionality
as a basic directedness toward the world. Postphenomenology also employs
his method of variational analysis, to which it adds a crucial twist: when
employing variational analysis (e.g., on ambiguous drawings like the Necker
cube), what is revealed is multistability rather than stable essences. Empirical
studies of “things in themselves” open for questions of things in themselves
as relative to cultural and historical diversity. These new approaches add to
the Husserlian classic phenomenology approach of a human (the philosopher)
investigating phenomena, by acknowledging that the moment we leave our
own writing desks and mingle with people in their everyday lives, the phe-
nomena gets complicated—as shown by many contributors to this volume.
Humans stand in a variety of relations with things, not least, as emphasized
in Ihde’s postphenomenological explorations, relations that develop cultur-
ally and historically.
xiv An Introduction to Postphenomenological Methodologies

TRANSPARENCY AND BREAKDOWNS

Heidegger, Husserl’s rebellious apprentice, moved us one step closer to

studying things. Heidegger (1985) was highly critical of Husserl’s phenom-
enology and argued that his notion of consciousness was drawn from philo-
sophical tradition rather than the things themselves. This makes Husserl’s
natural attitude highly unnatural, because it projects a theoretical position
into everyday experience, which means that “the manner in which what is
experienced gives itself is defined by the feature of an objectivity for a theo-
retical consideration of nature, and nothing else” (Heidegger, 1985, p. 117).
This objectivist attitude misconstrues our everyday being-in-the-world and
is in fact “natural” among scholars (including many philosophers). In Being
and Time (2008), Heidegger famously argued that ordinary tool use does not
consist in interacting with brute physical objects, but in skillfully dealing with
things and putting them to use. In such skillful coping, tools and technologies
are characterized by experiential transparency in the sense that they withdraw
from conscious awareness and allow us to focus on the task. Heidegger uti-
lizes the now-famous concept of “ready-to-hand” (Ger. zuhanden) to describe
this specific mode of being. However, if technological artifacts are character-
ized by transparency and inconspicuousness, how can we go about analyzing
these elusive entities? One of Heidegger’s key ideas was the concept of a
breakdown. When coping is interrupted, he argued, the equipmental aspects
of the world are lit up and brought into view. Breakdowns therefore offer
fruitful opportunities to consider the ordinary roles of artifacts in everyday
practices. From Heidegger, postphenomenology inherits the two notions of
transparency and breakdown. Such notions prompt empirical researchers to
study how technologies recede and become what Ihde (2009) calls “quasi-
transparent” means, as well as how they occasionally stand forward and
become salient aspects of our practices. We may also study how designers
actively aspire to build this frictionless “transparency effect” into technolo-
gies, often without obtaining the expected effect in practice—as also shown
by contributors to this volume.

EMBODIMENT AND HABITS

Merleau-Ponty is an even closer ally when it comes to studying people’s use

of material technologies. Merleau-Ponty is a peculiar figure in the postphe-
nomenological oeuvre, however, because he is often mentioned only in pass-
ing or relegated to its footnotes (for an exception, see Hoel & Carusi, 2015).
Like Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty described the basic mode of everyday life as
practical and prereflective, but he further fleshed out the phenomenological
 An Introduction to Postphenomenological Methodologies xv

account of everyday coping by emphasizing embodiment. According to

Merleau-Ponty, the lived body is not the passive receiver of sensory stimuli
or the locus of mechanical reflexes. It is a living, breathing entity that pulsates
with life. It is agentic, affective, motile, and sensuous. From a first-person
perspective, we are that body, and it is through our bodies that we are part of
the world. Through repetition, our bodies become so familiar with perform-
ing certain activities that this performance eventually operates below the
threshold of awareness. This is what Merleau-Ponty calls a habit. Whenever
we acquire such habits, they “unlock” new affordances for us by disposing
us to perceive and act in certain ways. Merleau-Ponty (2002) gave various
examples of this phenomenon, such as a woman automatically dodging door-
frames when wearing a feathered hat, a blind man skillfully using his stick to
navigate, and a driver effortlessly parking his car. Accordingly, habits blur
the classical distinction between subject and object, between body and world:
“Habit expresses our power of dilating our being-in-the-world, or changing
our existence by appropriating fresh instruments” (Merleau-Ponty, 2002,
p. 166). The body is not a fixed entity, but a fleshy network that incorporates
and extends over material artifacts. Accepting this argument urges empirical
researchers to study different kinds of embodiments, including Ihde’s (2002)
“body one” and “body two”—the lived and the cultural body—and exploring
bio-cultural boundaries and collectivities.

MULTISTABILITY AND MEDIATIONS

Ihde developed postphenomenology in order to give credence to the material

artifacts of our world. As Ihde (1998) puts it: “The postmodern hermeneu-
tics of things must find ways to give voices to things, to let them speak for
themselves” (p. 158). This idea of letting things speak for themselves, how-
ever, does not mean that postphenomenology is an “empty” theory. On the
contrary, it contains several substantial commitments: in its exploration of
how we handle and incorporate technologies in our everyday practices, post-
phenomenology adheres to bodily experience with material technologies, and
is grounded in a relational ontology that eschews any transcendental claims
(Ihde, 1990). It also adheres closely to the two concepts of multistability and
mediation. Multistability signifies how even the simplest technology has no
singular essence, but can be taken up for different purposes or stabilities in
different contexts. A lighter, for instance, is usually used to light candles or
cigarettes, but can also be used to open bottles. There is no “essential” use
of the lighter. Mediation, on the other hand, designates how technologies
actively shape the relation between humans and their world. As an example,
Ihde (1979) describes how a dentist’s use of a sickle probe amplifies features
xvi An Introduction to Postphenomenological Methodologies

like texture and hardness, but reduces features like moisture and tempera-
ture. Technologies not only transform perceptions, however, they also invite
(Verbeek, 2005) and facilitate (Rosenberger, 2014) certain actions, while
inhibiting and foreclosing others. Accordingly, they do not afford action pos-
sibilities to preexisting subjects with fixed goals, but subtly guide, nudge, and
steer our intentionality (Verbeek, 2005). Combined, these concepts help us
avoid the pitfalls of determinism and instrumentalism. “Technology is never
purely determinative,” Verbeek (2005) argues, “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 shaping that context” (p. 138). While technologies are always
multistable, every stability affects the human-world relation. Postphenom-
enology’s task is to find out how.

TAKING THE EMPIRICAL TURN

Postphenomenology has an ambivalent relationship to Heidegger’s philoso-

phy of technology. On the one hand, Ihde’s (1990) widely cited typology of
human-technology relations explicitly builds on Heidegger’s (2008) early
tool-analysis. On the other hand, postphenomenology has deliberately dis-
tanced itself from Heidegger’s (1977) later description of Technology (tran-
scendentalized with a capital T) as a unified and monolithic entity that reveals
every aspect of the world—including ourselves—as resources to be opti-
mized and utilized with maximal efficiency. The problem with this approach
is not that it is wrong per se—indeed, as an interpretation of a large-scale
pattern, it might be alarmingly accurate—but that the things themselves cease
to matter. In other words, if our analysis departs from Heidegger’s discourse
on the essence of Technology, we are bound to conclude that a given artifact
discloses reality as a stockpile of resources. In this case, Technology may
speak through the artifact, but the artifact itself remains silent and mute. Its
contribution to the world vanishes. Ihde (2006) describes his aversion to this
explanatory model accordingly: “As a pragmatist and a rigorous phenomenol-
ogist, I realized this meant, simply, that such an analysis was useless since it
could not discriminate between the results of playing a musical instrument,
also a technological mediation, and the process of genetic manipulation!”
(p. 271). Unsatisfied with this state of affairs, postphenomenology inverts
or at least symmetrizes Heidegger’s ontological difference, with which
he famously argued that Being cannot be explained through entities: what
things do equally cannot be explained with recourse to the abstract being
of Technology (Verbeek, 2005). Accordingly, postphenomenology breaks
 An Introduction to Postphenomenological Methodologies xvii

with Heidegger’s “one-size-fits-all” account of Technology (Ihde, 2010) and

replaces his high-altitude approach with close-up studies of particular tech-
nologies—in other words, it belongs to the empirical turn in the philosophy
of technology (Achterhuis, 2001).

METHODOLOGY AND EMPIRICAL DATA

The empirical turn has long been a contentious issue. Its proponents are
often criticized for neglecting the wider, ontological atmosphere in which
particular technologies are situated (for a discussion of this critique, see
Rosenberger, 2017). Our issue with postphenomenology, however, is not that
it is too empirical, but that it is not empirical enough. Postphenomenologists
often base their analyses on texts from science journals and magazines or
from their own personal life stories. While such auto-ethnographical explora-
tions may be perfectly adequate for dealing with common household items
or public places, what about practices in which the researcher is a stranger
(e.g., schools, hospitals, or businesses)? As it stands, researchers who want
to study such “foreign” fields must find methodological guidance elsewhere.
Taken to its extreme, this dooms postphenomenology to study only what it
knows, which leaves it open to Mol’s (2010) caricature of phenomenology
as a science that “elevates a single person’s self-ethnography to grandiose
proportions” (p. 254). Perhaps postphenomenology’s reliance on auto-
ethnographical examples has shaped (and restricted) its framework? After
all, postphenomenology is chiefly concerned with how singular bodies are
orientated by and toward technologies. “In a postphenomenological perspec-
tive, technology is often seen from the position of the individual rather than
the collective body” (Hasse, 2015, p. 281). In contrast, many of the empirical
contributions in this book emphasize the social and cultural aspects of human
experience. Perhaps experiences from the empirical field may improve the
analytical field of postphenomenology (Hasse, 2015). In other words, using
the empirical methods of social science may yield theoretical benefits.

OVERVIEW OF THE PRESENT VOLUME

Postphenomenology, which started as a branch of philosophy, is slowly con-

verging with social sciences like sociology, psychology, and anthropology.
Conversely, postphenomenology’s distinctly philosophical way of thinking
about and analyzing technologies is making its mark in these empirically
based disciplines. It is our contention that all research conducted under the
banner of postphenomenology must meet two criteria: it must be anchored
xviii An Introduction to Postphenomenological Methodologies

in an anti-essentialist, relational ontology (the “post-” part) and it must take

departure in embodied experience (the “phenomenology” part). Apart from
that, the field is wide open. None of the editors of this book are postphenom-
enological purists, and we believe that a certain amount of cross-pollination
of intellectual vocabularies is very fertile when letting a thousand meth-
odological flowers bloom. Accordingly, no contributor had to sign an oath
of allegiance to participate in this anthology and several chapters draw on
external theories and traditions to enhance their analyses. Nevertheless, all
chapters somehow put postphenomenological concepts like multistability
and mediation to work on technologies from blackboards and skatestoppers
to robots and brain scanners. In doing so, they help to expand and clarify the
postphenomenological framework and outline tentative answers to the meth-
odological questions posed above.
The volume is structured from the principle of relationships following
Ihde’s I-technology-world relations (1990)—but we have given technology
prevalence in the ordering of contributions.

Educational Technologies
In this first section, the authors look at educational technologies, such as
blackboards and laptops. These authors all engage in fieldwork studies and
take up important postphenomenological concepts. Variation is a focus
in Catherine Adams and Joni Turville’s review of postphenomenological
methodologies in education research. Tobias Röhl examines transparency
in educational technologies, drawing on the concepts of alterity relations
and mediation. And, Jesper Aagaard considers the effects digital mediating
technologies have on attention and examines these relations through the con-
ceptual framework of multistability.
In Chapter 1, Catherine Adams and Joni Turville propose a postphe-
nomenology of practice as a way to do postphenomenological research in
education. After introducing the basic tenets of postphenomenology, Adams
and Turville review existing phenomenological studies of educational tech-
nologies, tracing Ihde’s influence on the field to as far back as 1975. Taking
departure from these investigations and providing rich empirical examples,
the chapter proceeds to outline five methodological heuristics that may help
researchers wishing to pursue a postphenomenological study: (1) conducting
phenomenologically sensitive, auto-ethnographic explorations; (2) observing
others in action with their technologies; (3) eliciting lived experience descrip-
tions through interview; (4) employing phenomenology’s epoché-reduction,
a methodological complex aimed at restoring a thing to its lived, relational
wholeness; and finally (5) studying breakdowns and using “broken hammers”
(and hands!) to notice what is usually taken for granted.
 An Introduction to Postphenomenological Methodologies xix

In Chapter 2, Tobias Röhl draws on postphenomenological concepts to

account for the materiality of classroom interaction. By adopting such a
socio-material view on education, two types of educational technologies can
be identified: transparent media like blackboards and epistemic objects like
experimental set-ups. Transparent media recede into the background and
thereby allow other material to become the thematic foreground, whereas
experimental set-ups become the focal object of attention. Röhl then distills
the methodological consequences of his research into both these kinds of
media and introduces four postphenomenological methods of analysis: (1)
maximally contrasting artifacts; (2) minimally contrasting artifacts; (3) con-
trasting their contexts of use (e.g., the blackboard as an artifact upon which
to write and behind which to hide); and (4) auto-ethnographic observation,
which entails “slackening ones intentional threads” and forcing a gestalt
switch that moves the artifact from taken-for-granted background to thematic
foreground.
In Chapter 3, Jesper Aagaard presents a postphenomenological study of
digital mediation and attention. Aagaard sets out by making Gallit Wellner’s
wall-window metaphor subject for a critical discussion. The wall-window
metaphor suggests that digital technologies create an imaginary wall-window
between you and the person/object you engage with, dislocating your atten-
tion to a virtual space, while still allowing you to be bodily engaged in the
physical space. Aagaard criticizes this “non-reductive attentional split,” by
emphasizing his empirical findings from a Danish business school. This
leads him to propose the portal as a metaphor better suited for capturing how
digital mediations affect attention. He suggests that the screen functions as
a portal through which the user enters another realm. Based on his empirical
data, he argues that digital mediation renders the user both absent and present
at the same time. Thus, he argues, the user’s attention is significantly affected
by digital mediation. Aagaard then proceeds to discuss the methodological
concepts of reflexivity and validity in relation to his own postphenomenologi-
cal study.

Self-Tracking and Imaging Technologies

In this section, the focus is on self-tracking and imaging technologies. Here,
Moa Petersén looks at biohacking and self-tracking through a fieldwork
approach that makes her question assumptions of embodiment. Fernando
Secomandi also looks at self-tracking technologies, using ethnographic meth-
ods, and discusses how empirical investigation sheds light on the intersubjec-
tive constitution of human-technology relations. Finally, Ciano Aydin studies
brain-scanning technologies, like functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging
(fMRI). Drawing upon “technical mediation theory,” Aydin investigates how
xx An Introduction to Postphenomenological Methodologies

brain imaging technologies mediate the conception of the brain as the locus
of the self.
In Chapter 4, Moa Petersén takes up three important methodological prob-
lems for postphenomenological methodology that have emerged as issues in
relation to her fieldwork in a Swedish biohacking community. The first concern
is how to make the transition from a larger knowledge-producing community,
like a network of biohackers to individuals. The next problem begins with an
acknowledgment of Don Ihde’s human-technology relations. These relations
do not cover what Petersén identifies as a non-relation of a “body in a biomedial
collapse.” The final problem concerns the validity of a study that moves from
the wider networked community to the technology-infused body. The emphasis
on multistability that destabilizes the apparently homogenous technological
entity, poses a threat to any claims of validity of postphenomenological meth-
odology—apart from a focus on the multistability itself. This approach does not
account for the systematicity found at a network level. Petersén suggests that
that these challenges can be overcome by a cyclic process with an emphasis on
studies of multistabilities found at the individual level that act as a deconstruc-
tor of the study at the network level, where we find an apparent stability and
systematicity. It is the strength of postphenomenology, it is argued, that allows
for these movements; and this postphenomenological methodology is needed
within the social and cultural sciences.
In Chapter 5, Fernando Secomandi studies self-tracking technologies
through in-depth interviews, observations, and Internet studies—and dem-
onstrates the value of empirical research methods to postphenomenology.
Postphenomenology is regularly lauded by philosophers of technology for
providing impetus to a recent “empirical turn” in the field. From a philosophi-
cal perspective, to be empirical means, among other things, distancing oneself
from sweeping analyses at high abstraction levels, in order to concentrate on
the particularities of real-world practices of technology design and use. Seco-
mandi argues that an empirical investigation of a self-tracking technology,
inspired by an ethnographic approach to the study of service design practices,
results in the acknowledgment of an overlooked topic in postphenomenology:
the intersubjective constitution of human-technology relations.
In Chapter 6, Ciano Aydin examines brain imaging technologies, such as
Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and functional Magnetic Resonance
Imaging (fMRI), which are increasingly used not only to diagnose diseases
and lesions but also to correlate brain activation with psychological states and
traits. Drawing upon “technical mediation theory,” Aydin investigates how
brain imaging technologies mediate the conception of the brain as the locus
of the self, which is then granted or denied free will. This mediated notion
of self and freedom has, according to him, a history that can be traced back
 An Introduction to Postphenomenological Methodologies xxi

to Descartes’s adaptation of a particular technology: the camera obscura. The

camera obscura has inspired Descartes’s view of the autonomous self, and
is sustained and transformed by brain imaging technologies that scientists
use today to prove or disprove the existence of free will. An anthropology
is offered that proposes a different interpretation of the images displayed by
brain imaging technologies, which also has the potential to reframe “free
will” debates.

Robotic Technologies
In this section, the focus is on robotic technologies. Michael Funk discusses
the theoretical benefits of comparing modern social robot engineering with
the praxis of paleoanthropology from the perspective of the postphenomeno-
logical concept of material hermeneutics. Lasse Blond and Kasper Schiø-
lin introduce notions of “stable worlds” and “unstable humans” to Ihde’s
I-technology-world approach, in their discussion of technology transfer and
multistability, illustrated by the journey of the robot Silbot across multiple
sites (South Korea, Denmark, and Finland).
In Chapter 7, Michael Funk discusses the methodological analogies
between paleoanthropology and social robot engineering. He argues that
alterity relations play an important methodological part in the paleoan-
thropological investigation of deep human history. Through the concept of
observer´s self-alterity, Funk argues that paleoanthropology is not just a
material hermeneutic practice of studying fossils, but also a storytelling prac-
tice that is dependent upon the ability of the researcher to conduct different
interpretations of human evolution and cultural development. Funk proceeds
by comparing this methodological claim with robot engineering. He argues
that a similar kind of observer´s self-alterity is present in technoscientific
practices of engineering social robots. The construction of social robots
implies an interpretation of social practices and thus an interpretation of the
involved human characteristics. Funk concludes with seven, also heuristic
and schematic, theses.
In Chapter 8, Lasse Blond and Kasper Schiølin address the neglected
role of humans and their lifeworlds in postphenomenology’s famous I-tech-
nology-world formula. To expand this focus, Blond and Schiølin introduce
three concepts. First, technological style is the everyday appropriation of
technologies, which depends on human characteristics like health, age, and
even mood. Second, human instability highlights how the configuration of
such characteristics is inherently multistable. Finally, apparently stable world
refers to the cultural context in which humans are inextricably situated. This
is illustrated by an empirical study of the socially assistive robot Silbot’s
xxii An Introduction to Postphenomenological Methodologies

challenging journey from South Korean schools to Finnish and Danish nurs-
ing homes and rehabilitation centers, which eventually lead to the robot being
culturally shaped in order to embed it into local practice.

General Methodological Issues

In this final section, we present general methodological discussions. Robert
Rosenberger explores the theoretical benefits of amalgamating postphenom-
enology with other STS perspectives, like actor-network theory (ANT) and
social construction of technology (SCOT). His exploration of park benches
in “LOVE Park” includes a cross-variational approach to studies of particular
park benches, and draws in the postphenomenological concept of multista-
bility. Michel Puech discusses the ethical strength of postphenomenologi-
cal methods, making use of illustrative case study of data immersion and
exploring the postphenomenological concept of mediation. Arun Tripathi, on
the other hand, writes about how the multistability of technological embodi-
ments is characterized in order to visualize multistable hermeneutic rela-
tions with the use of technologies. Finally, Cathrine Hasse, drawing on an
empirical study of participant observation among physics students, discusses
the relation between the postphenomenological concepts of mediation and
multistability.
In Chapter 9, Robert Rosenberger utilizes the ongoing dispute between
skateboarders and anti-skateboarding groups as a case, to argue for the
need of combining STS approaches like ANT and SCOT with postphenom-
enology. The dispute is rooted in two opposing attitudes toward the use of
public space. The skateboarders represent an explorative and creative use of
public space, and the anti-skateboarding groups represent an attitude of reg-
ularity and order—that materialize in different anti-skateboarding devices
like “skatestoppers” built into the architecture of public space. Rosenberger
argues that neither postphenomenology nor other STS perspectives alone
are capable of fully grasping the complexity of the skateboarding case. He
presents three arguments for an amalgamation of the two schools: (1) The
argument from interface that claims ANT can benefit from the postphenom-
enological insights into how technology mediates human experience; (2)
the argument from multistability that claims that the postphenomenological
conception of materiality as multistable enables an understanding of the
multiple uses of technological artifacts; and (3) the argument from inscrip-
tion, that suggests that postphenomenology can benefit from the insights
offered by ANT into how technological artifacts are inscribed into social
networks.
In Chapter 10, Michel Puech examines the ethical strength of postphe-
nomenological methods and identifies three principles for a constructive
 An Introduction to Postphenomenological Methodologies xxiii

technoethics. These principles help illuminate what it means to assess what

Puech describes as an “ordinary technological mediation” between a human
interface, a self, and a collective value system tied to what he terms the
“technosphere,” which has a tendency to remain hidden. The first principle is
the individual pragmatism where assessing ordinary technological mediation
rests on the classical epoché—a descriptive method that opens for a valua-
tion of usually neglected mediation. The second principle is “flourishing,”
making use of situated descriptions of how self, institutional politics, and
practical wisdom merge. The last principle is informed by Asian philosophy
and involves an integration of the global that is tied to micro-phenomenology
through a search for harmony and balance, in order to explore the techno-
sphere in its ontological, existential, and ethical specificity. The argument is
underpinned by the mundane descriptions of energy consumption and data
immersion in ways that make it possible to examine and assess the ordinary in
our mediation with these examples from the technosphere. As there is always
already meaning and intentionality in our mediation with the world, there is
always a potential value-attitude in all these ordinary intentionalities. Bridg-
ing the descriptive/normative gap naturally has deep motives in the ancestry
of postphenomenology.
In Chapter 11, Arun Tripathi delves into specific practices in postphenom-
enological methodologies and how these practices and concepts are integral
to analysis. Understanding human-technology relationships has become one
of the most addressed activities within philosophy of technology. The main
purpose of this chapter is discussing the importance of postphenomenologi-
cal methodology concerning technological mediations, focusing on “cultural
variability” of technological mediations. Tripathi explores the hermeneutical
practices concerning human embodiments in order to understand what tech-
nologies embody; in his chapter he discusses the question of how multista-
bility of technological embodiments are characterized in order to visualize
multistable hermeneutic relations with the use of technologies.
In Chapter 12, Cathrine Hasse introduces participant observation as the
methodological foundation for an empirically grounded postphenomenology.
Postphenomenology has been long conceived of itself as a move from study-
ing “Technology” to analyzing specific technologies—the so-called empirical
turn. To this credo, Hasse argues that postphenomenologists must also begin
to look at other people’s technological mediated practices and advocates par-
ticipant observation for this purpose. As an example, she describes her own
field study of physics students in which students were taught to operate an
obsolete telescope as a rite of passage. Hasse further describes how students
would align their measurements to avoid looking stupid—an insight that
gives us a glimpse of some important social (or “non-functional”) dimensions
of technology use, like identity formation and pride.
xxiv An Introduction to Postphenomenological Methodologies

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 Part I

EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGIES
 Chapter 1

Doing Postphenomenology
in Education
Catherine Adams and Joni Turville

INTRODUCTION

Today’s classrooms—online, hybrid, flipped, one-to-one laptop—represent

significant shifts in how teaching and learning transpires. Yet how do we
account for these reconfigurations and future transformations? For decades,
educational researchers have been attempting to articulate the positive as well
as negative differences that digital technologies may be making to teaching,
to learning, and to knowledge creation. One qualitative way to approach this
question concerning technology is via phenomenology:

Although digital media are fairly recent phenomena, it could be said that the
phenomenological movement, from its earliest stages on, has offered a most
fruitful starting point for understanding the meaning and the impact of these
media for our lives, in general, and for education, in particular. (Vlieghe, 2015,
p. 1)

Indeed, over 40 years ago, Don Ihde (1975) forwarded phenomenology as

a way to interrogate “the learning process vis-à-vis machines and in terms of
direct connections between man-machine relations” (p. 201). In much educa-
tional technology research today, there remains an assumption that technol-
ogy either enhances learning in and of itself or that it is neutral without teacher
intervention; as such, little has been done to research technologies in terms
of both their affordances and limitations in educational lifeworlds (Aagaard,
2015a; Adams, 2010; Adams & Pente, 2011). Here, phenomenology and its
technology-focused offspring postphenomenology offer promising qualita-
tive approaches for unearthing how specific technologies may be reforming
and transforming experiences and knowledge construction in education.

3
4 Catherine Adams and Joni Turville

Drawing on examples from our own and others’ empirical studies of digi-
tal technologies across a variety of teaching and learning environments, in
this chapter we focus on doing postphenomenological research in education.
We define postphenomenology as phenomenology that attends to specific
technologies and the existential and epistemological differences they may be
making to the lifeworld. We begin with a brief introduction to postphenom-
enology, its historical roots and associated methods. We review the status
of postphenomenology in key educational technology research studies to
date. Finally, we offer a set of methodological heuristics that we have found
helpful in conducting our own postphenomenological inquiries of digitally
textured educational lifeworlds.
Our contention is that doing postphenomenology must maintain a sig-
nificant alliance with its progenitor, phenomenology. As Ash and Simpson
(2014) recently put it, “Post-phenomenology is not about abandoning the key
insights of phenomenology . . . [but rather] about refiguring and expanding
phenomenology’s analytic and conceptual boundaries [to] an excessive world
that lies outside of the human-environment correlate but which is central to
shaping human capacities, relations and experiences” (p. 16). To this end, we
identify several human science methods (i.e., composing anecdotes through
self-observation, gathering lived experience descriptions via interview, and
observation of humans and technologies in action), as well as one philosophi-
cal method (i.e., studying breakdowns as one way to perform variational anal-
ysis or phenomenology’s epoché-reduction), that we believe may be fruitfully
employed in conducting this kind of inquiry. We separate these methods
into two categories, roughly equivalent to data collection and data analysis
in qualitative research: (1) collecting or generating prereflective materials or
anecdotes, and (2) reflecting phenomenologically on the gathered prereflec-
tive materials. These disciplined enactments of human science inquiry extend
a particular form of qualitative research called “phenomenology of practice”
(Adams & van Manen, 2008; van Manen, 2014) to the study of technolo-
gies in educational settings. Phenomenology of practice engages many of
the core gestures of both phenomenology and postphenomenology, and too,
aligns with Ihde’s empirical turn in the investigation of human-technology-
world relations. As other postphenomenologists have done, we also leverage
insights and practical understandings gleaned from Latour’s actor-network
theory (ANT) during the reflective phases of our analyses. We tentatively call
this form of educational research a postphenomenology of practice.

POSTPHENOMENOLOGY AND ITS METHODS

In Husserl’s Missing Technologies, Don Ihde (2016) describes his post-

phenomenology as having evolved along several lines of inquiry in North
 Doing Postphenomenology in Education 5

America and Europe. The main stream established its bedrock at Ihde’s
home institution, Stony Brook University in the 1990s, by advancing his own
pragmatic phenomenology of technics (1990), and through reading seminars
on science-technology studies (STS) literature including the work of Donna
Haraway, Bruno Latour, and Andrew Pickering. A second tributary has
flowed out of the work of Peter-Paul Verbeek—a student of Hans Achterhuis
and Ihde—and his research group at University of Twente. In both instances,
postphenomenology has shared significant dialogues with science and tech-
nology studies (STS) and Latour’s ANT. However, it was Verbeek’s What
Things Do (2005) that most explicitly established the amalgam of postphe-
nomenology with ANT.
Generally, speaking, postphenomenology and ANT seem to play well
together as complementary methodologies in revealing a more inclusive
account of technologies (Adams & Thompson, 2017; Rosenberger, 2014).
Meanwhile, Ihde seldom evokes ANT in his inquiries, and Latour has been
openly antagonistic toward phenomenology. Nonetheless, because of ANT’s
ongoing ties to postphenomenology since Verbeek (2005), ANT necessarily
figures prominently in some of the educational research discussions below.
In this chapter, however, our primary focus is on the methodology of post-
phenomenology as an offshoot of phenomenology, and less on its relationship
to ANT.
Ihde (2016) admits that his phenomenological approach to studying tech-
nologies began as the classic Husserlian variety, and that his early inquiries
led him unexpectedly into territory already occupied by Martin Heidegger
and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. For example, in his empirical investigations,
he quickly realized that Husserl’s notion of intentionality needed a radical
revision, a change that turned out to be more in line with Heidegger’s (1962)
being-in-the-world and Merleau-Ponty’s (1968, 1945/2012) fleshy, recipro-
cal entwinements. In this post-Husserlian phenomenology, consciousness is
superseded by a more inclusive, situated embodiment (micro-perception) in
the midst of a culturally and historically colored world (macro-perception).
Here, Ihde inserts technology into a revised intentionality equation: being-in-
the-world or human-world becomes human-technology-world. Our relational
yoke to the world is always already mediated or “technology-textured” (Ihde,
1990, p. 163). Or as Heidegger (1951/1971) put it, “we are the bethinged, the
conditioned ones” (pp. 178–179).
Ultimately, Ihde (2008a) distinguishes his approach from classical phe-
nomenology by undertaking empirical investigations of specific technologies:

What these [investigations] taught me was how diverse they were, how differ-
ently embedded in different cultures even the same technologies may be, and
above all, how technological history is so full of surprises, the unexpected and
with unintended and unpredictable side-effects. (Ihde, 2008a, p. iv)
6 Catherine Adams and Joni Turville

For Ihde, these in-depth phenomenologies of individual technologies mark

phenomenology as postphenomenology. His project is also underwritten by
several key insights about technology including:

1. Multistability: Any given technology may be used in multiple different

ways across different contexts; as such, multistability undercuts techno-
logical determinism whether of the dystopian or utopian variety.
2. Human-technology relations: Our human-technology-world relations have
several focal variations which Ihde has named embodiment, hermeneutic,
and alterity, but also background relations. Verbeek (2008) has augmented
these variations. In postphenomenology, the intentional relation is denoted
by “human-technology-world” with varying sets of brackets and arrows;
of particular interest is what happens in the interfacial hyphen or “enigma”
position where (human-technology) or (technology-world) are intertwined
most intimately.
3. Amplification-reduction structure: Every technology extends our per-
ceptual and/or actional possibilities while simultaneously attenuating or
atrophying others.
4. Revealing-concealing structure: Derived from Heidegger’s ready-to-hand
(handy but invisible)/present-at-hand (broken and obstinate) hammer anal-
ysis, our being-in-the-world of equipment is primarily one of concealment
(Kiran & Verbeek, 2010, p. 417). Hammering, the hammer withdraws;
that is, in use, the hammer is not the figure of our attention but is instead
absorbed in the taken-for-granted background of our lifeworld. Thus to
study a technology, one must be able to relinquish one’s present-at-hand
grip on the technology of interest in service of learning the pre-predicative
language of its handiness in everyday life.

The following methods have also been explicitly associated with

postphenomenology:

1. Variational method or analysis: Husserl’s eidetic reduction or “imagina-

tive or free variation” is adapted by Ihde, whereby the researcher may
reveal a technology’s multistabilities as opposed to Husserlian “essences”
(Ihde, 2009; Rosenberger, 2014). Elsewhere, Rosenberger and Verbeek
(2015) describe it as “the method of brainstorming stabilities of a multi-
stable technology” (p. 27).
2. Variational cross-examination: Rosenberger (2014) suggests that a post-
phenomenologist must first determine an object’s dominant stability and
then perform a “critical contrast of particular stabilities that have been
identified” to understand more about these alternatives (p. 382). This
involves examining: 1) comportments and habits—the way a technology
 Doing Postphenomenology in Education 7

relates to the body and a person’s perception, 2) role within a program—

the role of a particular technology within a network of actors, and 3)
concrete tailoring—the physical alterations of technology for different
purposes (pp. 382–385).
3. Case study: More broadly, Rosenberger and Verbeek (2015) characterize
postphenomenology as a “case study approach” to research (p. 32). Case
study has become a popular way to frame postphenomenological studies.
See, for example, Irwin’s (2016) multiple chapter “cases”—from earbud
embodiment to self-tracking technologies.
4. Conversational Analysis (CA): Verbeek (2016) recently forwarded Con-
versational Analysis (CA) as “the missing link” for studying empirically
not only “what things do,” but how technologies mediate our perceptions
and actions “from within” (p. 195). Stemming from ethnomethodology,
CA is offered as a possible bridge method between postphenomenology
and ANT.

In the next section, we look at postphenomenology in educational research,

and then return to the question of method.

Postphenomenology, Technology, and

Education: A Literature Review
Education’s scholarly literature has long been aware of Ihde’s phenomenol-
ogy of technics. In 1985, for example, John W. Murphy cited Ihde (1979)
and declared that, “without an examination of the technological ‘world-view’,
technicized images of the classroom, learning, and students which accom-
pany it may go undetected” (p. 167). That same year, John M. Broughton
(1985) and Edmund V. Sullivan (1985) both made note of a lesser-known
chapter of Ihde’s, titled “A Phenomenology of Man-Machine Relations,” that
appeared in the edited volume Work, Technology and Education (1975). Sul-
livan observes that Ihde’s work should lead educators to ponder how taken-
for-granted scholastic objects like projectors, microscopes, and typewriters,
“when . . . working properly . . . are on the periphery of your awareness,
accomplish their function in a quiet and unobtrusive manner” (p. 1). Comput-
ing technology, it seemed, was poised to “be a figure as opposed to ground
in the educational ecology” (p. 1). The work of other phenomenological phi-
losophers such as Hubert Dreyfus, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty also figured in
these early articles; each intended to wake educators up to their technologized
surround; each was taking a critical crack at Seymour Papert’s (1980) Mind-
storms: Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas. A decade later, Jeanne
Connell (1996) devoted an entire article to the pedagogical implications of
Ihde’s philosophy of technology, and concluded that “educators must increase
8 Catherine Adams and Joni Turville

their awareness of the ways that computer technologies modify, extend, and
transform the nature of experience in the classroom” (p. 12). However, none
of these texts offered a sustained empirical study of individual technologies
in education, only philosophical argument.

Empirical Studies
In the late 1980s, some phenomenologies of technics in education began to
surface. One such example is Stefan Baldurssen’s (1989) dissertation on the
phenomenology of teaching and learning writing via word-processing soft-
ware. Citing Ihde (1979, 1983), Baldurssen (1989) argues that assessments
of technology in general are not adequate and that investigation of specific
educational technologies and their mediations by way of phenomenology is
critical. His empirical study of word-processing in schools, however, drew
nothing from Ihde in terms of his methods of inquiry. Instead, as van Manen’s
doctoral student, Baldurssen adopted an early version of van Manen’s practi-
cal phenomenology, which was published soon after as Researching Lived
Experience: Human Science for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy (van Manen,
1990).
Since that time, van Manen has supervised multiple dissertations involving
practical phenomenologies of technologies in education. One notable exam-
ple is Norm Friesen’s (2003) Student-Computer Relation: A Phenomenology
of its Pedagogical Significance. A portion of his dissertation, a phenomenol-
ogy of simulated frog dissection in the classroom, appeared in a 2011 issue
of Techne (Friesen, 2011a). Friesen’s work drew critique from Ihde (2012a)
and Rosenberger (2012) who argued that computer simulations do not simply
limit possibilities but may also provide richer and expanded possibilities.
Friesen countered with a discussion of how technology can bring a hyperreal
quality to instruction, whereby students may miss out on a more embodied
experience and leave students less connected to the world around them (Fri-
esen, 2011b).
Cathy Adams also studied with van Manen. Her pedagogy of Power-
Point revealed some of the ways in which student-teacher relations are
mediated through this ubiquitous presentation technology (Adams, 2010).
Teachers’ practices may be supported and enriched by using PowerPoint
in their classrooms, but they are also “enmeshed and relinquished to the
language, imagery, framing, at-handedness and sensuality of their material
and design” (Adams, 2010, p. 1). She also showed how PowerPoint may
incline how a class unfolds. Other phenomenologies of specific technolo-
gies include van Manen and Adams’s (2009) study of writing online, and
van Manen’s (2010) article on privacy in social media spaces or “Momus
technologies” (p. 1023). Over the last few years, Adams has supervised
 Doing Postphenomenology in Education 9

several doctoral students claiming Ihde’s and Verbeek’s postphenomenol-

ogy as their theoretical framework or primary methodology. Some have
struggled to articulate its specifics beyond van Manen’s phenomenology of
practice, or too, in relation to some of the theoretical concepts and methods
associated with ANT, such as “generalized symmetry” and “following the
actors.”

Postphenomenology and Education

A few educational researchers have also begun to publish their educational
inquiries explicitly as postphenomenology. These scholars include Jesper
Aagaard (2015a, 2015b, 2016), Catherine Hasse (2008, 2015a, 2015b), Peggy
Jubien (2014, 2015), and Tobias Röhl (2012a, 2012b, 2015). Aagaard’s
(2015a) postphenomenological research concentrated on upper secondary
students’ use of technology in college classrooms. He found that use of
digital devices is so ubiquitous that many students do not bring books or
even pens to school. After several months of observing students using their
laptops for off-task activities during lectures, he began formal interviews
with students. His interview data revealed several themes: (1) technology is a
mixed blessing—its affordances include speed of communication and access
to information but the same technology provides a “backdoor” where students
can escape from class without leaving the room (Aagaard, 2015a, p. 93); (2)
students are drawn to distraction—devices provide an allure that students
describe as hard to resist; (3) off-task technology use tended to occur when
a lesson was considered too difficult or boring, or when there was a break
(for example, waiting for the professor to set something up) (pp. 93–94). He
concludes that “we need a deliberate shaping of our involvements with tech-
nologies to develop a free relation to them” (p. 96). He suggests that this “free
relation” may be supported by implementing strategies such as taking regular
technology breaks during class or prompts from the teacher to “close the lid.”
Such studies are crucial in understanding the meaning of quantitative stud-
ies, for example, Carter, Greenberg and Walker’s (2016) recent finding that
everyday device use in postsecondary classes lowers exam results. While the
Carter et al.’s study examined students’ performance on standardized exams
in classrooms that permitted the use of digital devices to take notes compared
to those that did not, it was silent on students’ everyday experiences of using
technology in the classroom.
In “Methods of Materiality: Participant Observation and Qualitative
Research in Psychology,” Aagaard and Matthiesen (2016) challenge the
privileging of “human attribution of meaning” in qualitative research (p.
34). They call for a turn to the material world in order to account for the
reciprocal intertwinings of meaning and materiality. Artifacts are not neutral,
10 Catherine Adams and Joni Turville

unsubstantial things that simply receive whatever meanings we attribute to

them, but rather material presences that also act upon us:

To be clear, we are not trying to throw out the qualitative baby with the bath-
water, and this third space is decidedly not some sort of demilitarized zone
between interpretive and causal approaches. We explicitly situate material pres-
ence within the realm of qualitative inquiry. . . . Our argument is not against
interpretation but for an oscillation between linguistic meaning and material
presence. (Aagaard & Matthiesen, 2016, p. 36)

Aagaard and Matthiesen (2016) point to an empirical example of author-

ity in the classroom during parent-teacher interviews with Somali parents in
public schools in Denmark, to illustrate how the materiality of the classroom
perpetuates a particular social order and influences action. They argue that
research that employs interviews “without capturing our everyday inter-
twinement with material artifacts” (p. 40) may render an incomplete picture.
To address this lack of attention to materiality, qualitative researchers must
develop both “an ear for meaning and an eye for materiality” (p. 41). They
outline three possible ways to accomplish this:

1. use posthumanist analytic strategies,

2. study material presence in terms of agency/structure, and
3. draw situational maps.
(Aagaard & Matthiesen, 2016, p. 41)

For the first, they point to Röhl’s (2015a) work. Röhl (2012a), in an eth-
nography of the materiality of two secondary schools in Germany, explores
the ways in which people and objects are interwoven and impact one
another. He identifies a gap in understanding materiality, where studying
objects has focused largely on symbolic meaning, rather than understanding
“what things do” (Verbeek, 2005), in other words, a postphenomenological
approach. He proposes three conceptual strategies for examining materiality
in classrooms using a combination of ANT, SCOT, and postphenomenol-
ogy: respectively symmetry, emergence, and “broken hammer” or break-
down. Röhl also invokes postphenomenology where relations between
humans, objects, and the world are examined. His primary concern is with
how objects are involved in knowledge creation, and how certain materials
“enable and constrain certain forms of knowledge” (Röhl, 2012a, p. 122).
To this end, he proposes a “material ethnography” and suggests postphe-
nomenology may play a role in the investigation of “the embodied and sen-
sory relation that is constituted between human actor and material object”
(pp. 121–122).
 Doing Postphenomenology in Education 11

In her “Postphenomenology: Learning Cultural Perception in Science,”

Hasse’s (2008) interest is in revealing the embodied and situated knowledge
practices of physicists. She frames her study in terms of Ihde’s (2002) body
one and body two, or the “lived sensuous and the cultured body” (Hasse,
2008, p. 45). Hasse says her quasi-experiments do not represent what might
be considered typical phenomenological methods, but focuses on variational
descriptions. “It is from these descriptions that [Hasse] unfolds an argument
on the interaction of body one and body two and connects this perspective
to learning in science education as well as scientific practice” (p. 50). She
calls on Merleau-Ponty (1945/2002) and new material feminist scholarship
to develop a vocabulary to assist in performing her analysis.
Jubien (2014) conducted two studies of smartphone usage in postsecondary
education: (1) a phenomenological exploration of the experience of listen-
ing to pre-recorded lectures via podcasting; and (2) an ANT-based study of
smartphone use in education. Similar to Rosenberger, she posited that phe-
nomenology provides a way to collect the lived experiences of technology
use, while ANT provides a complementary way to describe technological
objects and their networked relations. Relying on Verbeek’s postphenomeno-
logical vocabulary and also that of Ingrid Richardson’s (2007) phenomenol-
ogy of handheld devices or “pocket technospaces” (p. 205), Jubien conducted
a third study under the rubric of postphenomenology. For Jubien, this ANT-
phenomenology amalgam allowed for descriptions and analyses of how peo-
ple and things may “join together, stabilize, work together, and break apart”
(Jubien, 2014, p. 8). Nonetheless, her study revealed an unresolved or at least
uneasy tension between the action-focused, material-semiotics of ANT, and
the more existential, meaning saturated concerns of phenomenology.
To date, postphenomenology as a methodology in educational research is
multistable. Doing postphenomenology in education has inspired an eclectic
mix of human and social science methods, and is most typically evoked for
its unique conceptual offerings and vocabulary regarding human-technology
relations. Below we offer a postphenomenology of practice. We believe that
this approach to inquiry may help make sense of some of the current empiri-
cal phenomenological studies of technology in education, as well as provide
a well-articulated methodological backdrop for conducting postphenomeno-
logical research in education.

TOWARD A POSTPHENOMENOLOGY OF PRACTICE

The postphenomenological research approach we outline here is strictly

informed by van Manen’s phenomenology of practice. The ambition of phe-
nomenology of practice is simple: to describe and reflect on a phenomenon of
12 Catherine Adams and Joni Turville

professional or personal interest by attending to the prereflective or everyday

lifeworld. Van Manen’s (1990) Researching Lived Experience, along with
early articles, sketched a way of doing educational research that diverged
radically from the quantitative approaches of the day by advocating a “return
to the [pedagogical] things themselves.” Today, qualitative research is main-
stream; and too, many now claim to be doing phenomenology in the human
and social sciences. Van Manen’s more recent (2014) Phenomenology of
Practice: Meaning-Giving Methods in Phenomenological Research and
Writing, published soon after he retired, is based on his years of teaching this
form of human science inquiry to graduate students across multiple profes-
sional disciplines, and clarifies many methodological details of his approach.
Perhaps because phenomenology of practice is already pragmatic and
empirical, and situated in the prereflective, concrete everydayness of things,
researchers approaching technology via van Manen’s phenomenology of
practice had little need to lay it aside in favor of a postphenomenology. None-
theless, recognizing that postphenomenology specifically signals “a nuanced
change from classical phenomenology [by] thematizing of materiality, par-
ticularly in the form of instruments and devices by which we make ‘worlds’
available to us which were previously unexperienced and unperceived” (Ihde,
2003, p. 20), we easily adopt this term here. Phenomenology of practice,
similar to Verbeek’s (2015) methodological ambitions for postphenomenol-
ogy, “combines philosophical analysis with empirical investigation” (p. 190).
In outlining a postphenomenology of practice, we begin by making a
distinction between the prereflective (the natural attitude) and the reflective
(the phenomenological attitude), which roughly corresponds to the familiar
division employed in empirical research between data collection and data
analysis. In a postphenomenology of practice, generating prereflective data
consists of gathering lived experience descriptions (e.g., by way of inter-
views, journals, observation, etc.) and crafting anecdotes that describe a par-
ticular technology or thing as occurrent in everyday life. Reflective analysis
proceeds by way of both human science methods (e.g., line-by-line, thematic,
and existential analysis) and phenomenological methods (e.g., the epoché and
the reduction) (see van Manen, 2014). A finished (post)phenomenological
research text is a weave of both prereflective material and reflective insights
intending to (1) emulate human-technology-world entwinements through
textual description, and (2) explore and shed light on particular technology-
texturings of pedagogical lifeworlds—relational, corporeal, spatial, temporal,
material, and medial.
From a (post)phenomenological of practice perspective, the things of our
immediate world speak to us prereflectively. The chair invites me to sit down,
my e-mail tugs at me to check it, my buzzing iPhone insists that I answer it.
Of course I may choose not to do any of these things. But having responded
 Doing Postphenomenology in Education 13

to the “call” of a thing, I am swiftly caught up in the particular world that

the particular thing or technology opens for me: sitting, reading an e-mail, or
talking to a friend on the phone. Our embodied selves always already dwell in
the midst of this primordial “rapport with things” (Heidegger, 1951/1971, p.
157). These silent, ongoing corporeal conversations with our socio-material
surround may be glimpsed by attending to the vocative or invitational quality
of a given technology (Adams & Thompson, 2017). To access these human-
technology-world correspondences requires attention to the prereflective or
pathic dimensions of the lifeworld. Here, van Manen’s (2014) phenomenol-
ogy of practice provides multiple methods, derived from the human and
social sciences, for gathering humans’ prereflective rapport with their tech-
nologies by way of lived experience descriptions or anecdotes.

The Prereflective: Composing Anecdotes through

Self-Observation (Phenomenological Protocol Writing)
A first way to generate data for a postphenomenological investigation is to
attend to one’s own lifeworld: “Our personal life experiences are immediately
accessible to us in a way that no one else’s are” (van Manen, 2014, p. 313).
With practice, a phenomenological researcher begins to develop an eye for
the non-intrusive observation of oneself and of others—so as not to disturb
the moment or event in its unfolding “in the wild”—and too, an ear for the
invitational appeals of one’s equipmental or technology-textured surround.
But to translate these prereflective moments into text (i.e., to re-cord with
fidelity human-technology-world interactive/interpassive relations), demands
a writerly attention to what appears in its prereflective lived-throughness.
Explanations, opinions, judgments, or theoretical concepts must be pushed
aside in favor of what was given in the moment. Such experiential happen-
ings are necessarily written in retrospect, with attention to the sensuousness,
situated detail of living through the moment.
Such concrete, lived-through descriptions are a crucial ingredient to a
phenomenology, and more particularly postphenomenology. Indeed, Ihde’s
many postphenomenologies of technics are filled with such self-observant
phenomenological description. For example, here Ihde (1979) describes the
simple act of writing on a blackboard:

I pick up . . . a piece of chalk and begin to trace it across the . . . blackboard.

Upon a careful examination of this experience I suddenly discover that I experi-
ence the roughness of the board at the end of the chalk. This is, of course, also
Merleau-Ponty’s blind man who experiences the “world” at the end of his cane.
If I begin to be descriptively rigorous, I find I must say that what I feel is felt
locally at the end of the chalk, or better, at the chalk-blackboard junction. The
14 Catherine Adams and Joni Turville

“terminus” of my intentional extension into the world is on the blackboard, and

I have discovered (contrary to empiricism) that touch is also a distant sense.
(Ihde, 1979, p. 7)

Ihde opens with an otherwise unremarkable but recognizable “lived

moment” to teachers: “I pick up . . . a piece of chalk and begin to trace it
across the . . . blackboard” (1979, p. 7). Reflecting back with his postphe-
nomenologist’s eye, that is, momentarily loosening “the intentional threads
that connect us to the world in order to make them appear” (Merleau-Ponty,
1945/2012, p. xxvii), Ihde notices that in performing this taken-for-granted
action, “I experience the roughness of the board at the end of the chalk”
(1979, p. 7). He then reflects further on this briefest of moments in more
phenomenological depth, drawing in more precise and concrete prereflective
material (“what I feel is felt locally at the end of the chalk, or better, at the
chalk-blackboard junction” [ibid]) with the assistance of Merleau-Ponty and
his then nascent postphenomenological vocabulary.
In a recent study examining writing technologies in schools, Adams (2016)
also re-assembles a lived-through moment based on her self-observation:

My hand, or rather hands at the desktop computer (or laptop or iPad) keyboard
want to write, and too, they want to write together. Rhythmic taps and clustered
bursts of understanding live effortlessly between them. They have long since
established a unique corpus of keystroke dances and jigs, as singular as my
handwritten signature. Together my two hands’ fingers patter out letters, words,
and sentences, dividing their choreographic work seamlessly among them-
selves. The right hand, in command of the drop-down menus, tabs, toolbar and
scroll, moves fluidly back and forth between mouse and keyboard. There is no
question of encroaching on one another’s space: my fingers and hands are the
space. (Adams, 2016, p. 483)

Such first-person description is developed by paying close attention to the

language of keyboarding in order to re-evoke some of its sensual and gestural
aspects (e.g., the soft “patter” generated by the fingers moving swiftly from
key to key, and the “clustered bursts” of a writer in the throes of composi-
tion). Attending to the vocative dimensions of textual description is also a
key dimension of a (post)phenomenology of practice (van Manen, 2014, pp.
240–296).

The Prereflective: Gathering Lived Experience

Descriptions through Interviews
Another way to gain access to the lived world of others is to conduct
interviews with those who have experience with the technology-textured
 Doing Postphenomenology in Education 15

phenomenon in question. Interviewing human participants is one of the most

widespread methods of data generation in qualitative research practice today.
However not all research interviews are alike. In a postphenomenology of
practice interview, the primary purpose is to elicit lived experience descrip-
tions (LEDs) about the research participant’s everyday engagements and
encounters with the technology of interest. As such, the researcher asks ques-
tions to assist the participant in recalling specific moments, and then in pro-
viding a lived-through account of the event. Interviewing for LEDs requires
a particular kind of questioning. Investigating the experience of teaching with
PowerPoint (Adams, 2010), for example, the researcher might offer the fol-
lowing prompts: “Can you think back to the last time you taught with Pow-
erPoint? . . . Recalling that particular class, can you walk me through what
happened, perhaps beginning with when you arrived and opened your Power-
point?” Or, “Do you have a particular moment that stands out when you were
teaching with PowerPoint? Where were you? What happened?” Interviewees
may also be invited to write down a specific recollection in lived-through
detail. Interview transcriptions are subsequently culled for LEDs.
Aagaard (2015a) employs interviews in his postphenomenological stud-
ies. He also worries that, “despite an increased sensitivity to embodied use
of technologies, postphenomenologically oriented scholars rarely conduct
empirical studies of other people’s technologically mediated experiences
and practices” (p. 92). Interviewing, sometimes combined with observation
of others engaged in practice, can be an excellent way to generate multiple
experiential variations or multistablities in relation to a particular technol-
ogy, as well as to potentially disrupt one’s certainty about how a technology
may or may not appear or be used. For a postphenomenology of practice,
interviewing others is a core method for generating a rich and diverse body
of first-hand examples of everyday human-technology-world engagements
(see also Adams & Thompson, 2017, pp. 24–33, on “gathering anecdotes”).

The Prereflective: Composing Anecdotes

through Observation of Others
Yet another way to generate postphenomenological data is through observing
others in the context of their technologized surround. This data generation
strategy, popular in ANT as well new materialist and nonrepresentationalist
ethnographies, is also favored by some postphenomenologists in education.
While observation of others does not give access to another’s prereflective
experience as such, it may assist in pointing up aspects of everyday life that
may otherwise be taken for granted by oneself and others. Aagaard (2015b)
employed this approach by first observing device use in classrooms, and
later interviewing students. Observing others engaged in their equipmental
16 Catherine Adams and Joni Turville

surround can be invaluable in spotting what may otherwise be invisible in

one’s own technology practices, and thus allows the researcher to lift gently
to notice what would otherwise pass without remark (i.e., by slackening “the
intentional threads which connect us to the world in order to make them
appear” [Merleau-Ponty, 1945/2012, p. xxvi]).
We suggest, however, that observation of others or even of self may not
always constitute sufficient data to (re)construct certain phenomenologies of
technology. In his ethnography of a science classroom, Röhl (2012b) relies
on his disciplined observational skills to write rich and detailed accounts of
events. He then evokes postphenomenology to address the corporeal and
sensorial world of the students:

By observing students and teachers and how they engage material objects in
the classroom, we can try to describe and analyse how the objects’ sensory and
bodily dimension affects them. . . . Postphenomenological analyses can also be
understood as descriptions of how the researcher relates to the material objects.
The researcher partly assumes the role of a participant in science classes. (Röhl,
2012b, p. 54)

Here Röhl continues his ethnographic stance, and attempts to situate

himself so he may speak on behalf of the students and thereby describe the
invitational quality and prereflective dimensions of their lifeworld:

When I visited the science classes, I usually sat on a chair at one of the desks,
listened to classroom discourse, observed experiments and copied what was
written on the blackboard into my notebook—much like the students I observed.
Thus, I was similarly affected by the material objects used in the classroom and
can use that perspective to describe how demonstration experiments and the
blackboard invite us to use them in a specific way. (Röhl, 2012b, p. 54)

Yet, it is ultimately not the researcher, but the students, who are best posi-
tioned to describe how the world of the classroom and the science experiment
appeared to them, that is, the intelligibility of the event to each individual,
what material aspects of the experiment showed up as meaningful to them,
and so on. Here, a postphenomenology of practice necessarily returns, not
only to the things themselves, but also to the students themselves. While the
observant researcher can indeed glean some aspects of another’s technology-
textured lifeworld by carefully reporting their own perceptual apprehensions
of a situation, the postphenomenologist is charged with pursuing a technol-
ogy’s multistabilities. To accomplish this, observation must also be combined
with other methods in order to reveal the unique human-technology-world
that is opened by a given technology for a given individual in a given context.
 Doing Postphenomenology in Education 17

In the final section, we examine how one may begin to reflect on these
gathered prereflective experiences in a postphenomenology of practice. In
qualitative research, such phenomenological reflection is roughly equivalent
to data analysis or interpretation. For Merleau-Ponty (1945/2002, p. xvii), the
ambition of phenomenological reflection is to “emulate the unreflective life
of consciousness”:

Reflection does not withdraw from the world toward the unity of conscious-
ness as the world’s basis; it steps back to watch the forms of transcendence
fly up like sparks from a fire; it slackens the intentional threads which attach
us to the world and thus brings them to notice; it alone is consciousness of the
world because it reveals that world as strange and paradoxical. (Merleau-Ponty,
1945/2012, p. xv)

In phenomenology, such reflection is achieved by way of the reduction,

or more precisely, the epoché-reduction couplet. The epoché-reduction is a
twofold methodological gesture that intends to at once suspend one’s precon-
ceptions (i.e., the epoché) in order to discover the experiential surge of the
lifeworld (i.e., the reduction proper). Here it is crucial that the reader divest
themselves of the erroneous belief that the phenomenological reduction is
about reducing a phenomenon down to some single essence, or as Aagaard
(2015a) describes, “boil[ing it] down to a stock cube of essential meaning”
(p. 92, italics in original). In line with the etymological roots of the term
“reduction” (to bring back or restore), the phenomenological reduction also
aims to restore or at least resemble the originary phenomenon in its lived
wholeness. This sometimes surprising meaning of the reduction is also evi-
dent in medical terminology. Reduction is the name of the surgical procedure
for resetting a broken bone, that is, it is the process of restoring a bone to its
original form, placement, and functioning. In phenomenology, the reduction
similarly leads us back to life in its prereflective wholeness, as it was origi-
narily lived. We will return to this notion of the reduction as restoration or
“reassembled resembling” (Adams & Thompson, 2017, p. 31) shortly. For
now we note that this type of research proceeds not by deduction or induction
but by reduction (van Manen, 2014, p. 218).
In his Experimental Phenomenology, Ihde (2012b) similarly engages the
epoché-reduction couplet, and describes it by a simpler term: “phenomeno-
logical looking.”

The first steps of phenomenological looking are usually called an epoché, which
means to suspend or step back from our ordinary ways of looking, to set aside our
usual assumptions regarding things. Within this general stance, particular levels
of stepping back are then determined; these levels are termed phenomenological
18 Catherine Adams and Joni Turville

reductions. I shall interpret these specifications as working rules or directions

for the way the investigation may proceed. Thus, epoché and phenomenological
reductions may also be called hermeneutic rules, since they provide the shape
or focus of the inquiry. Hermeneutic in its broadest sense means interpretation,
and rules give shape to an interpretation. (Ihde, 2012b, p. 17)

In his phenomenology of practice, van Manen (2014) outlines human

science methods (e.g., examining an LED line-by-line, thematically, and
existentially) as well as philosophical methods (e.g., performing multiple
epoché-reductions) to assist with “phenomenological looking” or reflect-
ing on the prereflective. The eidetic reduction, for example, recognizes that
every phenomenon obtains its unique identity via its differences from other
related phenomena. A phenomenon is originally constituted and marked by
what it is not. The eidetic reduction is sometimes performed by varying the
example given by an LED. The intent is to uncover aspects of a phenomenon
that are invariant or unique. Ihde makes extensive use of this “varying the
example” technique in his many fine analyses of technologies in use. Read-
ers familiar with the vocabulary of postphenomenology will recognize the
eidetic reduction as similar to variational method or analysis used to uncover
the multistabilities of a given technology (Ihde, 2009; Rosenberger, 2014;
Verbeek, 2005).
Below we address another example of reflective analysis via the epoché-
reduction, by using a technique found across empirical studies in the human
and social sciences including phenomenology and postphenomenology, but
also ANT (e.g., Latour’s [1996] Aramis project), ethnomethodology (e.g.,
Harold Garfinkel’s [1967] breaching experiments), and media ecology
(McLuhan, Hutcheon & McLuhan’s [1977] City as Classroom projects):
studying breakdowns. Paying close attention to what transpires when a tech-
nology breaks down, malfunctions, or is missing is also a reliable way to
perform the eidetic reduction.

The Reflective: Studying Breakdowns

and the Eidetic Reduction
Sometimes, like David Mitchell (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) in the film
Demolition (Sipe & Vallée, 2015), we need a broken hammer to dislodge us
from our taken-for-granted lodge in life, and set us on a new path. Only in
this way may we hope to encounter what is otherwise hidden from us, or of
what we possess only a distant awareness. Suffering a psychological collapse
after the war, Heidegger wrote in his 1946 “Letter on ‘Humanism’”: “‘Phi-
losophizing’ about a breakdown [das Scheitern] is separated by a chasm from
a broken down thinking. If this should fortunately come to a person, what
 Doing Postphenomenology in Education 19

would occur is no misfortune. To him would come the sole gift that could
come to thinking from being” (Heidegger in Mitchell, 2015, p. 21).
As Andrew Mitchell paraphrases, “Thinking must be broken open . . . the
gift of the break down is a break through into the world” (2015, p. 21). Such is
the gift of Heidegger’s (1962) broken hammer analysis in granting us primor-
dial entrance to what is most near: “things” and to “the being of the entities
encountered in the environment” (p. 95). The event of a breakdown—whether
a tool, one’s body, or a relation to another—may momentarily wrest from us
the stubbornness of our preconceptions (the epoché) and open the possibility
to recuperate the lifeworld as it is meaningfully constituted (the reduction).
A breakdown is thus a kind of naturally occurring epoché-reduction: what is
taken for granted falls temporarily away, and meaning structures that were in
play briefly collapse. For a moment, what we take most for granted may be
made potently visible through absence. In the context of ANT, for example,
networked assemblages and unexpected alliances may be revealed when the
binding ties are suddenly severed. In the context of postphenomenology,
a breakdown provides a reliable way of surfacing our otherwise taken-for-
granted, co-constitutive relations with technologies and thus make them
available for inquiry (Adams & Thompson, 2017).
Studying breakdowns or employing the “broken hammer” strategy is noted
by Röhl (2012a) as well as Aagaard and Matthiesen (2016). For Röhl, “the
‘broken hammer’ reveals the manifold relations educational ‘tools’ are part
of and the way objects are treated in order to overcome their material resis-
tance” (Röhl, 2012a, p. 119). He provides two examples. The first is a science
experiment that did not go as planned, the second involves a teacher who uses
an object for an unexpected purpose. In both instances the “broken hammer”
is employed by Röhl as a concept to help explain the fragility of epistemic
or knowledge objects in classrooms, to identify material “resistances” and
their visibilities (present-at-hand), and how these resistances may be over-
come (i.e., returned to ready-to-hand) for pedagogical effect. However, this
approach to studying breakdown is not what is intended by the eidetic reduc-
tion; rather it demonstrates a way to leverage the insights of (post)phenom-
enology in order to perform a sociomaterialist analysis.
By way of comparison, in her analysis of scholastic writing instruments,
Adams (2016) employs the occasion of her broken hand to perform an eidetic
reduction. She varies the example of writing with her “non-writing” hand as
well as with different instruments. In the process, she reveals how a writing
templum is convened by the knowing, writing but prereflective body in con-
gress with its instruments. Citing Merleau-Ponty’s (1945/2012) example of
an experienced organist adjusting to a new organ, Adams writes: A similar
gestural rehearsal, resizing, and resettling unfolded as I tried keyboarding
with my injured hand. My writing instruments—keyboard, mouse, screen,
20 Catherine Adams and Joni Turville

and word processor—had not changed, but one of my hands had. As a “sub-
ject who [had already learned] to type,” I had “literally incorporate[d] the
space of the keyboard into [my] bodily space” (Merleau-Ponty, 1945/2012,
p. 146). Trying to keyboard and mouse in this somewhat modified material
landscape, “new knot[s] of significations” began to form as my writerly body
adjusted, returned, and reorganized. With a little practice, my new hand and
finger situation were quickly inducted into and absorbed in the new arrange-
ment. An adjusted, but nonetheless wholly familiar, writing templum once
again convened. (Adams, 2016, p. 484)
Having revealed writing—no matter its instruments—as the convening
of a particular kind of practice through varying the example via a broken-
handed writing body, Adams now turns to the nuanced atmospheres opened
by different writing instruments in the midst of writing. As Ash and Simpson
(2014) maintain, a sustained attention to our lived corporeal engagements
with things is a crucial aspect of postphenomenological research. Postphe-
nomenology requires attention to embodied experience alongside “an empha-
sis on the ways in which the body-subject undergoes constant processes of
‘affectual composition’ in and through its relations with a material-agential
world” (Ash & Simpson, 2014, p. 8). Revealing the dynamism of the lived
body’s everyday engagements with its instruments demands a return to phe-
nomenological methods (such as the eidetic reduction) in order for “unseen
things [to] become ‘visible’” (Ihde, 2003, p. 20), and for the uniqueness of
the “revealing-concealing structure” (Kiran & Verbeek, 2010, p. 417) of a
particular technology in relation to its human user to be made evident.

CONCLUSION

In educational technology circles, the mantra, “it’s just a tool” is still used to
describe the belief that technology is neutral and that the teacher or student
alone is responsible for constructing educational meaning. Postphenomenol-
ogy provides a welcome ameliorative to this sovereign humanist position,
foregrounding our co-constitutive relations with our technological surround.
Gathering and reflecting on phenomenological descriptions of using tech-
nology in pedagogical situations can provide much needed insight into the
mediating influences of the wide range of technologies. As such, postphe-
nomenological studies and insight may serve in promoting more critically
circumspect applications of different technologies in pedagogical settings,
and in advancing a long-overdue revision to our taken-for-granted assump-
tions and practices with technologies in education.
Doing postphenomenogy in education involves attending to the unique
differences a particular technology makes to teaching practice, knowledge
 Doing Postphenomenology in Education 21

apprehension, and pedagogical meaning. To date, postphenomenological

methods have included data collection techniques such as ethnographic
observation, self-observation, and semi-structured interviewing, and analytic
techniques such as the “broken hammer” and variational theory. Adopting a
phenomenology of practice (van Manen, 2014) provides another empirical,
qualitative approach to examine carefully and critically the mediating effects
of individual technologies. A postphenomenology of practice recovers pre-
reflective experiences of our everyday relations with technology as crucial
data in its empirical studies. It also reinstates the epoché-reduction couplet as
a core philosophic method in postphenomenology’s repertoire of heuristics.
The place of the “broken hammer” is thus clarified not only as a concept for
interpreting socio-material results, but also as a way of proceeding reflec-
tively in performing variational analysis.
In their “Field Guide to Postphenomenology,” Rosenberger and Verbeek
(2015) tell us that postphenomenology follows no strict method. Nonetheless,
they have observed that postphenomenological studies seem to share some
characteristics such as including “empirical work as a basis for philosophic
reflection” (p. 31) and a focus on how technologies mediate human-world
relations. For Rosenberger and Verbeek, by “applying postphenomeno-
logical concepts to concrete instances of human-technology relations, the
advantages, disadvantages, limits, and places of potential expansion and
enrichment can be identified” (p. 32). We suggest that van Manen’s (2014)
“phenomenology of practice” provides another approach to postphenomenol-
ogy that leans heavily on its phenomenological roots while providing a stable
methodological ground for conducting empirical postphenomenological stud-
ies in education.

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 Chapter 2

Inviting and Interacting

Postphenomenology and the
Microsociology of Education
Tobias Röhl

INTRODUCTION

Postphenomenology is a philosophical endeavor that promises to shed light

on the ways in which humans and technology are entangled. In my ethno-
graphic research on educational artifacts (Röhl, 2012b, 2013), I used post-
phenomological concepts in order to account for the materiality of education.
Like other socio-material approaches, postphenomenology highlights that
technological artifacts are not neutral tools but mediators of perception (Ihde,
1990) and action (Verbeek, 2005). They transform how and what we perceive
and act in the world. In an “interrelational ontology” (Ihde, 2009, p. 44),
artifacts and humans co-constitute each other. In different human-technology
relations, artifacts amplify and reduce certain aspects of the world, but also
invite some actions and inhibit others. They are sensually related to our body
with its perception and abilities.
As I will argue in this paper, postphenomenology and its concepts enhance
and sensitize microsociological and ethnographic accounts of education by
opening up research for the invitational qualities of things and their bodily
interrelations with human users without trivializing them. Drawing on ethno-
methodological accounts of technology (Hindmarsh & Heath, 2000; Lynch
& Macbeth, 1998; Greiffenhagen, 2014), this bodily interrelation is further
combined with a practical interrelation in which the act of using things is
seen as constitutive part of understanding technology. Consequently, I see
technological mediation as a result of the interplay between invitational
qualities of artifacts and their practical use, and argue for a further pragma-
tization of postphenomenology. This pragmatization builds on ethnographic

27
28 Tobias Röhl

observations of situated use of technology and extends postphenomenology’s

idea of “multistability” (Ihde, 1990, p. 144). For postphenomenology, tech-
nologies are “multistable”—that is, their purpose is not predetermined, but
can vary in different contexts. While multistability is an important concept
for postphenomenology, it is often something to be demonstrated (e.g., Ihde,
2009, p. 17ff.), rather than being used as an analytic starting point (Rosen-
berger, 2014, p. 381). As I will show, this analytic shift can be achieved by
including the microsociological notion of situated use. What technologies are,
for all practical purposes in a given situation, is also shaped by the varying
way they are used and talked about; and this, in turn, displays to others how
these artifacts are to be understood here and now.
In order to build my argument, I will first describe two types of engaging
with educational artifacts that I encountered in my previous research. I will
conclude my discussion by outlining methodological consequences of an
approach combining postphenomenological concepts with microsociologi-
cal research. While I make use of examples from the field of education, this
approach can be applied to other fields as well.

WORKING THROUGH AND WITH THINGS:

MEDIA AND EPISTEMIC OBJECTS

In the following, I will show how the invitational qualities of artifacts in

human-technology relations mediate the ways in which teachers and students
participate in education; and how this, in turn, enacts different types of arti-
facts. This enactment, however, does not solely rest on the invitational quali-
ties of artifacts, but on the practical achievements of teachers, students and
manufacturers: they work through and with things to enable their invitational
qualities. The data presented here originates from ethnographic research on
the role of artifacts in mathematics and science classes in German secondary
schools (Röhl, 2013).

Transparent Media—Working Through Things

In education, a number of different media figure prominently in teaching
and learning: blackboards, whiteboards (analogue and digital), notebooks,
textbooks, projectors, televisions sets, video recorders, computers and tab-
lets, and so forth. Some of them are established and commonplace tools of
teaching (e.g., the blackboard); others can less frequently be encountered
in the classroom and made their educational appearance only recently (e.g.,
PowerPoint presentations; see Adams, 2008). They are used to convey and
distribute academic knowledge by different modalities (visual, auditory,
 Inviting and Interacting 29

semiotic). Some, like the blackboard, are reserved for the teacher; others,
like the textbook, are distributed evenly among all participants. While some
of them can be filled ad hoc with content in the classroom (e.g., notebooks,
the blackboard), others have to be prepared at home (e.g., PowerPoint pre-
sentations), or produced beforehand at a publishing house (e.g., textbooks)
or manufacturing company (e.g., demonstration experiments). Some can be
used to address the whole class at once (e.g., demonstration experiments,
whiteboards), others can only be used by a few persons at a time (e.g., text-
books, hands-on experiments).
Despite these differences, all these various artifacts can be described as
media: they distinguish between a thematic foreground and a background—
that is, they let us see something differently, or make something absent pres-
ent, while at the same time repressing some features (Krämer, 2015; Wiesing,
2010). As such, they are part of “relations of mediation” (Ihde, 1990, p.
72ff.). They mediate the ways in which we perceive the world by becoming
quasi-transparent. As “screens” (Introna & Ilharco, 2006), many educational
media hold our attention and frame what is shown as relevant. While we
focus our attention toward something that is shown, we are not concerned
with the act of showing and how it is brought about (Debray, 2004). Like
Heidegger’s equipment (Zeug; 1962, pp. 66–88), media are “ready-to-hand”
and thus not themselves objects of our immediate attention. Instead, we turn
our attention toward the things made present by media.
This “hermeneutic transparency” (Ihde, 1990, p. 82) of educational media
is the result of choices made by manufacturers and school administrators
before class starts. This can be illustrated by taking a close look at one par-
ticular blackboard in a German school (see Figure 2.1). Since its surface
is painted in dark green, the blackboard in German schools is actually a

Figure 2.1 A blackboard in a German school run by the Catholic Church (Tobias Röhl).
30 Tobias Röhl

“greenboard.” The dark and inconspicuous color of the surface contrasts with
traces of white chalk applied to it and does not attract attention when the
blackboard is not in use. The green surface is encased in a metal frame. Like
other frames, it clearly distinguishes between an inside and an outside, thus
denoting a relevant subject matter. Paraphernalia, like a cleaning cloth, can
be placed in a tray beneath the frame. And the blackboard resides literally
in the background of the classroom, fastened to the wall, towards which all
students are aligned at their desks and chairs. Without much effort, they can
look at it and see what is written on its surface. At the same time, the teacher
is positioned next to it at his or her desk. While the blackboard behind him or
her, and thus visually less accessible, the teacher can easily write on it. Two
groups are spatially positioned in a way that facilitates specific ways of using
the blackboard: viewing from a distance (students), and writing in proximity
(teachers). By reducing any obstacles that may stand in the way of a “ready-
to-hand” use, the blackboard can quite effortlessly serve as a medium in
which some things (its surface, our bodily positions towards it, some of its
components) can be relegated to the thematic background while other things
come to the thematic foreground (the writing on its surface).
But how do teachers and students achieve this in the classroom? Using the
blackboard as an example, I will show how educational media are made in the
classroom, and become part of quasi-transparent relations of mediation. The
blackboard has been a constitutive part of classroom teaching in many West-
ern countries for roughly 200 years (Kidwell, Ackerberg-Hastings, & Rob-
erts, 2008; Hamilton, 1990, p. 75ff.). With the advent of classroom teaching
in the 19th century, it was established as a focal point of classroom discourse.
Classroom discourse typically revolves around “elicitation sequences”
(Mehan, 1998, p. 121) in which a teacher’s initiation (usually a question)
is met by a student’s response, followed by an evaluation of that response
through the teacher. This seemingly dialogic sequence is always directed at
the whole class. With the blackboard, this sequence is further affirmed by
creating a collective focus for the teacher’s initiation; and also by creating a
place where correct responses by students can be recorded, and thus turned
into authorized knowledge through the teacher’s hand, equipped with chalk.
Teachers and students direct their attention toward the blackboard fre-
quently and it figures prominently in classroom discourse (see also Kalthoff
& Röhl, 2011). Students are usually copying what is written on it into their
notebooks, without any prompts by their teachers. Instead, teachers often
have to remind their students that they have to wait before they are supposed
to write something down if they want to elaborate an argument or develop
a formula together with the class: “You don’t need to write that down!”;
“Pencils down and close your notebooks! There is something we need to
think about!”; “Please wait till you write it down!” (classroom observations;
 Inviting and Interacting 31

Röhl, 2013, p. 95ff.). This illustrates that copying is the prevalent activity
in the classroom established around and with the blackboard. Especially in
lower grades, students often aim to make an exact copy of the writings on
the blackboard as evidenced by questions such as “Is that a heading?” “Are
we supposed to colour that as well?” (classroom observations; Röhl, 2013, p.
95ff.). While it is an important part of the activities of teachers and students,
the blackboard itself remains silent and rather passive. Teachers and students
usually do not talk about the blackboard itself, but about their activities
directed at it and the results of these activities—writing on the blackboard is
in its double sense (activity, result) in the thematic foreground of the partici-
pants of school lessons: “I’ll write down the important stuff you need to learn
on the blackboard”; “I’m writing the example down”; “Open your notebooks
and copy that!” (classroom observations; Röhl, 2013, p. 95ff.). That teachers
and students direct their attention toward what is written on the blackboard,
but not the blackboard itself, is taken for granted during class. Indeed, as a
researcher I was often busy writing down what was on the board and forgot
to take notice of how this was supported by the blackboard and how this
affected students. I was similarly affected by the blackboard’s qualities as a
medium and reacted accordingly. Outside of class (e.g., during breaks), the
blackboard can, however, easily become something else. The typical black-
board used in German schools with its foldable wings can, for example, serve
as a hideout from other students, or as a cover from thrown objects like paper
balls. It is then no longer an academic medium but an object used as a tool
for something else.
By writing on the blackboard, teachers do not simply list a number of
propositions or “hard” facts, but create a meaningful order.1 Texts are
neither written nor read in a linear fashion (Engert & Krey, 2013; Krämer,
2003). Instead, different textual elements (headings, paragraphs, text
boxes, sketches, diagrams, formulas, etc.) are distinguished from each
other typographically (by size, underlining, coloring, framing), and spa-
tially related to each other (below/above, left/right, middle section/side
sections). Teachers work on a semantically charged field in which different
textual elements lend meaning to each other. Certain elements (important
formulas, rote definitions) are singled out and thus highlighted in their
relevance, by the teachers not only verbally stating their importance, but
also by marking them visually with lines and colors. Other elements are
relegated to less conspicuous places, like the side sections—for example,
auxiliary calculations, homework assignments, administrative dates, and
so on. The middle section usually signifies the main narrative of a lesson,
and so on. What is written on the blackboard thus becomes meaningful,
not by simply being there, but as a result of the participants’ actions in
the classroom. By writing something down in a specific place (e.g., as
32 Tobias Röhl

a headline), but also by referring to it verbally and gesturally, teachers

often signify certain sections as important and assign specific disciplinary
meaning to them: “What is important here [pointing to a formula]?”; “That
[pointing to formula] is a differential equation!”; “That [pointing to x-axis]
is what we call x, and that [pointing to y-axis] is what we call y.” Students
similarly try to make sense of the blackboard and assume that there is a
meaningful order: “Why is there a 2 in parentheses?”; “Is that [pointing
to the upper half of the blackboard] a heading?” (classroom observations;
Röhl, 2013, p. 95ff.).
The blackboard and its writings also frame what happens in the classroom.
Fickle classroom discourse is transformed into reproducible writing. Head-
ings on the blackboard often serve as a reminder of what is talked about. Inap-
propriate remarks of students are postponed or rejected by referring to the
heading on the blackboard. Therefore, a “public curricular field” (Macbeth,
2000, p. 36) is created that establishes a focal point for all participants. As
soon as the lessons start, everything on the blackboard is thus a meaningful
place. Even the empty blackboard is just a canvas for classroom discourse
that has yet to be filled. And everything left empty can either later be written
on or is left blank intentionally, and thus itself meaningful. By writing on the
blackboard, teachers not only leave traces of chalk but also distinguishable
empty spaces that signify something:

The experiment is sketched on the blackboard [see Figure 2.2]. One student asks
about the “gap” between the two electric fields, “Querfeld” and “Längsfeld,” in
the sketch: “The gap, is it intentional?” The teacher affirms this. He detaches the
component from the experimental set-up and shows it to the class, so that they

Figure 2.2 A meaningful gap on the blackboard (Tobias Röhl).

 Inviting and Interacting 33

can see the “gap” at the device. Finally, he labels the “gap” on the blackboard:
“feldfreier Bereich” [field-free area]. (classroom observations, science class,
grade 12; Röhl, 2013, p. 100)

This example not only shows the relevancy and meaning of “gaps” but also
another transparency of the blackboard. Things that are turned into writing on
the blackboard, like the device in the example, are identified with the signs
representing it. Often, teachers and students point to and talk about graphi-
cal inscriptions, formulas, and names on the blackboard, while at the same
time referring to the actual objects which these represent. Even when they
are absent, past experiments and objects shown a long time ago can be made
present for the participants by evoking their written form.
The blackboard is thus enacted as an educational medium by designing its
surface non-conspicuously, placing it at a focal point of the classroom, and
by the participants focusing on the writing on its surface. A large and ever-
present artifact is thus turned into a quasi-transparent medium by the efforts
of several actors involved: educational manufacturers, school administrators,
teachers, and students. They all work through this artifact to establish it as
medium. Writing on the blackboard (both as activity and result) thus turns a
void surface into a meaningful plane.

Epistemic Objects—Working with Things

Another important educational technology can be found in objects which
are used to present knowledge themselves: in mathematics classes, models
display features of geometrical bodies; and in science classes, experimental
set-ups are used to show the laws of nature at work. These “epistemic things”
(Rheinberger, 1997) differ from educational media, like the blackboard,
insofar as they are not simply re-presenting curricular knowledge but pre-
senting and embodying it (Mitchell, 1990; see also Kalthoff & Falkenberg,
2008). Consequently, a geometrical model is not just a sign but is indeed the
geometrical body it re-presents. And experimental set-ups similarly not only
stand for the laws of nature, but also demonstrate them at work. In terms of
human-technology relations, we can classify the connections between these
epistemic objects and human subjects as “alterity relations” (Ihde, 1990, p.
97ff.). We encounter something, as autonomous beings, that is independent
from us and captivates our attention by its otherness.
Again, we can identify features that lend these objects to such relations.
There are a number of manufacturers that produce epistemic objects for
educational purposes. These objects all share a common feature—they are
reduced to their essential and most relevant characteristics with regard to
their educational purpose. If we take a close look at one of these objects,
34 Tobias Röhl

this becomes clear (see Figure 2.3). This model of a geometrical prism
contains three pyramids. The prism is used to teach students the formula
needed to calculate the volume of pyramids. By comparing the height and
the base area of the pyramids to that of the prism, one can demonstrate that
the formula is exactly one-third of the formula for prisms. While many dif-
ferent things can be described as geometrical prisms, one of the teachers I
observed used this model and not some box. What makes the model better
suited for educational purposes than household items and other things? The
geometrical model is a purified object that is entirely devoted to its use as
an educational artifact, demonstrating geometrical features of prisms and
pyramids. There are no signs on its surface, it does not resemble anything
else, but stands for itself. Its transparency lets one see inside, and thus the
three pyramids it contains. The pyramids are clearly distinguished by their
color—indeed, the sole purpose of the different colors is to quickly identify
the shapes of three individual pyramids. Consequently, one can say that the
purification and reduction of the object serves two purposes: First, from
the perspective of the teacher, it can easily be used as a tool to teach and
is—in this regard—transparent; students do not get distracted by features
that are irrelevant to geometry (other purposes of an object, signs that invite

Figure 2.3 Geometrical model of a prism containing three pyramids (Tobias Röhl).
 Inviting and Interacting 35

interpretation etc.). Second, by focusing on educationally relevant features

they become at the same time amplified; these features are thus conspicu-
ously presented as something which confronts us. It is this conspicuous
embodiment of relevant features that turns epistemic objects, like the prism
and its pyramids, into something opposed to us as subjects.2 When one of
the teachers I observed used the model of an airplane to show the students
that one can discern its volume by assuming it is cylindrical in shape, he
had to put much more effort and time into the transformation of an artifact
into an epistemic object of geometry. In contrast to the prism, the airplane
model is endowed with a number of qualities that distract from its status
as cylindrical object: it is painted like its real-world counterpart, there are
logos and writings on it, it has windows, wings, engines, and so forth.
How do students and teachers work with epistemic objects? In order to
answer this question, I summarize some of my classroom observations of
mathematics and science classes in German secondary schools in the fol-
lowing paragraphs (Röhl, 2013, p. 65ff.): Before epistemic objects enter the
classroom their use is often rehearsed. In the case of experimental set-ups,
teachers usually have to assemble different components and parts. They do
this in preparation rooms where a number of different experiments and other
educational tools are stored. After their assembly, teachers test if the experi-
ment runs correctly and if it is clearly visible in front of a classroom full
of students. When I observed them in the preparation rooms, the following
questions where relevant for the teachers working on the experiments: Does
the experiment work at all? Do the measurements adhere to the theoretical
assumptions? Is the phenomenon visible from a distance? In their prepara-
tions they assure that a scientific phenomenon is visibly embodied by the
experimental arrangement.
When the epistemic objects enter the classroom they are often placed at
some place next to/at the side of the teacher’s desk and not yet mentioned.
Before the demonstration can start, a new topic has to be introduced and
talked about. During this verbal introduction, I could observe that teachers
turn their attention fully toward the class and ignore the experimental set-
up. Sometimes teachers have to assemble or adjust something, before they
can begin with the experiment. Usually teachers do not comment these last-
minute preparations and carry them out while the class is doing something
else (e.g., writing something lengthy down). In one instance where a teacher
commented on what she was doing, she kept her voice down and made clear
that her activity was not part of the actual experiment but indeed preparatory:
“This isn’t part of the experiment yet!” (classroom observations; Röhl, 2013,
p. 71). With their comments (or their omission) teachers signify preparatory
activities as being profane and irrelevant acts beyond curricular knowledge.
36 Tobias Röhl

In my field notes, teachers then often proceeded to place the experimental

set-up prominently in the middle of the desk, making it the center of atten-
tion. Many even introduce the object explicitly by giving names to it or some
of its parts:

Now a little experiment! This [points to experimental set-up] is a basin filled

with water, a 1-cent coin, and a copper pipe. (classroom observation, science
class, grade 7; Röhl, 2013, p. 73)

Alright, horizontal launch of a projectile, this would be something like that

[goes to experimental set-up and tinkers with it]. We have here some kind of
spring which you can tension [tensions the spring] and then I can release it and
then it shoots somewhere [releases spring]. Fantastic, isn’t it? (classroom obser-
vation, science class, grade 11; Röhl, 2013, p. 73)

By giving a name to them, both teachers in the above examples select some
things. This serves two purposes. Firstly, elements are singled out to which
the class can refer verbally. Secondly, these elements are assigned relevancy
for disciplinary knowledge. Many parts of the experimental set-ups are
not mentioned at all: clamps and screws may hold the set-up together and
guarantee its execution, they are, however, not granted a name in classroom
discourse. Nevertheless, students sometimes fail to see the named objects and
their components in a purely disciplinary way—they, for example, identify
(often jokingly) certain components with household items and let the class
know what it looks like to them. Confronted with a blower that had a hose
attached to it a student in one class exclaimed ironically: “Cool! A vacuum
cleaner.”
Finally, the experiment can be executed. Teachers prepare their students for
the moment of execution and signify an adequate moment of observation: “Well,
alright then!”; “Alright then. Ready, steady, go!” Often teachers also suggest how
to observe the experiment: “Everyone look ahead!”; “Look carefully!”; “Pencils
down! Look here!” (classroom observations; Röhl, 2013, pp. 79–80). The pre-
ferred sense is seeing—a visual event is to be observed. Elements that are not
relevant are often explicitly excluded by stating their irrelevance: “This box just
serves as a resonating body!”; “Unfortunately the acrylic glass is reflecting light
as well, but this is not what it is about!” (classroom observations; Röhl, 2013, pp.
74, 81). Again, teachers shape how the experiment is perceived by distinguishing
relevant and irrelevant elements and phenomena from each other. A “disciplin-
ary vision” (Kalthoff & Röhl, 2011) is practically enabled in which things are
to be seen from the perspective of an academic discipline. Seeing something
as something is thus a practical achievement of the participants (see Goodwin,
1994; Lynch & Macbeth, 1998; Schindler, 2009). After the experiment has been
conducted, teachers and students transform their observations into linguistic
 Inviting and Interacting 37

signs—both verbally and in writing on the blackboard and in the notebooks of

students. This is the culmination of the disciplinary vision. The written formula
on the blackboard only preserves a highly abstracted and generalized version of
the demonstration—features that are seen as secondary to the experiment—like
clamps and screws, colors, and so on, but also accidents and breakdowns—are,
however, left out. A present thing is turned into a representation of selected
features. By seeing disciplinary, some things are lost (clamps, screws, accidents,
etc.); others, however, are gained (being able to generalize and extend idiosyn-
cratic observations to other cases, being able to calculate and predict, etc.) (see
also Latour, 1999).
The alterity of epistemic objects is highly manufactured and tamed. Sci-
ence classes do not aim to let the things speak for themselves or to return to
the things of the lifeworld. Instead, they can be seen as an attempt to disci-
pline things in two ways—by making them work orderly and by making them
part of a knowledge order of an academic discipline. Teachers thus work on
a very specific alterity: phenomenon and thing become one in order to act as
an independent entity that stands in contrast to other things and the human
participants in the classroom; yet, they are restricted in their independence
granted to them. Sooner or later, the otherness of epistemic objects is turned
into a predictable and calculable formula.

METHODOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES

What are methodological consequences of such an approach to (educational)

technologies? In an earlier article, I outlined three general analytic strategies
or stances that let us tackle the materiality of education (Röhl, 2012a; see also
Adams & Thompson, 2011). Here I want to show more concrete methods that
allow us to deal with these issues. In the previous section, different methods
were implicitly employed to show the interplay of invitational qualities of
educational artifacts and the activities connected to them.
Contrasting and comparing is one of the main operations of qualitative
social research (e.g., Corbin & Strauss, 2008). By comparing data with other
data, one can gain insights about the specific quality of given data material. It
also enables an analytic perspective in which both the idiosyncrasies and the
taken-for-granted nature of one’s data are irritated. Ihde similarly argues for a
pragmatic take on phenomenology’s eidetic variation (2009, p. 12ff.). Instead
of searching epistemologically for invariable essences, postphenomenology is
interested in pragmatic and empirical variations of “multistable” (Ihde, 2009,
p. 16) artifacts. Technological artifacts are not endowed with an essence
that determines their use once and for all. They are developed in different
directions, used in different ways, and so on. By comparing these different
38 Tobias Röhl

developments and uses and by systematically varying features of artifacts one

can, however, gain insights into the bodily relations that a technology opens
up—either on the level of perception (“amplification”/“reduction”; Ihde,
1990) or on the level of action (“invitation”/“inhibition”; Verbeek, 2005).
Often, this is achieved by discussing examples from the history of technology
(e.g., Ihde, 2009) or new technological developments (e.g., Verbeek, 2011).
In both cases, however, this takes on the form of case studies that tend to
emphasize general features of a technology and its use. While this approach
avoids the pitfalls of romanticizing technology and analyzing technology as
an abstract attitude characteristic of modernity—prevalent, for example, in
Heidegger’s accounts (Ihde, 1993)—it neglects the microsociological analy-
sis of socially situated use, and how this use frames what things are to human
actors and thus what can and cannot be done with them.
Consequently, I would like to take up the idea of variation and develop it
into a tool for microsociological ethnographic research. Variation, then, is
not something undertaken solely on the level of different (often historical)
examples of technologies, but as something that can be found in ethno-
graphic data of technology in use. From a sociological viewpoint, this has
the advantage of being grounded in data that demonstrates how technology is
actually used. Microsociological accounts of technology show that we are not
determined by technology and that their use is not a secondary phenomenon.
Instead, the context of use is seen as highly relevant, since it is here where
things receive their practical meaning: “the sense and significance of objects
emerge within the developing course of action and interaction; their objective
and determinate sense is intersubjectively and momentarily accomplished
‘here and now’” (Hindmarsh & Heath, 2000, p. 558). Things are worked on
and change their status accordingly for the actors involved—for example, by
pointing toward and talking about the screens in front of them, co-workers
in a telecommunication control center create a shared definition of what they
see. By turning variation into an analytic tool to investigate ethnographic
data, one can account both for this situated use and the invitational qualities
of artifacts. This empirical variation can assume different shapes. In the pre-
ceding sections, the following methods were used: (1) maximally contrasting
artifacts, (2) minimally contrasting artifacts, (3) contrasting contexts of use,
and (4) auto-ethnographic observations.3

Maximally Contrasting Artifacts

By comparing and contrasting two types of different artifacts it is possible to
gain insights into the specific features of a given technology. In the case of edu-
cational artifacts, one can easily classify quasi-transparent media and epistemic
objects as two different categories. They belong to different categories not just
 Inviting and Interacting 39

by being designed differently but also by being used in fundamentally different

ways. Media, like the blackboard, are used to represent something which, in
turn, is talked about, copied, and so on. The medium itself is absent from the
thematic foreground of participants’ actions and efforts. By treating the black-
board as something which does its job in the background, and by putting effort
into its transparency, it is indeed performed as a medium with a meaningful
plane on which to operate. Epistemic objects, on the other hand, are worth talk-
ing about from the perspective of teachers and students. For them, they embody
knowledge and are thus treated as being endowed with a fascinating “presence”
(Gumbrecht, 2004) of an object in its otherness. By making them the focal point
of their activities, participants turn them into something worthy of taking center
stage. And at the same time, these artifacts are enacted as objects in the nar-
row sense—they are seen as something independent from us and our activities.
Ultimately, we can identify two objects that are made differently at two points:
in development/design and in actual use. At the same time, these analyses show
that there are also overlaps between these two types of artifacts.

Minimally Contrasting Artifacts

Another way of contrasting artifacts is to take two artifacts that are used for
similar purposes. This is an operation of minimal contrast in which one can
dig deeper into the invitational qualities of technology. How can one explain
the different ways that an artifact is used? Why is an artifact designed in a
specific way? How do different qualities contribute to its actual use? In the
case of educational technologies, I could show that artifacts that are specifi-
cally designed for educational purposes are more easily integrated into class-
room discourse. This was achieved by contrasting the geometrical prism and
the airplane model. In doing so, features of an educational design could be
identified: the educational purification and disambiguation of artifacts.

Contrasting Contexts of Use

Technological artifacts are not determining practice, but inviting differ-
ent ways of using them. This is one of the insights of postphenomological
thought. This is also in line with practice theory as envisioned by Schatzki
(2002). How artifacts are used is not a question of enforcement but one of
adequacy and appropriateness (Schatzki, 2002, p. 210ff.). Educational arti-
facts, in particular, invite us to use and see them disciplinarily, there are no
“scripts” (Latour, 1994) that enforce a certain way of using them. To put it
differently: the artifacts described here are not Latourian speed bumps, but
open to re-interpretation and re-purpose. When teachers and students work
on things to turn them step-by-step into epistemic objects, they dynamically
40 Tobias Röhl

change them. Something which attracts attention by being there and behaving
unexpectedly is finally tamed by transforming it into signs on the blackboard.
And when students use the blackboard as a prop in their peer cultural activi-
ties and direct their attention toward the thing itself, we can see more clearly
how, in contrast, it is used as a medium. Or when students see epistemic
objects not as educational artifacts but as household items, then we can simi-
larly glimpse the efforts that go into enacting them as embodiment of a disci-
plined otherness. In that sense, contrasting contexts of use is another way of
exploring the postphenomenological notion of multistability. Yet, it extends
this notion by looking for this multistability in ethnographically observed
situations where a particular artifact was used.

Auto-ethnographic Observations
The last method I want to discuss is not about contrasting data. Instead it relies
on a reflective attitude in which the researcher becomes the object of his or her
own observations. This can be achieved by either focusing on one’s own reac-
tions and writing them down, or by using previously recorded data and asking
about the taken-for-granted assumptions therein. This was done by analyzing
how different ways of observing are required when we encounter either the
blackboard or the experiments in the classroom. In the case of educational
media we need to turn our attention toward features that the participants them-
selves are ignoring. By assuming such an analytic stance from time to time in
the field, we can make features visible to research that are usually taken for
granted. This holds especially true for socio-material research where we have to
challenge our everyday modernist assumption, in which objects are mere tools
used by human subjects, both in their separate worlds (Latour, 1993). Addition-
ally, both phenomenology (e.g., Heidegger, 1962) and pragmatism (e.g., Mead,
1972) teach us that objects reside in the thematic background when we use
them, thus becoming inconspicuous. Consequently, we need an analytic stance
that deviates from those of the people we are observing if we are interested in
the pragmatic knowledge surrounding technology and its use.
In employing these methods I could show how a socio-material and micro-
sociological account of education can benefit from postphenomenological
concepts like mediation, human-technology relations and variation. This
opens up microsociological research for the sensual qualities of artifacts and
the bodily relations between them and their users. Artifacts are not solely
shaped by their use, but have qualities beyond that (Harman, 2009). Postphe-
nomenology, on the other hand, can gain a better insight into the pragmatic
and situated side of technological mediation. Human-technology relations
are worked upon and brought about by actors engaging in them. This also
highlights that human-technology relations are not clear cut categories, but
 Inviting and Interacting 41

denote a dynamic range in which we have to constantly situate ourselves in

face of artifacts surrounding us and our practice. The alterity of epistemic
objects in education, for example, is a practically controlled and situatedly
specified otherness that deviates from that of the toys and robots described
by Ihde (1990). And while microsociology extends its scope beyond human
actions, postphenomenological analyses are validated and further elaborated
upon through ethnographic and microsociological research. Socio-material
practice can thus ultimately be described as interplay between invitational
qualities of artifacts and the way in which we interact with them.

NOTES

1. For the field of university mathematics Greiffenhagen (2014) similarly observed

that by writing on the blackboard an “organized body of knowledge” (513) is brought
about.
2. In that regard educational epistemic objects are also media: some features are
highlighted (e.g., geometrical features), others are inhibited (e.g., mundane associa-
tions). Both (media and objects) bring some things into the thematic foreground, and
others into the thematic background. In the case of educational epistemic objects,
however, what is brought into the foreground is present in the object itself—and not
another re-presentation (like the writing on the blackboard). One could also argue
that educational epistemic objects rest on qualities that are more akin to “technical
things” (Rheinberger, 1997): they have qualities that make them reliable tools (Zeug;
Heidegger, 1962, pp. 66–88) to display other qualities that raise questions and are
experienced as something independent from us and opposed to us.
3. In a similar vein, Rosenberger (2014) describes how “variational cross-exami-
nation” can be used to extend the postphenomenonological notion of multistability.
By brainstorming different possibilities for the design of the analyzed artifact, its use,
and its relation to other human and nonhuman actors one can outline what makes spe-
cific human-technology relations stable (or unstable). In contrast to this quasi-eidetic
approach, my methods rely on ethnographic observations and comparisons. Neverthe-
less, both approaches acknowledge that situated use contributes to the stabilization of
objects.

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 Chapter 3

Entering the Portal

Media Technologies and
Experiential Transportation
Jesper Aagaard

In How We Became Posthuman (1999), N. Katherine Hayles writes that

“when people begin using their bodies in significantly different ways, either
because of technological innovations or other cultural shifts, changing experi-
ences of embodiment bubble up into language, affecting the metaphoric net-
works at play within culture” (p. 206). Arguably, one of the most significant
cultural shifts of the 21st century has been the increasing influx of digital
technologies. The contemporary landscape is characterized by what has been
called an invasion of glowing rectangles (McCullough, 2013). But what are
the repercussions of this digital colonization of the human lifeworld? How,
for instance, does it affect our everyday experiences of space and time? And
how is it best embedded in what Hayles calls “metaphoric networks”? In my
research on technological mediation of attention, I have long looked for ways
to understand the phenomenological role of media technologies in our lives.
In this endeavor, I stumbled upon Galit Wellner’s (2011) promising post-
phenomenological metaphor of a wall-window. By comparing this metaphor
to my own empirical material as well as my experience as a technologically
equipped citizen, however, I eventually came to disagree with its radical con-
ceptualization of technologically mediated attention.
The purpose of this chapter is to sketch out an empirically informed alter-
native metaphor for media engagement. Based on empirical material from a
qualitative study in a Danish business college, I argue that we can understand
engagement with media technologies in terms of another architectural meta-
phor, namely that of a portal. This metaphor entails a specific understanding
of technologically mediated attention: whereas the wall-window metaphor
leads to optimist ideas about so-called non-reductive attentional splitting

45
46 Jesper Aagaard

between physical and virtual space, the portal suggests that this kind of flaw-
less multitasking is in fact impossible. The rest of the chapter is structured as
follows: First, I flesh out the wall-window metaphor in terms of its meaning
and its unorthodox notions of attention. I then point out what I perceive as
flaws in the metaphor and use illustrations from my empirical research to
argue that we should instead conceptualize our engagement with media tech-
nologies in terms of a portal, which opens up to considerations of absence
and presence. I then go on to discuss methodological issues of interest to an
empirically informed postphenomenology. Finally, I address the ethics of
attention implied by the metaphor of the portal.

THE WALL-WINDOW: NON-REDUCTIVE

ATTENTIONAL SPLIT

When using a technology, there are multiple ways we can relate to it. It is
multistable (Ihde, 1977). This means a technological artifact does not have an
essence, but in fact supports several coherent stabilities. Using this postphe-
nomenological insight, Galit Wellner (2011) proposes that one stable way we
relate to cellphones is as a wall-window: when using a cellphone, you erect
an imaginary wall between yourself and your immediate circumstances (e.g.,
the train), while the phone provides a window to remote space (e.g., the space
of your interlocutor). Wellner goes on to suggest that this wall-window meta-
phor can be extrapolated to all media technologies. In the case of the com-
puter, for instance, the window then refers to the remote space of the Internet
as seen through the screen. According to Wellner, the common denominator
of all media technologies is their “capacity to dislocate our attention to other
places (remote in place, time or imaginary), while our physical body remains
in full engagement with the surroundings” (2011, p. 95; emphasis mine). As
implied by the casual juxtaposition of “dislocated attention” and “full engage-
ment,” the wall-window rejects conventional notions of attention in which the
more attention you give to virtual space, the less you give to your immediate
surroundings, and vice versa.
Wellner presents the revolutionary possibility of a non-reductive atten-
tional split in which attention is paid to both virtual space and one’s imme-
diate surroundings. By doing so, she effectively replaces the traditional
zero-sum understanding of attention with a kind of win-win situation: “It
is not an ‘either-or’ relation,” she claims, “but an ‘and-and’ that covers the
physical and the remote spaces” (2011, p. 97). A closer look at the wall-
window metaphor thus shows that it does not abide by the normal semantics
of “window”: windows exist to allow ventilation and the passage of light
into closed off buildings. Without walls, there is neither need nor place for
 Entering the Portal 47

windows. According to this logic, any time a person engages with a “win-
dow” to remote space, this person must already have erected a “wall” to
his or her surroundings. This, however, is not how the metaphor is built.
Instead, the wall-window is conceived as a unitary phenomenon comparable
to “transparent floor-to-ceiling walls” (Wellner, 2011, p. 80). In other words,
the wall-window is envisioned through the language of the gaze in which
a user may simultaneously peek through a transparent wall and a window.
Wellner illustrates such non-reductive attentional splits through descriptions
of teenagers who do their homework with the TV on and so-called persistent
phone users who continue to perform here-and-now activities while engaging
with their phones.
It is worth noting that this idea of a non-reductive attentional split closely
coincides with popular notions of young people as digital natives (Prensky,
2001) or a kind of net generation (Tapscott, 1998). According to these
discourses, frequent interactions with media technologies have rewired the
brains of today’s youth and given them an almost innate ability to attend to
multiple streams of information simultaneously. Indeed, Wellner (2014a) has
recently argued that “we can re-wire our brains, because the brain is plastic,
that is highly flexible in its ability to adapt to various forms of technologies,
situations and experiences, such as celling while driving” (p. 6). In other
words, the youth of today are considered superb multitaskers. As claimed
in the now-famous and oft-cited anthology Educating the Net Generation
(2005), “Net Gen students are facile at multitasking and moving back and
forth (sometimes rapidly) between real and virtual spaces” (Brown, 2005,
p. 176). As these new generations enter our schools, it is argued, we must
reconfigure the educational system to accommodate to their new ways of
learning: students will be bored without the rapid changes that media tech-
nologies can provide, and media multitasking engages them because it allows
them to do several things at once. It is with this rosy picture of multitasking
that I take issue. A plethora of scientific research shows that young people
are not the superb multitaskers that the digital natives discourse portrays them
to be (Aagaard, 2014). If teenagers do their homework with the TV on, for
instance, it significantly impairs their homework performance (Pool, Kool-
stra, & van der Voort, 2003). The accompanying idea of “persistent phone
use” is what this chapter sets out to challenge.

THE PORTAL: EXPERIENTIAL TRANSPORTATION

Using illustrations from my empirical work, I will argue that salient aspects
of the experience of using media technologies are best conceived through
the metaphor of a portal. Before presenting my empirical material, however,
48 Jesper Aagaard

I want to emphasize that I appreciate Wellner’s (2011) attempt to flesh out

the phenomenology of media technologies. In fact, the notion of a portal can
be said to spring from the margins of her article: Wellner’s (2011) descrip-
tions of media use contain notions of being “transported” to a remote space
through technology (p. 81), and of a texting student “returning” to class (p.
92); notions that can hardly be explained through images of transparent floor-
to-ceiling walls. In an essay on Husserl entitled “The Philosopher and His
Shadow” (1964), Merleau-Ponty cites Heidegger’s remark that “the greater
the work accomplished . . . the richer the unthought-of element in the work”
(p. 160), and uses this idea to get at aspects of Husserl’s work that pervade
his work, but are so close to him that Husserl himself was unable to see them.
In what follows, I use this cooperative strategy in an attempt to get at hitherto
unthought-of elements in Wellner’s writing.

Situating the Current Study

Let me begin by briefly situating my research project: The empirical material
presented here is part of a broader study on technological mediation of atten-
tion in an educational context. The study is conducted as a long-term, multi-
method qualitative inquiry at a large business college in urban Denmark. The
fieldwork began in August 2013 and spanned a year and a half. After six
months of open, ethnographic participant observation in various classrooms, I
started formally interviewing individual students about their use of technolo-
gies. These interviews were semi-structured, meaning they took departure in
an interview guide, yet remained flexible enough to explore spontaneously
occurring “red lights” such as unusual terms or intonations in the participants’
answers (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2008, p. 135). All participants volunteered
and were not paid for any of their involvement. During my observations, I
had noticed how students often used educationally unrelated websites during
class (Aagaard, 2016a). Students reacted particularly strongly against any
kind of perceived passivity, which they seemed to find almost unbearably
boring (Aagaard, 2015). In an attempt to gauge whether this type of mediated
impatience was a strictly educational phenomenon, I wanted to address the
use of digital devices outside of school in settings that young people choose
freely. A number of interview questions thus regarded the students’ spare
time (“How do you use technology outside of school?” “Do you use social
media when you are with your friends?” etc.). In total, 25 students were inter-
viewed. Interviews lasted about 15 minutes each and the sound recordings
were subsequently transcribed to text. The quotations used below are those
which best illustrate the points of interest. They have been translated from
Danish to English and all names are pseudonyms.
 Entering the Portal 49

Entering Another Realm

During an interview with a student, Jim, he told me that he would often go
on Facebook or play online games during lessons he found boring. However,
Jim also told me that now, as an ambitious senior, he was trying to limit this
kind of media use, but administering this kind of self-discipline had proven
to be difficult. Jim had basically trained himself to log onto Facebook during
lessons, and breaking this habitual distraction had proven harder than he had
thought. When you have a computer right in front of you, he explained, the
pull toward social media is immense. This made me interested in Jim and his
friends’ use of phones and social media during everyday interactions.

JESPER: Do you also do that when you’re together with friends? If there’s a
break, do you go on Facebook?
JIM: A lot of people have their phones right next to them and usually have some-
thing going on. They’re either in a conversation, snapping [using Snapchat], or
on Facebook. Sometimes I think it’s annoying if you spend time with people and
they’re anti-social with their phones. So yeah, I’d say it happens.
JESPER: But you find it a bit “annoying,” you say?
JIM: Yeah, I do. The way the phone has taken control of us. You can be some-
where completely different even though you’re sitting together.
JESPER: And what is “annoying” about your friends doing that?
JIM: Well, you’re hanging out and trying to have a conversation, so it’s pretty
provocative that they’re somewhere else. You’ve come together to be together. So,
you should really be together.

Jim explains that a lot of people use their phone to access social media,
but this use has the effect of rendering the user completely unresponsive to
their friends. As Jim describes it, it is as if the user is located somewhere
completely different although he or she may be physically seated right next
to you. It feels like the person has mentally exited the room and left behind
only the empty shell of a body. At first glance, it is almost as if digital devices
are capable of instantiating a paradoxical split between the person’s body
and mind (hence the opening quote). Upon closer examination, however, it
becomes evident that media engagement involves manual comportment like
clicking, scrolling, and swiping (Friesen, 2011). But although there is never
talk of pure consciousness emanating from a body in suspended animation,
co-present friends experience a discrepancy between a person’s physical
body and their attention, which is experienced as “annoying.” In contrast to
this movement away from ones social circumstances, Jim emphasizes the
primacy of embodied situatedness: when you have shown up somewhere to
be together with your friends, he argues, it is common courtesy to devote
50 Jesper Aagaard

attention to those friends (“You’ve come together to be together. So, you

should really be together.”). Even if you might temporarily lose interest in
what is being talked about, you hang in there. Simply transporting yourself
somewhere else is “annoying,” “anti-social,” and “provocative.” When I
asked another student, Karen, whether she found it acceptable to partake in
social media when hanging out with your friends, she mirrored many of these
sentiments.

JESPER: Currently, there’s big social debate on whether it’s okay to go on Face-
book when you’re together with your friends. What do you think?
KAREN: I think it’s very rude. When you talk to people, that they just barely listen
to what you have to say.
JESPER: “Rude?” In what sense?
KAREN: You can tell that they’re focused on something else. I believe you should
be together with the people you’re with. Not just sit there and do all sorts of other
things. To me, it’s like the person went into another room and couldn’t even hear
what I’m saying, because they’re not paying attention anyway.

Continuing the normative description from above, Karen also finds it

“rude” to use social media when spending time with other people. She also
describes the situation in spatial terms: It is as if the person has gone into
another room. Notice that Karen expresses herself in cryptic and seemingly
tautological terms: “You should be together with the people you’re with.”
How can we do anything but that, a skeptic might ask. But while this state-
ment may not make much logical sense, it makes perfect phenomenological
sense as a vivid description of attention and lack thereof. Like Jim, Karen
describes how a person focused on something else feels distant, like he’s not
really there. Also like Jim, however, she describes these awkward encounters
in terms of friends’ departures. They both denounce other people’s tendency
to do annoying things with their devices, but seem to exempt themselves
from culpability when describing such everyday scenarios. Their answers
thus bring to mind the so-called social desirability bias, which is a tendency
to answer questions in a manner that is viewed favorably by others. One
possible explanation for these statements is that Jim and Karen are simply
reproducing negative discourses about digital devices perpetuated by educa-
tors, parents, and the media. Against this idea I would emphasize that many
students were acutely aware of their own use of devices. Far from merely
regurgitating familiar tales, they provided reflexive and in-depth accounts of
their own “annoying” and “rude” uses of technology. One example occurred
in an interview with the student Kent, who started out by explaining that he
gets annoyed if people scroll through Facebook while he is together with
them. I asked him what about it that annoys him.
 Entering the Portal 51

KENT: You always hear that men can’t multitask. And this is a pretty good exam-
ple that men can’t multitask when they have a phone in their hand. You’re just
inhabiting two worlds. And apparently a lot of people can’t cope with that. Some-
times I have my phone in my hands—this is something I’m quite bad at myself—
but then, if my girlfriend says something to me I have to ask, “What?” two or
three times. Then she gets annoyed with me and feels like she isn’t interesting
to listen to. But I’m not doing it on purpose. It’s basically because I’m not aware
that, “Okay, I’m now using my phone and may seem completely absent to my
surroundings.” So yeah.

As we see, Kent self-consciously shifts perspective mid-sentence and

moves from a discussion of the misdeeds of his friends to his own com-
plicated relationship to the phone. Although starting out by complaining
about other people’s tendency to use phones at inappropriate times, Kent
ends up admitting to doing the same thing himself. He explains to me that
“as a man” he cannot multitask. Instead of simultaneously inhabiting two
worlds when using his phone during conversations, what we have previ-
ously called persistent phone use, Kent actually seems “absent” from his
surroundings—much to the dismay of his girlfriend, who feels misun-
derstood and underappreciated when this happens. In this brief segment,
Kent both acknowledges that there is a problem (“this is something I’m
quite bad at myself”), and tells me that he is not doing it out of malicious
intent (“But I’m not doing it on purpose”). What we may surmise, then,
is that Kent has developed a habit that is not completely under his vol-
untary control (Aagaard, 2015). In summary, when engaging with media
technologies, people can be moved to mediated realms of elsewhere. Such
departure may to some extent depend on active intentionality on behalf
of the user, but it leaves behind an empty shell of a body to spatially
proximal companions. This is considered both annoying and rude. Hence,
when confronted with empirical realities, the notion of persistent phone
use seems to carry significant phenomenological omissions. Of course,
these empirical excerpts stem from only a few interviews, and although
the other students expressed similar sentiments, this does not preclude the
existence of persistent phone use. However, I leave the question of post-
phenomenological validity for a later section. Trusting that these excerpts
are sufficient to make my point, I subsume these descriptions under the
heading of a portal.

The Portal: Absence and Presence

The students use spatial language to describe the comportments of multi-
tasking phone users: They feel like these friends are located somewhere
52 Jesper Aagaard

completely different, like they have gone into another room, and they seem
absent from their surroundings. Based on such descriptions, I would argue
that the use of media technology is best conceived through the metaphor of a
portal. The word “portal” means doorway, entrance, or passage and descends
from Medieval Latin portāle, city gate. Phrasing media engagement in terms
of entering a portal implies movement from one place to another and for our
metaphorical purposes this means that media users are not sitting-inside-and-
looking-out at mediated content, but actively entering and exiting specific
realms. This experiential transportation is not a radically new phenomenon
that only comes into existence with the introduction of screens, but can also
be found in the familiar experience of reading books. According to Friesen
(2011), reading, writing, and surfing the web are all ways to access “another
realm of experience and meaning” (p. 83). This is not to say that the dynam-
ics in these cases are identical (see, e.g., Mangen & Kuiken, 2014). The point
is that by entering media portals, whether books or phones, we leave behind
our immediate world and its inhabitants in favor of mediated realms. Our
everyday language reveals the importance of such experiences: We can be
absorbed, immersed, captivated, engrossed, or engulfed by something. We
even speak of people being lost in a book. Hence, the portal inclines us to
discuss engagement with media technologies in terms of absence and pres-
ence in particular places (e.g., at the dinner table, in a plot, in the classroom,
or on Facebook). And because being present in two places at once is simply
not possible, we are inclined to reject the notion of non-reductive attentional
splitting. Let me be clear: I am not disputing that in certain circumstances
ones physical body can be located in two places at once (e.g., at the Rainbow
Bridge at Niagara Falls bordering Canada and the United States). What I
am claiming is that a person is not fully present in two places at once when
merely standing in the doorway or vacillating between them. This notion of
presence is tied to a phenomenological description of the human condition
as Dasein, being-there. On the basis of being-there, Martin Heidegger (1995)
addresses the privative notion of being-away:

How often it happens, in a conversation among a group of people, that we

are “not there,” how often we find that we were absent, albeit without having
fallen asleep. This not-being-there, this being-away, has nothing at all to do
with consciousness or unconsciousness in the usual sense. On the contrary, this
not-being-there can be highly conscious. In such being absent we are precisely
concerned with ourselves, or with something else. Yet this not-being-there is
nonetheless a being-away. (Heidegger, 1995, p. 63)

When conversing with my friends I can be both physically present and

highly conscious, but if my consciousness is directed elsewhere (e.g., the
contents of my smartphone), it will literally seem to my friends as if I am
 Entering the Portal 53

“not-being-there.” That this absence is experienced from the perspective of my

friends is a crucial point, which Heidegger leaves too implicit. Judgments of
absence and presence always occur from the second-person perspective, which
corresponds to ethical concerns (Friesen, 2012). As van Manen (1990) argues,
when a person says of his friend that she is lost in a book, then he is actually
the one experiencing a loss, “namely the attentive presence of his companion,”
(p. 61). The notion of a portal thus implies a perspectival shift in discussions
of multitasking: You might think you are capable of persistent phone use,
but what would your friends say? This perspectival shift explains the Carte-
sian specter that seems to haunts this chapter: While there is no discrepancy
between a person’s body and their mind, a noticeable lack of movement and
“vitality dynamics” makes it seem that way to others (Aagaard, 2016b).
Because presence is primordial, we do not ordinarily give much thought to
the presence of others during everyday conversations, but we do notice when
they are unresponsive and preoccupied with something else. This peculiar
experience constitutes a breakdown in everyday Mitsein, being-with: We get
“annoyed” or even hurt if we talk to somebody and it seems like they are not
paying attention. We feel distant from a person who is spatially close, but
mentally remote. Heidegger’s reflections on being-away obviously predate our
modern media technologies, but it does seem like contemporary artifacts such
as smartphones have made the experience proliferate. People have even coined
new terms such as “nocializing” and “phubbing” to address these issues: Nocial-
izing is the act of being out in a public setting like a bar and spending time on
a digital device instead of socializing with the people around you. Phubbing
is a portmanteau of “phone” and “snubbing” and refers to snubbing someone
in favor of a mobile phone whenever a conversation loses its appeal. Studies
of media technologies need a language that is sensitive to such human experi-
ences. The need for such expressions reveals something additional about the
use of media technologies: While the intensely immersive experience of media
portals like books and smartphones might be similar, the norms currently gov-
erning the use of such technologies are strikingly different. Personally, I have
never experienced being snubbed mid-conversation in favor of a book. What I
have experienced, however, is being snubbed in favor of social media or text
messages and, full disclosure, have occasionally snubbed others for the same
reasons. None of these cases contained non-reductive attentional splits. It seems
more appropriate to discuss such events in terms of absence and presence.

Metaphors: Semiotic Mediation

“The wall-window may be an unfortunate metaphor,” responds the skeptic,
“but why rectify a mere metaphor?” Metaphors are usually regarded as
handy shortcuts to convey complex ideas. They are instruments of thought
54 Jesper Aagaard

that explain novelty via familiarity (Radman, 1997): Time is money. Life
is a journey. The mind is a computer. Each metaphor powerfully illumi-
nates and enriches a specific idea. But metaphors are also encumbered with
assumptions, and when people use metaphors, they inadvertently embed
those assumptions into the conversation. The prominent conceptual metaphor
“argumentation is war,” for instance, structures the way we tend to argue
and discuss. We defend a standpoint, attack our opponent’s views, get shot
down, lose the argument, and so on (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). The metaphor
emphasizes the combative aspect of arguing and once this warlike relation
has been established, it becomes hard to imagine (much less conduct) argu-
ments in cooperative terms. Hence, metaphors are not just neutral rhetorical
devices that reflect a preexisting reality; they pragmatically affect how we
experience and handle everyday situations. Unfortunate metaphors may lead
to socially harmful or undesirable framings of certain phenomena (Schön,
1993). This tangible influence on our perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and
actions can be considered a kind of semiotic mediation (Brinkmann, 2014b).
Semiotic mediation is the discursive counterpart to the postphenomeno-
logically familiar notion of technological mediation. Stating that a specific
type of comportment qualifies as “non-reductive attentional splitting,” for
example, implies a different set of understandings and possibilities compared
to calling it “absence.” What’s more, such metaphors shape laws and policies
about multitasking and media use. The notion of digital natives is already
driving the debate about social, political, and educational legislation (Bennett
& Maton, 2010). Since the wall-window is so perfectly aligned with idealist
discourse on young people’s skilled use of technology, I find it urgent to iden-
tify and circumvent its inherent limitations to avoid potentially misguided
decision-making. As Richardson and Wilken (2012) argue, “The ontological
and cultural significance of the window and the frame, especially for under-
standings of media, cannot be overstated” (p. 186).

POSTPHENOMENOLOGICAL METHODOLOGY

In laying forth my empirical material, I am not advocating an incor-

poration of some sort of naïve positivism into postphenomenology nor
proposing that our discussions turn into closed questions answered only
by empirical material. I am just trying to open up the field by encourag-
ing empirical explorations of other people’s technologically mediated
experiences. Since this is still a relatively new endeavor in the field of
postphenomenology, I will discuss the two important methodological
notions of researcher reflexivity and analytical validity from this theoreti-
cal perspective.
 Entering the Portal 55

Postphenomenological Reflexivity
When it comes to researcher reflexivity, empirical branches of phenomenol-
ogy have traditionally been built around the key Husserlian epistemological
strategy of suspending ones natural attitude in an attempt to remain open
to the “things themselves” in their appearing (this maneuver is called the
epoché). According to Giorgi’s (2009) descriptive phenomenology, the
researcher must refrain from bringing in her own non-given past knowledge
to account for whatever she is trying to understand. In fact, the researcher is to
approach the research subject in a “naïve, pretheoretical way” (p. 135). This
rigorous procedure entails bracketing ones scientific understandings, past
knowledge, and personal experiences with a phenomenon. Perhaps more sur-
prisingly, we also find this decidedly Husserlian strategy in Max van Manen’s
explicitly and emphatically hermeneutic phenomenology. When describing
the epoché, van Manen (2014) talks about the mind being “cleared of gar-
bage” (p. 223) and about “freeing oneself from obstacles” (p. 228). Some
phenomenological researchers are so anxious to avoid distorting access to the
phenomenon in question that they deliberately refrain from reading research
literature until after carrying out their analyses (Ashworth, 1996). All these
recommendations seem to rely on the idea that theoretical knowledge unduly
restricts and narrows ones focus—Overgaard (2015) even calls it “the curse
of knowledge.”
I find it useful to dispel this restrictive view of knowledge. The idea that
knowledge blinds us is simply a reversal of the old Platonic dogma that
only by gaining knowledge do we see what really is. But “the reversal of
a metaphysical statement remains a metaphysical statement,” as Heidegger
reminds us (2011, p. 158). Although keeping an open mind is surely an
admirable ideal, I worry that dogmatically applying the epoché may lapse
into willful ignorance. When it comes to research, I subscribe to the prag-
matic point that knowledge shapes what we see and do as researchers. As a
qualitative researcher, I do not pretend to let a phenomenon “show itself as
itself” through some sort of mystifying epoché. When I interview students,
for instance, I do not just sit back and let rich and detailed narratives flood
me. I actively prompt, encourage, question, and respond to each remark. In
this interaction, I neither remove nor bracket any knowledge. On the contrary,
my entire research process is closely informed by my reading of postphenom-
enological theory, which I have used as a tool to help me generate empirical
material. Empirical research is never a view from nowhere. Data are always
codetermined by theory and methodology and in this respect, data is not
simply given; it is taken (Brinkmann, 2014a). This point is to be understood
in a positive way. As St. Pierre (2011) reminds us, “If we don’t read the
theoretical and philosophical literature, we have nothing much to think with
56 Jesper Aagaard

during analysis except normalized discourses that seldom explain the way
things are” (p. 614). Indeed, most mainstream psychologists would marvel at
the idea of exploring human attention through anything other than rigorously
designed randomized controlled trials.

Postphenomenological Validity
The argument that data is not simply given but taken raises the important
question of validity: How do we assess the quality of analyses? According to
van Manen (1990), a good phenomenological description resonates with lived
life and evokes the phenomenological nod of recognition. The vital factor is
not that phenomenological research claims correspond to an objective reality
cleansed of human interest (“subjective bias”), but that they tap into a realm
shared of experiences (Friesen, 2012). In a discussion of Iris Marion Young’s
feminist phenomenology, Ferguson (2009) likewise argues that a basic phe-
nomenological test of validity is whether a description resonates with us,
whether we see it as valid in our own experience: “We can only generalize
from these experiences for those with whom they resonate” (p. 54). Apply-
ing resonance as validity criterion steers between the two extremes of false
universalism (“everybody shares the same experiences”) and idiosyncratic
subjectivism (“each person’s experiences are unique”). Using Young’s article
“Throwing Like a Girl” (1980) as example, Brinkmann (2012) similarly
argues that phenomenology has the ability to “make the obvious obvious” by
pointing toward something that may have remained unnoticed all along, but
which we recognize when it is pointed out to us. The goal of phenomenology
is not to shock or surprise, but to strike a chord of familiarity with its reader.
Validity judgments regarding the notion of a media portal thus ultimately
lie with the readers of this chapter, but many technology users, this author
included, can probably recognize the experience of experiential transporta-
tion through media technologies. Everything else withdraws and fades into
the background. Even one’s physical situatedness tends to recede. As a
person that intensely dislikes flying, I frantically cling to such experiential
transportation during transatlantic flights. Wellner (2014b) similarly states,
“No wonder that dentists install televisions on the ceilings of their clinics
so that the patients’ attention is somewhat distracted from the teeth and the
treatment” (p. 58). As a branch of social science that finds its strength in
the intersubjective attunement implied by a notion of resonance, however,
we must acknowledge that descriptions of common experiences may hide
conflicts and indicate agreement where none is to be found (Friesen, 2012).
In this regard, it is important to acknowledge that Wellner (2014a) mentions
a gender divide in which male scholars seem to be cautious about multitask-
ing, whereas female scholars tend to agree that it is possible. Indeed, the idea
 Entering the Portal 57

that women are superior multitaskers is popular in both conventional wisdom

and the media. This is in line with Kent’s remark that, “You always hear that
men can’t multitask.” Against this idea, however, I cautiously note that Karen
along with several of the female students I interviewed were quite skeptical
of this gendered cliché (see also Aagaard, 2016b). Nevertheless, I would not
claim to have the final word on this subject.

CONCLUSION: THE ETHICS OF ATTENTION

In conclusion, I want to relate the metaphor of a portal to the broader field of

postphenomenology. The present discussion namely resembles another debate
on media multitasking, which has arisen within the field of postphenomenol-
ogy (see special issue of Techné; Wellner (Ed.), 2014). The core issue in this
debate is using a cell phone (or “celling”) while driving. On the one hand,
Wellner (2014b) argues that we are developing a new attentional skill, multi-
attention, which should be celebrated and practiced. Wellner (2014b) argues,
“It is up to us to train and re-wire our brain in a manner that would support
our beliefs, desires and ideologies” (p. 66). Hence, she views celling while
driving in a favorable light. On the other hand, Rosenberger (2014) warns us
against distraction caused by celling while driving and favors stricter regula-
tion. How do we make sense of the fact that both authors employ postphe-
nomenology, yet reach fundamentally opposing conclusions? I would argue
that the answer hinges on the dual role of possibility in postphenomenology.
First, there is a distinction between possible and actual: While Wellner
and Rosenberger agree on the postphenomenological notion of multista-
bility, Wellner builds on the “multi-” part and imagines possible future
variations, while Rosenberger stresses the “stability” of our present sedi-
mentations. Historically, anti-essentialist strivings led Ihde to accentuate
the “multi-” part of multistability by using variational theory to reveal
additional gestalts (or stabilities) in visually ambiguous patterns, such
as the Necker cube (Ihde, 1977). Later, this emphasis on variation and
multiplicity was carried on to the analysis of technologies. As a result,
postphenomenologists are generally eager to refute simplistic accounts of
human-technology relations by showcasing alternative possibilities, a tac-
tic known as the negative use of multistability (Rosenberger & Verbeek,
2015). In the cell-driving debate, for instance, Ihde (2014) has critiqued
existing empirical studies for being rigid and narrow compared to phe-
nomenological studies, because these studies focus on already sedimented
actions in contrast to the phenomenological focus on possibilities. While
this expansive “but wait, there’s more!” use of multistability constitutes
an excellent argument against the rigidity of technological determinism,
58 Jesper Aagaard

I worry that an over-emphasis of hypothetically possible human-technol-

ogy relations may gloss over problematic actual relations and empirical
patterns in our contemporary world. An overly optimist approach to
multistability may ultimately render postphenomenology politically and
ethically neutered. As an alternative, I would stress the importance of an
empirically informed postphenomenology that departs from the complex
and nuanced realities of our actual technological lifeworld and includes its
downsides and drawbacks. As Foucault (1997) once put it, “My point is
not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous, which is not
exactly the same as bad. If everything is dangerous, then we always have
something to do. So my position leads not to apathy but to a hyper- and
pessimistic activism” (p. 256).
This leads me to a second distinction, namely between possible and desir-
able: It is undoubtedly true that we humans are fundamentally adaptive
creatures that will adjust to most technological changes. Perhaps we can even
adjust to a future world in which we concentrate only in short spells and
resort to technologies at the slightest lull in our conversations or if a topic
does not immediately interest us. The question, however, is not only whether
such a future is possible, but also whether from a contemporary standpoint
we deem such an existence desirable. While animals are guided by fixed
appetites and desires, we humans have a capacity for so-called strong evalu-
ations, that is, concerns with the normative worth of our desires: So even if
it is in principle possible to develop multi-attention, why should we strive to
do so? Which reasons (or “beliefs, desires, and ideologies”) do we have for
practicing multitasking instead of erring on the side of caution? Such ques-
tions concern the normative dimension of our media use, or the ethics of
attention. Multitasking enthusiasts claim that driving while celling enriches
the experience of driving so that it becomes more “vibrant” (Wellner, 2014b;
Michelfelder, 2014). In other words, people should multitask in order to free
themselves from encumbrances and boredom. But is minimization of discom-
fort an ethically strong argument? Attractive as the idea may be, there seems
to be more to appraising the normative ramifications of multitasking than the
joy of individual users: What about virtues like patience, trust, responsibility,
and commitment? What if your vibrant experience happens at the expense
of friends or fellow road users? Or, in other words, do I not owe my fellow
human beings a certain attentiveness? There are good reasons to believe that
I do. Shannon Vallor (2015) has recently argued that paying attention is not
just a cognitive ability, but a moral skill:

A person who cannot be counted on to pay attention when you tell her about the
recent death of your closest friend, or who is unable to stay focused on the grave
and imminent danger to which you’re trying to alert her, or who cannot attend
 Entering the Portal 59

to the expressions on your face during an intense conversation, is not someone

who can be said to be virtuous. (Vallor, 2015, p. 117)

In agreement with this sentiment, I caution against what I have elsewhere

called mediated impatience (Aagaard, 2015).
Let me interject a final note about the advantages of discussing media
portals. Framing the debate in terms of absence and presence sidesteps the
objection that critics of multitasking tend to confuse attention with “full
concentration.” Wellner (2014b), for example, distinguishes everyday atten-
tion from full concentration and argues that multitasking may prohibit full
concentration, but it does not prohibit splitting ones attention evenly between
two tasks such as driving and celling. Since driving rarely requires our full
concentration, she argues, multitasking is uncomplicated. Making a similar
point, Diane Michelfelder (2014) argues, “If the opposite of distracted driving
is driving while giving it one’s full and complete attention, it would seem this
is something we do not do on a regular basis” (p. 123). The need for full con-
centration, in other words, arises infrequently and only in specific situations.
According to this chapter, however, what is problematic about multitasking
is not so much a lack of full concentration as it is lack of presence in one’s
immediate circumstances. It is not that entering a media portal somehow pro-
hibits an ordinarily concentrated being-in-the-world (a claim which, as both
Wellner and Michelfelder rightly point out, would be phenomenologically
untenable), but that it limits responsiveness to one’s immediate surroundings
due to its immersive nature. In social situations, this lack of responsiveness
may be frustrating and deplorable to friends and conversational partners. In
traffic situations, it may even be lethal.

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 Part II

SELF-TRACKING AND
IMAGING TECHNOLOGIES
 Chapter 4

Human-Technology Relationships
in the Digital Age
The Collapse of Metaphor in Biohacking
Moa Petersén

INTRODUCTION

In their (2012) book Inventive Methods, Celia Lury and Nina Wakeford argue
that methodology hasn’t developed in the same pace as the renewed interest
for empirical and interdisciplinary studies within social and cultural sciences.
Postphenomenology is among those theoretical frameworks where method-
ology lags behind. Postphenomenological methodology is still searching for
a stable level of validity. As the digital culture and technology increasingly
encapsulate our everyday lives, it is high time to find one. To quote Diane P.
Michelfelder, “Now is a good time to be a postphenomenologist” (Michelf-
elder, 2015, p. 237).
The relationship between humans and technology within postphenomenol-
ogy is a complicated one. The easy part is that there always is a relationship.
There are no humans separated from technology and no technology separated
from humanity—there are only hybrids. Postphenomenological theory on
human-technology relations departs from four human technology relations
observed and theorized by Don Ihde (1990): embodiment relation, alterity
relation, hermeneutic relation, and background relation. Newly developed
biotechnologies and VR environments demand new technology relations to
be articulated, as they “fuse” with our biological body in a way not prior seen
(Verbeek & Rosenberger, 2015, pp. 20–21). In my recent, ongoing, research
I have set out to investigate biohacking groups as plausible new arenas for
bio-knowledge production. In the following text, I will discuss how the

65
66 Moa Petersén

human-technology relation I’ve found within the Swedish biohacking com-

munity becomes an important factor in explaining biohacking as new arena
for civic science.
My investigation has so far shown that, in the biohacker community, the
fusion between the biological body and technology seems to be rather radical:
the biological body is believed to actually be a computer system, or better, a
system of information. In my research project, I have chosen to analyze this
fusion from a postphenomenological perspective; and in the following text,
I will give examples of the methodological complexity of such a project.
I have faced three main methodological problems that will be specifically
addressed in this text. First, is it methodologically possible to use Ihde’s
technology relations in order to map the biohacker informants’ relations to
their biological bodies if the boundary between body and technology has been
eradicated? Second, how can we move between a network level of the larger
knowledge-producing community of biohacking, and the individual level
where the biohackers’ personal experiences are analyzed? Third, what is the
validity of a study like this?
This text is based on my ongoing empirical research, and these three
methodological questions will be discussed in relation to my account of my
research process and results so far. In the first section, I open with a discus-
sion of the possibilities a postphenomenological researcher has to transition
from a network level to an individual level (and vice versa) in the same
study. I then briefly contextualize biohacking—and also say something
about self-hacking, which is a related phenomenon that is used occasionally
in the text to further pinpoint my methodological challenges. In relation to
this, I point out the human-technology relationship(s) I have found among
the informants in terms of the “collapsed metaphor,” and relate these to
Ihde’s embodiment relation, as well as to Ihde’s theory on body one/body
two (2002). This section is followed by some methodological reflections on
validity of postphenomenological studies in general. After this, I explain
and give examples of my efforts to find methodologically satisfactory post-
phemomenological solutions to carry out a study of the maker approach
within new environments for bio-scientific production. By combining the
concept of biomedia and the concept of scientific literacy, I suggest that we
in biohacking groups—and perhaps in other new civic knowledge-produc-
ing environments as well—can see a biomedia transition from metaphori-
zation to automatization, as learners are collectively engaging practically
with the material in a way that does not presuppose, or even wish for, prior
theoretical knowledge about explanatory models or their inbuilt metaphors.
It is my overall hypothesis that a collapse of metaphor within these new
 Human-Technology Relationships in the Digital Age 67

science-producing environments boosts a “maker approach,” as the stage of

scholarly theoretical metaphorization is erased and the learners instead are
led directly into the automatized stage that encourages activity and hands-
on engagement with a material.

FROM BODILY SELF-UNDERSTANDING

TO ACTIONS WITHIN THE NETWORK

This study takes place on two levels: when mapping the Swedish biohacking
movement, I have studied rhetorics, discourses, and actions using a netno-
graphic method. When moving to the individual perspective, I have made
deep qualitative interviews with two members of the movement, aimed at
identifying the informants’ perceived relations to technology and their bio-
logical bodies.1 By comparing the results from the interviews with Ihde’s
four technology relations, I have tried to postphenomenologically map what
relations to technology are present among the movement’s members. Two
interviews is not sufficient empirical material for drawing confident and
valid conclusions; this text should therefore be seen as the account of a pilot
project, and the arguments put forward here should be treated as ideas rather
than truths.
The transition back and forth between the level of the networked Swedish
biohacker organization and the individual level of the biohackers’ perceived
personal beliefs toward their relation to their biological bodies and technol-
ogy, made me undertake investigations into the possibilities of combining
an Ihdean perspective with a more Latourian approach. The focus of my
study lies at the formation of biohacking as a new arena for bio-scientific
knowledge production, and the aimed result thus belongs more to a network
level. Nevertheless, I believe postphenomenological theory and methodol-
ogy which, in contrast to, for example, an ANT perspective, take the human
body into account, provide an effective way to lay bare certain human-
technology relations that I am convinced are shaping the overall methodol-
ogy and scientific approach of the biohacking movement. Therefore, what
my study needs is a marriage between an ANT perspective, through which
actants and actions as parts of a larger scientific network can be studied,
and a postphenomenological perspective that sees to the individual and
existential bodily self-understanding. In my opinion, the level of bodily
self-understanding has a high impact on the formation of the overarching
biohacking system. In What things do (2005), Peter-Paul Verbeek shows
how Don Ihde’s and Bruno Latour’s seemingly contradictory perspectives
68 Moa Petersén

actually can be amalgamated. Verbeek argues that the very kernel of Ihde’s
and Latour’s perspectives are the same—to overcome the subject-object
distinction; and, comes to the conclusion that they can complement each
other. The main difference that Verbeek sees is how the concept of media-
tion differs between the two perspectives. To Latour, a network is shaped
by how the actants (that is hybrids of humans and their tools) within that
network act. For Ihde, mediation theory deals with the experience of the
world that the individual human has through or with technology. Verbeek
argues that both thus overcome the distinction between object-subject, but
in slightly different but coupled ways (Verbeek, 2005). Ihde sees the two
theoretical systems as resting on “interrelational ontologies,” but that the
philosophical traditions where these ontologies come from differ. The more
semiotic approach within ANT thus collides with the embodied phenom-
enology of postphenomenology (Ihde, 2015).
In my study, I have followed the path outlined by Verbeek as I argue that
the two methods can complement each other. I have not tried to fuse them
into each other, but rather let them complement each other from separate
places. In summary, I believe it is crucial to study the actions (hands-on
methodology) of the actants (the members of the biohacking movement)
within the network (biohacking movement) in order to understand the forma-
tion (new arena of knowledge production) of this network. But, I argue, in
order to understand the actions, it is also crucial to understand the experiences
(perceived human-technology-body relations) of the individual members of
the network.

CONTEXT: BIOHACKING

The biohacking movement was established in the United States in 2005. In

summary, the biohacking movement conducts forms of genetic engineering
outside of institutional settings. Experiments are varied but can include, for
example, building lab equipment or analyzing human or animal genomes.
Biohacking is a scattered phenomenon in the sense that it contains a lot of
different subgroups with different types of research interests, goals, and ide-
ologies. Sociologist Alessandro Delfanti has described biohackers as “life
scientists whose practices exhibit a remix of cultures that update a more tra-
ditional science ethos with elements coming from hacking and free software”
(Delfanti, 2013, p. 1). I have concentrated my research on the Swedish non-
profit biohacking organization BioNyfiken. BioNyfiken is the only biohack-
ing organization in Sweden and was established in 2014. It consists of three
subgroups located in the three main cities of Sweden: Stockholm, Göteborg,
 Human-Technology Relationships in the Digital Age 69

and Malmö. The three subgroups together have approximately 750 members
(as of November 2015). Within BioNyfiken Sweden, research is focused on
making RFID/NFC implants into the human body, by manipulating the brain
through electrical impulses to optimize its performance, and by hacking
bacteria and DNA. The methods of engaging with the biological material are
very hands-on. The implants, the brain manipulations, and the DNA-hacking
are all described as being possible to carry out using household equipment.
For instance, the brain manipulation machine (tDCS) is built with a Wettex
dish cloth, tinfoil, an old mouse pad, and hot melt adhesives.
BioNyfiken Sweden is partly integrated with Quantified Self Stockholm,
a nonprofit organization for self-trackers (564 members in November 2015).
Also, the Quantified Self movement is of US origin, and was founded in 2007
by Wired magazine editors Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly. This community, as
such, is not central to my study, but in this methodological reflection I will
use it occasionally in order to further explain the technology relation present
within the biohacking community. In the self-hacking movement, so-called
Quantified Self-technologies (QS-technologies)—such as health applications,
sleep trackers, and fitness trackers—are used to extract and review biologi-
cal body data in order to manipulate and optimize the bodily organism or its
“output” and “performance.” One of the main concerns that Quantified Self
Stockholm and BioNyfiken Sweden share is optimization of personal and
public health. It is believed that body-hacks will lead to increased individual
and public health through heightened individual responsibility. The strong
aim of life improvement often found within biohacker and self-hacker
groups is an ethos appropriated from computer hacking environments (Levi,
1984/2010; Delfanti, 2013, pp. 12–13). As part of this hacker ethos, both
communities contest the system where large established institutions are in
charge of research on the human biological body and medicine. Biohacking
and self-tracking both point to their possibilities of solving problems that
institutionalized research has hitherto failed to solve.
When blog posts and home pages are analyzed, an explicit analogy of
human biological body and computer(-system) comes forth in the rhetorics
of both movements. The human body is conceptualized as possible to hack,
optimize, and control. This is not true only for the Swedish examples, but
serves as a general belief also for the movements on an international scale. On
the homepage of one of the largest self-hacker movements in the world, Self-
hacker.com, for example, we can read, “As an individual, you are your own
architect or software engineer that need to program your body based on your
requirements.” Likewise, my interview material shows that informants from
both movements tend to describe their biological bodies as computerized
systems, or systems of information. BioNyfiken operates on a more societal
70 Moa Petersén

level, as their main goal is to contest the established bio-research system by

providing the general public with a new scientific environment outside of the
bio-research industry and academia. The members of Quantified Self Stock-
holm, on the other hand, are more interested in personal bodily optimization.
Thus it would be fair to propose that BioNyfiken is more into hacking the
scientific system and the general human biological system, while Quantified
Self Stockholm is more concentrated on hacking the personal bodily system
to optimize bodily factors, such as personal strength, health, and endurance.

THE COLLAPSED METAPHOR

I started the analysis by looking at the verbal use of the body/computer(-sys-

tem) analogy that I had found both within the organizational rhetorics and the
personal statements. Since Ihde’s theory on human-technology relations nei-
ther includes thoughts on the “pure” human biological body (compare body
1/body 2) or body-technology verbal metaphorization, I turned to theories on
the metaphor in order to open up the material collected. George Lakoff and
Mark Johnson (1986) have famously argued how metaphors shape actions.
But how this action is shaped in reality is relatively under-explored and
under-theorized (van der Weele & van den Boomen, 2008). In this project
I argue that something I call “the implosion of the metaphor” encourages
action within the biohacker environment.
In the case of BioNyfiken, the relation to technology seems to have
moved inside the body and merged with the relation to the bodily biologi-
cal self. How can we explain this from a postphenomenological view? First
some clarifications. The conceptualization of the biological human body
as a computer system which is possible to “hack,” control, or optimize,
present within the biohacker movement, can be interpreted from many
different perspectives. The most obvious would perhaps be as part of a
long-lived cultural futurist trope of the cyborg (i.e., Haraway, 1991) that in
more recent years—fueled by fast-developing inventions on the biomedi-
cal consumer market and of wearable technology alike—has fused with a
transhumanist ideology. Further on, technological metaphors for the human
body are by no means a novelty. Both the scientific explanatory models
of the biological body, as well as the popular concept of the body, have
a long history of mirroring technological development, and new techno-
logical innovations (Coleman & Fraser, 2011). Within biological science,
explanatory models to the biological body that contain metaphors from the
digital sphere—such as code and information—have a long history (Kay,
2000; Keller, 2002). Eugene Thacker has researched the metaphorical
 Human-Technology Relationships in the Digital Age 71

development within biology induced by the formation of bioinformatics

during the 1980s, where data science and biological science amalgamated
to an extent not prior seen (Thacker, 2004, p. 33). Without investigating it
further Evelyn Fox Keller notices how both the border between organisms
and computers, and the border between computer science and organism
science, gradually have been made more and more porous as an effect of
developments of computer programs and computer visualization techniques
that have narrowed the epistemological gap between sample and its carried
data (Keller, 2002, p. 203). Thacker continues this observation and takes
it one step further as he argues that within the new digitally framed biol-
ogy science, not only has the border been made porous, but it has in fact
collapsed into one and the same leveled dimension of biomedia. This is
much due to biology’s accelerating dependency on and use of computer
technology (Thacker, 2004, pp. 39–40). Thacker analyzes the example
of “information” that has been a metaphor for DNA since the 1950s, and
argues that information no longer can be called a metaphor for DNA, but
instead must be viewed as an inherent part of DNA as a technical principle
(2004, p. 40). The relation between information and DNA, for example, has
thus been transitioned “from metaphorization to automatization” (Thacker,
2004, p. 40), in a process where no external appropriation of metaphors is
needed anymore. Thus, biomedia is a step away from the classical sense of
a metaphor where it is described as “a figure of speech in which a word or
phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable”
(Oxford Dictionaries).
It’s not hard to find support for a biomedia collapse of the metaphor
in contemporary biological research. As an example, a group at Zurich’s
Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences has recently showed that
contemporary alternatives of storing data on memory sticks and hard drives
are outclassed by new methods of storing data on DNA. Compared to the 50
years that data lasts on a CD, storing data in bone tissue will make it last for
a million years, at least (Grass et al., 2015). Body, DNA, and information are
inseparable in this example. This interlace is clearly illustrated by the image
that was made by one of the researchers in the group to visually enhance the
research results (Figure 4.1). In the illustration, the data digits overlap seam-
lessly with the genetic information within the bone piece, as if they naturally
belonged to the same system of information.2
Another example of a complete merge between body, DNA, information,
and technology is the recent developments of biological engineering within
synthetic biology. Here a total merge between DNA code and computer
code is commonly agreed upon as the base for research. On the blog biony-
fiken.se,3 Sina Armoor Pour, one of the co-founders of BioNyfiken Sweden,
72 Moa Petersén

Figure 4.1 Illustration (Philipp Stössel, ETH/Zürich). Previously published in Grass

et al., 2015. Used with permission. (Philipp Stössel from Grass, R. N.; Heckel, R.;
Puddu, M.; Paunescu, D.; Stark, W. J., Angew. Chem.-Int. Edit. 2015, 54 (8), 2552–2555.
Reprinted with Permission.)

answers a question what BioNyfiken will do in their newly built laboratory

in Stockholm. He answers by referring to a TED talk by bioengineer Tal
Danino where he presents his aims to develop techniques for programming
bacteria with different algorithms, as is done in computer software. The
desired outcome of Danino’s project is to program these bacteria to detect
and treat diseases like cancer. The example clearly shows a transition from
metaphorization to automatization that it shares with a lot of contemporary
research within synthetic biology, genetic engineering, and biomedicine. In
Danino’s example, bacteria will not only be understood as digital devices,
they will also be treated practically as digital tools with different functions
that are determined by the programmers’ individual intentions. Armoor Pour
answers that this is the kind of research BioNyfiken wants to engage in. This
proves how the collapse of the metaphor is also of high importance to the
Swedish biohacking movement. Another post on the bionyfiken.se blog (April
25, 2015), in which Armoor Pour reflects upon an article on biohacking that
had been published the previous day, confirms that the collapse of metaphor
is important to BioNyfiken’s approach to bio-research. In the article, pub-
lished in Sweden’s largest daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter, the journalist
explains the methods of a biohacker by comparing them to the methods of
a computer hacker, someone who “rebuilds, experiments, and creates new
within computer technics. The biohacker wants to do the same, but with
organic material instead of PCBs and code” (Larsson, 2015). Armoor Pour
reacts to this by explaining that biohackers who work with bacteria and DNA
instead “use DNA and bacterias as computer hackers use computers, PCBs,
 Human-Technology Relationships in the Digital Age 73

and code. That’s where we are heading. A future where we use organic
machines as computers and PCBs and where we write code with DNA.”4 The
journalist uses a metaphorical explanation where the biohacker is supposed to
do something to the organic material with inspiration from a model coming
from outside of the biological field. In Armoor Pour’s answer, this metaphor
is collapsed and computer and body are made equivalent to each other in an
amalgamated “organic machine” actually consisting of PCBs and code.
Now it is time to look at the relations that surfaced in the interviews in
comparison to Ihde’s four technology relations, in order to find how to meth-
odologically proceed from here. First, let me briefly sketch Ihde’s human-
technology relationships (2015) to assure my departing points:

1. Embodied relation—Ihde’s classical example is looking through a pair

of glasses. Even if the glasses are not explicitly noticed all the time, it
co-shapes our relation, engagement, and interactions with our surrounding
world.
2. Alterity relation—In this relation we treat our technology at hand as if it
was a living creature separated from us.
3. Hermeneutic relation—Ihde’s classic example to exemplify this relation
is the thermometer that we have to “read” and interpret in order to turn
into a perception. We will not actually experience heat or cold, but the
interpretation of what the thermometer displays will give us a represen-
tation of reality that we can translate into our own bodily sensation of
temperature.
4. Background relations—in this relation the technology makes up the back-
ground of our experience, and creates a context for our perceptions.

After interviewing the biohacker informants, the material retrieved

showed that the human-technology relation that was dominating among the
biohackers was most equal to the embodied relation. The seamless blending
of the biological body and the computer system within the movement shows
affinity with Ihde’s example with the glasses that grow onto the bearer and
become an unconscious extension of the biological body. The transparent
way in which it shapes the world- and life-experience of the glass bearer is
also obvious in the biohacker example as ideas about the computer system
leak onto the conceptualization of the human biological body, and also
shape the actions taken to manipulate, optimize, or control it. But the blend-
ing of body and technology is not in itself an object for reflection among
the biohackers. The border between biological body and computer system
in the biohacker environment has imploded in such a way that it avoids
reflection and conscious meditation. Just as with all of Ihde’s relations, the
embodied relation in Ihde’s scheme is dependent on intentionality; and the
74 Moa Petersén

relation between the glass bearer and the glasses never frees the glasses
from being a tool used by the human individual in order to enhance real-
ity. Our intentionality to engage with the world is mediated through the
tools. Thus, there is always a possibility to take the glasses off and stop the
enhancement. The human relation to technology as a tool cannot be entirely
unconscious, except, perhaps, for short time periods. Moreover, I’m sure
the level to which “transparent” embodiment of technological artifacts is
possible is a strictly individual matter. The amount of factors that impact
how prone a certain individual is to reaching successful transparent embodi-
ment is probably vast, and is—though it is not within the scope of this
text—an interesting and much needed field for future postphenomenologists
to map. In summary, within the biohacking community, both intentionality
and relation have been reduced to a minimum, as the tool dimension—to a
large extent—has been eradicated.
To make this a bit clearer we can compare it to the relation I found present
among the self-hacker informants. Though the rhetorics on a network level
seemed to show a parallel implosion of metaphor present both within the
biohacking community and the self-hacking community (optmizing and con-
trolling the biological body as a computer), interviews laid bare that different
kind of technology relations dominated the two groups. From the interviews
with the self-hacker informants, it was also hard to distinguish between the
informants’ relations to their technological equipment and their relations to
their own biological bodies. The equipment they used to monitor biodata
was perceived of as displays making the data—already present within the
body—visible. Just as in the example with the USB-bone piece (Figure 4.1;
Grass et al., 2015), the data code of the technological equipment and the bio-
logical data were seamlessly blending into another, and flowing from body to
device without friction. The body was further understood as a computer sys-
tem consisting of data and information that was partly controllable but also
unpredictable in its network structure. The informants’ approaches to their
own biological bodies made me think of the rhizomatic network described by
Deleuze and Guattari (1980/1987). One of the informants expressed how he
experienced how this partial feeling of control made him insecure, and that
this came from ideas of the body working as an open-ended web or network.
He explained his fears that the disruption or manipulation of one node of the
network within the system may cause changes (often long-term) that would
eventually lead to illness and instability of the system. This comprehension
of the biological body shows affinity with a rhizomatic network model that
is decentralized and unpredictable; and one that finds new ways of transfer-
ring information even if it has been manipulated in order not to (introduc-
tion; Deleuze & Guattari, 1980/1987). Moreover, among the self-hackers, I
found something that resembled a hermeneutic relation, where the informants
 Human-Technology Relationships in the Digital Age 75

reported they were interpreting the signs of the body parallel to the infor-
mation that their technological devices visually displayed. One informant
also reported how her technological devices led her to questioning if her
experience of her own body was, in fact, correct. For instance, she reported
how the devices made her think and react in ways like, “My blood pressure
has risen—I must be feeling bad.” The technological devices thus led her
to feel bodily sensations she would not have felt if she hadn’t been able
to interpret information on the displays. She reported this as “anxiety ris-
ing.” The hermeneutic relation, in this case, thus lead to something that
can be compared to Ihde’s alterity relation. I have elsewhere related the
alterity relation to Sigmund Freud’s concept of the uncanny, as feelings
of quasi-otherness and experiences of the uncanny, in my opinion, share
a profound likeness (Goysdotter, 2013). The experience of the body turn-
ing into someone to which I necessarily relate but don’t really trust shows
signs of a failed embodiment relation. The embodiment process has then
stopped halfway and, due to different factors, avoided implosion. This
could be compared to the relation found among the biohackers where the
separation between body and technology found within the self-hacker
movement has been overbuilt and no glitch to reflect or hesitate in front of
it is present. If the self-hackers could be placed closer to the hermeneutic/
alterity relation not reaching the embodiment relation, the biohackers have
transgressed the embodiment relation and instead moved toward a collapse
of the relation.
Recent postphenomenological studies have dealt with contexts of new
technology where Ihde’s four human-technology relations have been
somewhat twisted toward what Peter-Paul Veerbeek and Robert Rosen-
berger call a “fusion relation” (Verbeek & Rosenberger, 2015, p. 21). In
these relations, found, for example, in cochlear implants or artificial heart
valves, the relation is more intimate than that active in the embodiment
relation (p. 21). I suggest that the collapse of the metaphor rather suggests
that the relation between human biological body and technology within
biohacking has imploded into a non-relation. It seems to me as if a belief
in that the body actually is a computer could hardly be called a human-
technology relation anymore. For what is a relation, in a phenomenological
understanding, if there is no conscious distance between the components?
The non-relation is closely knit to Ihde’s theory on the interlaced body
one and body two (2002). According to Ihde, body one is the perceiving,
active, here-located, bodily experience developed by Maurice Merleau-
Ponty as the corps vécu. Body two is the cultural or socially constructed
body, discussed by Michel Foucault, for example (Ihde, 2002, p. 69ff.). It
seems as if the biomedia collapse of technology into the human body pro-
duces a body concept that is neither possible to explain by body one nor by
76 Moa Petersén

body two. Both the concept of body one and of body two are depending on
a relation to the surrounding world—either as a world of things to perceive
as is the case of body one, or as a world of social constructions as in body two.
The body concept that surfaces through the collapsed metaphor, I will suggest
we call body zero. This body is not a perceiving or a relating body, but a body
which it is possible to do things to and engage practically with. Body zero is
of course interlaced with body one and two, and every human contains all of
them. But, I suggest, body zero could be studied on its own in order to reveal,
for example, the hacker approach to the human biological system found
within biohacking. In the next paragraph I will develop this idea further.

THE MAKER APPROACH

POSTPHENOMENOLOGICALLY UNDERSTOOD

At the network level, we saw how biohackers and self-hackers seemed to share
the same relation to technology as dissimilated with their biological bodies.
But a closer phenomenological dive into the conceptualizations of the indi-
vidual members of the movements showed how the human-technology rela-
tions differed between the two communities. Such a zooming-in that detects
differences can be related to Ihde’s concept of multistability. Multistability
is an interesting concept when discussing validity of postphenomenological
studies, as it can, in fact, pose a threat against the validity of postphenomeno-
logical methodology. According to the multistability principle, we can never
approach technology as if it was a homogenous entity. Technology must
instead always be treated as technologies, an approach that avoids us from
falling into the trap where single observations are taken to be great truths.
Into this principle goes also that technologies never are to be considered
autonomous, that they are non-neutral and therefore ambiguous, and that
their effect on life-experience differs between cultures (Ihde, 1990, p. 144).
It is clear in the case of self-hacking and biohacking that Ihde’s multistability
principle was proven right. At a more particular level, in combination with a
phenomenological methodology, the stability that was first observed showed
to be multistable. But where do we reach a level where this eternal instabil-
ity of the research areas and the empirical material can be solid enough to
draw a valid conclusion? How can a research method studying relations that
continually hybridize avoid being caught in the same unstable and non-valid
state? This is, of course, not a methodological question only relevant for post-
phenomenological studies, but is a classic critique against, for example, social
constructivist studies. So, what criteria for validity are there for postphenom-
enological studies? The principle of multistability puts postphenomenology
in a place from where it is risky to draw general conclusions. Sure, to draw
 Human-Technology Relationships in the Digital Age 77

the conclusion that technologies are multistable is a sort of conclusion in

itself, but what should we do if we want to be able to speak about the network
in which the postphenomenologically approached individuals are active? In
my efforts to make my study gain a higher level of validity, I have tried out a
cyclic process. That is, I have started at the network level and moved towards
the individual level. In this process I have destabilized (or multistabilized)
the network level, and then turned back again to the network level. Let us
now, lastly, see what happens if we follow this cyclic process. Thus, the next
question of my study: How can we take further the human-technology non-
relation present within biohacking, to shed light on the movement’s approach
to science-making, if the movement is seen as a new arena of bio-scientific
knowledge production?
Biohacking groups are new environments for scientific production and
can be examined against the concepts of civic participation, civic science,
and citizen science (i.e., Jasanoff, 2005, 2012). As such, biohacking could
be studied as part of the open science movement, which is an important
factor in the recent struggle over redefinitions and reshaping of scientific
institutions and public participation in scientific knowledge production (Del-
fanti, 2013, pp. 10–11). These new environments have in the last years been
strongly emboldened as digital channels for tutorials, teaching, and research
has increased (Silvertown, 2009). Scientific literacy is an important concept
within the discussion of new arenas for production of scientific knowledge. It
is a huge discussion, and I will only briefly mention it here since, in my case,
it serves to explain the methodological differences between the biohacking
movement and institutionalized bio-science. The traditional definition of
scientific literacy is one that relies heavily on the individual understanding of
scientific concepts and methodology. National Science Education Standard
defines scientific literacy as “the knowledge and understanding of scientific
concepts and processes required for personal decision making” and as “the
ability to describe, explain, and predict natural phenomena,” (National Acad-
emy of Sciences, 1996, p. 22). Scientific literacy is also used by the biohack-
ers, but in their use it has taken on a very different shape. In “A Biopunk
Manifesto”5—which is the main document of the biohacker movement, writ-
ten by one of its central figures Meredith Patterson—scientific literacy is held
forth as “necessary for a functioning society in the modern age. Scientific lit-
eracy is not science education. A person educated in science can understand
science; a scientifically literate person can ‘do’ science” (Patterson, 2010).
When presenting the manifesto at the UCLA conference Outlaw Biology?
Public Participation in the Age of Big Bio (2010), Patterson herself illustrated
the biopunk focus on doing in favor of understanding, in the introduction to
her talk, as she showed a chart displaying all of the human metabolic path-
ways. When showing it, Patterson said, “When I look at that, I think ‘Wow,
78 Moa Petersén

this is cool, what can I DO with it?’” (Patterson, 2010); this opposed to another
possible formulation that might have been, what can I understand from it?
I suggest that the concept of “scientific literacy” as it is used within the
biohacker movement is directly connected to the collapse of the metaphor
and the non-relation to technology; and that they, in turn, are constitutive for
the biohacking movement as environment for learning. I have earlier in this
text discussed a quote from Amoor Pour where he defines the methodology
of biohackers when they engage with their material. Above, I used it to high-
light the imploding metaphor found in biohacker groups, but it could also be
used to illustrate how an implosion of metaphor is a methodological step from
imitating, understanding, and metaphorization to automatized doing, using,
and crafting. In the biohacker environments, as in the computer hacker envi-
ronments, the practice of the members is described as highly material. Firstly,
they meet in so-called Makerspaces. Moreover, biohackers often describe
themselves as carpenters, tinkerers, or other craftsman-oriented professions.
As argued in the former paragraph, the meaning of scientific literacy, to the
biohacker movement, is to know what one is able to do with something on a
material level when presented with it—just as a carpenter knows what could
be done given a piece of wood and a chisel. This practical outlook is insepara-
ble from the biohacker view on the human biological body as programmable,
hackable, and controllable.
In the Makerspace, learners are collectively engaging practically with the
material in a way that does not presuppose, or even wish for, prior theoreti-
cal knowledge about explanatory models or their inbuilt metaphors. Rather it
is seen as a relief if no homogenous pre-understanding is present among the
participants. Further on, a heterogeneity of the group composition is desired
in order to reach innovative solutions. Co-founder Hannes Sjöblad tells in an
interview, found on the BioNyfiken homepage, that “the Swedish biohacker
community is a very diverse group of people with different backgrounds
and interests: experienced lab researchers, quantified self-enthusiasts, body
modifications artists, chip implantees, makers, grinders, and fitness- and
performance optimizers. This is a bubbling scene, when these groups come
together in the same room, incredibly creative interactions happen.” Amoor
Pour expresses a similar idea as he writes about his wishes for a nearby future
where “people without any biological education whatsoever use the technol-
ogy in order to investigate themselves and their environment and push the
biotechnological development forward.” The BioNyfiken environment is
thus explicitly structured to bring non-specialists together to act upon things
together—not, in the first hand, to understand these things together. This
environment seems to fulfill the meaning of scientific literacy as it has been
explained by Roth and Calabrese Barton, who argue that scientific literacy is
something that is gained through an interactive situational exchange between
 Human-Technology Relationships in the Digital Age 79

individuals, organizations, and subjects of study through multiple forms of

discourse practices (Roth & Barton, 2004, p. 105). BioNyfiken also identify
themselves as in opposition to the institutionalized research environments
and to the methods applied in these environments that Sjöblad, in the inter-
view referred to above, calls “a closed sector only accessible to people with
specialized training wearing white lab coats.” Resistance of this kind is char-
acteristic to hacker environments, and is interlaced with the understanding of
scientific literacy found in the biohacker environment. So, I argue, the focus
on doing instead of understanding within the new environment of knowledge
production of biohacking groups has its roots in the members’ biological
self-understanding as computer systems. The barriers between model and
real object have been dissimilated on the body-conceptualization level, and
this is what leads the actions of the researchers in their doer-approach to the
human biological body.

CONCLUSION

In this text, I have focused on three postphenomenological methodological

problems of my present investigation into the Swedish biohacking com-
munity. The first focus has been on how to make the transition between the
network level and the individual level. In this study, this transition is of great
importance since I argue that the conceptualization of the body at one level
connects to the conceptualization of knowledge production, or methodology,
in the other—and vice versa. The conceptualization of the biological body as
a hackable system, and the hands-on methodology that I have found within
the Swedish biohacker community, seem to corroborate that such a transition
is possible and valid. The other focus has been on how to apply Ihde’s human-
technology relations to a situation where technology has merged totally with
the body in a biomedial collapse. The relation to the body within biohacking
seems to parallel best Ihde’s embodiment relation, but it calls for a new and
even more intimate relation (I have called it a non-relation in this text). Even
if Ihde’s four relations can’t sufficiently explain what has happened in bio-
hacking, the validity of using his human-technology relations on this material
becomes evident when compared and contrasted to the relation present within
self-hacking where the same bodily conceptualization was present on the
network level. The use of Ihde’s postphenomenological human-technology
relations here has shown a discrepancy on the individual level that wouldn’t
have been detected if only the network level would have been studied. The
third focus has been directed toward how to increase the validity of a postphe-
nomenological study like this. One answer, I suggest, is to combine a study
of the network level with a postphenomenological study of the individual
80 Moa Petersén

level—or a systematic analysis with phenomenological methodology—in a

cyclic process. In such a process, a seemingly stable network context can be
deconstructed by postphenomenological multistability, and the multistability
could be slowed down and controlled by the overarching systematic context.

NOTES

1. With the same aim, I have also made deep interviews with two members of the
quantified self-movement.
2. The image was published together with the article (Grass et al., 2015).
3. http://bionyfiken.se/
4. All translations from Swedish are my own. Italics are my emphasis.
5. “Biopunk” is an umbrella term for many different sorts of biohackers with
different foci. A biohacker is thus a biopunk, but a biopunk is not necessarily a
biohacker.

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 Chapter 5

Service Interfaces in
Human-Technology Relations
A Case Study of Self-Tracking Technologies
Fernando Secomandi

Postphenomenology is regularly lauded by philosophers of technology for

providing impetus to a recent “empirical turn” in the field (Achterhuis, 2001;
Ihde, 2009; Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015; Verbeek, 2005). From a philo-
sophical perspective, to be empirical, among other things, means distancing
oneself from sweeping analyses at high abstraction levels, in order to focus
on the particularities of concrete practices of technology design and use. Post-
phenomenologists hold that by such an approach one was better positioned to
avoid undesirable transcendentalist, dystopian, and nostalgic tendencies that
characterized much of classical philosophy of technology.
For those familiarized with research methods in the social sciences, on
the other hand, to be empirical means generating first-hand data through
interviews, observations, collection of documents, and so on, often by
spending significant time “in the field.” In this sense of the word, very few
postphenomenological studies may be called empirical (e.g., Aagaard, 2014;
Forss, 2011; Friis, 2015; Hasse, 2008; Secomandi, 2013), for the majority of
publications depend on syntheses of secondary bibliographic sources. The
point is not made as a criticism but simply as an observation that those who
want to conduct postphenomenological field studies must look elsewhere for
methodological guidance. And in the process of doing so, they can end up
exploring phenomena from novel perspectives, arriving at new findings for
postphenomenological theory.
This chapter is an exemplification of that—an empirical investigation
of a self-tracking technology, inspired by ethnographic approaches to the
study of service design practices, resulting in the acknowledgment of an
overlooked topic in postphenomenology: the intersubjective constitution

83
84 Fernando Secomandi

of human-technology relations. The self-tracking technology in question is

DirectLife, a service commercialized by Philips to assist users in becoming
more physically active (http://www.directlife.philips.com).1
Also known as activity or fitness trackers, self-tracking technologies are
systems that provide users insight into activity patterns, typically with the
goal of supporting behavioral change and improving general well-being.
These technologies often consist of a wearable electronic device that employs
biometric sensors plus networking technologies to record users’ behavioral or
physiological data and sync these with another device (e.g., smartphones) for
further data crunching and visual feedback.
In the case of Philips DirectLife, the wearable component is an activity
monitor supposed to be worn by users on a daily basis in the trousers’ pocket,
as a necklace, and occasionally in the socks when cycling. By plugging it
into a personal computer, the monitor automatically uploads activity data to
the DirectLife website application on which dashboard users can track their
recorded levels of physical activity. In the DirectLife website, users also
follow a 12-week activity improvement program consisting of progressively
higher targets to be reached on a weekly basis.
Many self-tracking technologies like DirectLife are embedded in programs
formulated according to “sports training” or “gaming” logics that are geared
at enhancing users’ commitments to activity targets. These programs may
include virtual communities built around users’ existing social networks or
managed by manufacturers, where people can compete among themselves
and/or share information and tips. At the time of its introduction, DirectLife
was distinctive for offering users one-on-one supervision from professional
coaches via e-mail communications. Because of the rich data that can be gen-
erated about people’s physical and social activities, as well as the potential
that is created by Internet-based connectivity, self-tracking technologies hold
for companies the promises of better customizing offers for different users
and groups, of building stronger and more profitable relationships, and gain-
ing strategic knowledge about target markets.
The topic of self-tracking technologies has attracted considerable attention
in academic circles, not least by philosophers of technology (see van den
Eede, 2015, for a review). This chapter is an extension of studies that adopt
a postphenomenological standpoint (Irwin, 2016; Secomandi, 2013; van den
Eede, 2015). In what follows, DirectLife is addressed as a service interface.
What this term suggests is the position that technologies can assume in medi-
ating exchanges between the people who exchange a particular service (Seco-
mandi, 2013; Secomandi & Snelders, 2011, 2013). By focusing on the service
exchange relations that embed a self-tracking technology like DirectLife, one
 Service Interfaces in Human-Technology Relations 85

can discover how human-technology relations are formed intersubjectively

by users and providers. Specifically in this study, the uncovering of the inter-
personal dimension of technological experience is partly made possible by
a research methodology that highlighted the social dynamics regarding the
design and use of the DirectLife service.
The next section starts with an explanation of how self-tracking tech-
nologies may be studied as service interfaces from a postphenomenological
perspective. The following section, then, elaborates upon the topic of inter-
subjectivity as a dimension of human-technology relations. These conceptual
sections prepare for the empirical study of DirectLife, which describes how
experiences of this self-tracking technology are constituted intersubjectively
by users and designers interacting through service interfaces. The chapter
concludes with a discussion about intersubjectivity in relation to postphenom-
enology’s interrelational framework.

SERVICES, POSTPHENOMENOLOGY, AND

SELF-TRACKING TECHNOLOGIES

Services have long been deemed peculiar economic entities because of the
closer forms of human interaction that are required for the production of out-
comes. Researchers from diverse disciplines, such as economics, marketing,
operations, geography, and industrial design largely work under the shared
assumption that, for the production of services to occur, users must contribute
information, labor, possessions, or even their own bodies, as inputs to pro-
vider operations. In short, services are cocreated by providers and users. Yet,
the meaning of this assertion can only be grasped in contrast to how goods
have constantly been portrayed following what economic theorists known as
the “anonymity principle” (Gallouj & Weinstein, 1997, p. 540). The prin-
ciple holds that upon production a good typically attains a degree of physical
independence from those who produced it and those who will consume it,
which allows it to circulate freely in the economy beyond the original context
of production. As shown in the history of economic thought, the belief that
services lack the material independence and permanence of goods was opera-
tive already three hundred years ago, when Adam Smith famously declared
unproductive the labor of domestic servants by explaining that it

does not fix or realize itself in any particular subject or vendable commod-
ity. His services generally perish in the very instant of their performance, and
seldom leave any trace of value behind them, for which an equal quantity of
service could afterwards be procured. (cited in Delaunay & Gadrey, 1992, p. 12)
86 Fernando Secomandi

The productivity of service activities is thus negated because they are

embodied in a form that is not physically bound, storable, or tradable, as
goods purportedly are. Nowadays, service research is a long way from the
view above that services are simply immaterial and unproductive, yet the
question of how they differ from goods is not completely resolved (see Illeris,
2007).
It is not necessary to fully enter the goods versus services debate to remark
that, from a postphenomenological perspective, one can immediately object
to the portrayal of goods as “anonymous” entities. A brief description of the
fountain pen like the one used to draft this chapter would suffice to prob-
lematize such a characterization. In use, the pen is in a position of mediation
between paper and writer. It transforms expressive intentions into scribed
text, in ways that would be impossible without it. Here is a first challenge to
the independence of the pen—what it is and does can only be determined by
taking into account a practice of writing that entangles a human user.
A second challenge surfaces when noting how writing, although predomi-
nantly located in the private domain of a study desk, is not entirely solitary.
As the user attends to the brand name embossed on the pen’s body or the
concavities near its tip affording a firm grip, a relation with its designers is
established. To be sure, in ordinary writing, the felt presence of these “other”
humans is most negligible, so the tendency is to ignore them. Few would
describe the experience of writing with a pen mainly in terms of an exchange
relation with its designer. However, under rigorous postphenomenological
analysis, the dimension of human interactivity might be recoverable even in
the simplest case of a mass-produced good.
Contrast this example with a visit to the doctor—a classic service case—
and the interpersonal relation needed to cocreate an outcome becomes
prominent. In such situations it is difficult to dissociate the “service” from the
human interactions giving rise to it, even if what is exchanged between doctor
and patient also involve partly “objectified” bodily aspects, such as physical
attributes, outward appearance, embodied skills, expressed emotions, and so
forth. To conclude, experiences with fountain pens and medical consultations
are differently graded in terms of human-to-human interactivity.
In service research, Shostack (1977, 1982, 1987) was perhaps the first to
describe services from an experiential perspective. With a background in
marketing and operations, she conceived of services as essentially intangible
processes that are organized by providers in order to deliver benefits to con-
sumer. Because delivery processes were in principle “hidden inside” organi-
zations, consumers could only experience services through their “peripheral
clues,” or “evidence,” which Shostack (1977, p. 77) defined as “the things
that the consumer can comprehend with his five senses—tangible things.”
 Service Interfaces in Human-Technology Relations 87

In the case of air transportation, for example, the tangible evidence would
include flight tickets, onboard food and drinks, the airplane itself, even flight
attendants. Through the service evidence, users could indirectly perceive and
evaluate “backoffice” provider-controlled processes, for instance, by forming
an impression of what went on inside the plane’s cockpit when hearing the
pilot over the loudspeaker.
The term “evidence” might be highly suggestive for phenomenological
ears, but Shostack’s construal of service experience was in fact markedly
unphenomenological. The tangible evidence was conceived as a surrogate
“reality” for users, whereas the “essence” of a service was to be found in
intangible processes over which only service providers could gain direct
knowledge. In Secomandi and Snelders (2011), a critique of Shostack and
revision of her two-domain account of services is advanced on basis of the
concepts of service interface and service infrastructure, the former represent-
ing socio-technical resources that are closely associated with user-provider
exchanges, while the latter represents resources that are indirectly related
to user-provider exchanges and need to be actualized through an interface.
From the embodied standpoint of users or providers, these two domains are
entwined in such a way that service reality can only be experienced in inter-
action with material interfaces and the infrastructural aspects that are enacted
through them.
In postphenomenological terms, it is possible to further elaborate the
interplay between service interfaces and infrastructures through an analy-
sis of technological mediation (Secomandi, 2013; Secomandi & Snelders,
2013). By applying Ihde’s framework of human-technology-world relations
to services, the experiences of users or providers is thus formalized in terms
of human-interface-infrastructure relations, whereby the other human who
cocreates the service experience is revealed in technologically mediated
encounters as an aspect of the infrastructure. Explored from the perspective
of users, this framework clarifies that service experiences can display the
different modalities of technological mediation first identified by Ihde (i.e.,
embodiment, hermeneutic, alterity, and background). This line of research
focusing on user experiences is expanded by Secomandi (2013) through an
empirical study of Philips DirectLife, the same self-tracking technology that
is analyzed in the present chapter.
Despite the new terminology of service interface and infrastructure, the
application of postphenomenology to the study of self-tracking technolo-
gies is not an uncharted terrain. Broadly speaking, postphenomenological
literature is filled with detailed case descriptions of user experiences with
screen-based, networked, or wearable electronic devices, that share rel-
evant characteristics with self-tracking technologies (e.g., Aagaard, 2014;
88 Fernando Secomandi

Bakardjieva, 2005; Ihde, 2007, 2010; Irwin, 2016; Rosenberger, 2009, 2013b;
Verbeek, 2008; Wellner, 2015). Fewer studies, however, investigate how
technology can mediate human experience of another human being (or bodily
aspects thereof) (Forss, 2011; Rosenberger, 2011b; Verbeek, 2008). In par-
ticular, little has been written about technologically mediated experience of
a person’s own corporeality. Ihde (2002) deals at times with issues of virtual
embodiment in gaming and virtual reality, as well as of computer-generated
medical imagery of his own body (Ihde, 2009). Besmer (2015) describes
tele-operated robotic arms as an extended avatar of an operator’s body.
Forss (2011) briefly comments on occasion in cancer cell screening through
microscopes where cytodiagnosticians analyze their own material. What is
common throughout these cases is the identification of one’s own body as the
primary aspect of the world that is transformed in a technologically mediated
situation. For self-tracking technologies, this is key to their capabilities to
track the self.
At this point in the discussion I wish to raise two questions in respect to
how self-tracking technologies can be studied as services from a postphenom-
enological standpoint. First, there is the question of how exactly users’ bodies
are revealed for them through a service interface. This reflexive characteristic
of self-tracking technologies was problematized recently by van den Eede
(2015, p. 153), who wondered how user bodies may be postphenomenologi-
cally accounted for as “worldly” aspects: “When one considers graphics of
sleep patterns, step count, distance travelled, et cetera, of what exactly are
those images?” To be sure, with this question van den Eede alludes to two
distinct but interrelated issues. On the one hand, there is a reference issue, of
how one can experience what is depicted in these graphics as one’s own cor-
poreality. On the other hand, there is a translation issue, of how lived expe-
riences of embodiment can be “read” from the graphical elements that are
displayed onscreen. While this second issue is not relevant to the argument
being developed in this text,2 the first is, and in my understanding the trouble
identified by van den Eede follows from the limited treatment of the concepts
of body schema and body image in postphenomenological research (Besmer,
2015; Ihde, 2002; Secomandi, 2015; Welton, 2006). These terms represent a
duality of human embodiment commonly described as the phenomenological
difference between “being” and “having” a body. I hold that the main aspect
of the world to which a self-tracking technology refers is the body image of a
user. The empirical study of DirectLife below further complicates matters by
showing how these body images can be revealed through service interfaces,
and as such become part of the infrastructures that are partly controlled by
service providers.
 Service Interfaces in Human-Technology Relations 89

The second question that can be raised when examining self-tracking

technologies as service interfaces regards which standpoint to adopt. The
postphenomenological studies mentioned so far opt exclusively for the
user perspective. In the study below, in addition to that I contemplate
the provider perspective, more specifically, the experience of designers
who implemented a new functionality on the DirectLife website. This
take of the empirical research approximates it to ethnographic studies
about the visualization practices of engineering designers in the field
of science and technology studies (e.g., Bucciarelli, 1994; Henderson,
1999; Vinck, 2003). I highlight the social context of design work regard-
ing the DirectLife service. I also argue that design visualizations can be
approached as service interfaces with users and that designer experiences
of these visualizations depend on how users are enacted through them. In
conclusion, experiences of DirectLife, for both designers and users, are
constituted intersubjectively on basis of their relations through a service
interface. To support this assertion, a postphenomenological account of
the role of intersubjectivity in human-technology relations is needed, a
concern to which I turn next.

INTERSUBJECTIVITY IN
HUMAN-TECHNOLOGY RELATIONS

Postphenomenological research has by and large overlooked the role of

interpersonal exchange in human-technology relations. A notable exception
is Forss’s (2011) ethnographic study in a cytology laboratory, which contains
fascinating detail of how expert evaluation of cell material through the micro-
scope can depend on knowledge about the patients concerned. For example,
knowing that a patient was exceptionally old could make cytodiagnosticians
extra cautious in detecting cancerous cells that might lead to invasive surgery.
Also, when checking samples from a patient one had met in person, diagnos-
ticians could abstain from carrying out assessment and hand over the job to
colleagues.
Other exceptions in postphenomenological literature are the studies that
address the topic of human-to-human contact through telecommunication
technologies (Bakardjieva, 2005; Ihde, 1990, p. 199; Rosenberger, 2011b;
Wellner, 2016). These latter studies establish a valuable counterpoint to the
argumentation I seek to develop in this section, because they offer an oppor-
tunity to ask whether any technologically mediated encounter between human
beings implies the exchange of services.
90 Fernando Secomandi

In special, Bakardjieva’s (2005) integration of sociological phenomenology

and critical theory with Ihde’s (1979) analysis of the amplification-reduction
structure of technologies is the most attuned to the issue of intersubjectivity.
Bakardjieva observes that telecommunication technologies, in general, have
amplification powers to enlarge one’s social world, by providing knowledge
about previously unknown people and societies, by connecting geographi-
cally distant individuals, by fostering new relationships, and so forth. On the
other hand, the type of social encounters that happen through these technolo-
gies can be constrained in terms of tangibility, reciprocity, intimacy, and so
on. Of special concern is the fact that these technological reductions can be
“designed in” telecommunication technologies by its producers and thereby
shaped according to a capitalist logic of socioeconomic exploitation. The
danger would be that such a logic then frames every tele-encounter made
possible by the technology, resulting in the alienation of its users.3 About the
technological reductions caused by the telephone, Bakardjieva concludes:
“Thus, I have to express my love for my distant mother through the sole
medium of my voice amplified by the telephone/telecommunication system,
over a period of time constricted by the high cost of the long distance call”
(Bakardjieva, 2005, p. 65).
The passage, however, does not sufficiently detail how producer logic
is felt as operative within the technologically mediated experience. When
someone speaks to a distant mother over the phone, one also finds himself
relating to the mobile network provider. Differently from the mother’s voice,
to which focal attention is directed, the network provider is not the immediate
interlocutor. Its presence is experienced rather more indirectly, for instance,
as the growing feeling of time scarcity that contextualizes the conversation
that unfolds. It is from its field position that the network provider bestows
significance upon how mother appears to the caller. She may seem indifferent
to the rising costs of the call, as seemingly insignificant moments in the day
are recounted in minute detail. Reflexively, the caller may become aware of
his own impatience, monetary stringency, or even rudeness.
This analysis reinforces Bakardjieva’s point by clarifying how the
socioeconomic logic of service exchange with a service provider can sub-
tly encroach upon social relations through a technological system that the
provider partly controls. To be sure, Bakardjieva herself does not believe
domination by the “System” to be the necessary outcome of technological
mediation. She goes on to elaborate a phenomenological conception of home
as a personal realm where users are able to creatively appropriate technolo-
gies and renegotiate its mediation effects, thus resisting external control. At
this juncture, however, my argumentation bifurcates from Bakardjieva’s, for I
 Service Interfaces in Human-Technology Relations 91

believe that opportunities for user empowerment cannot be found in a domain

that is totally devoid of technological influence.
Two tenets of postphenomenological philosophy of technology is that
human activity is, and has always been, technologically embedded and that
humans do not need to, and possibly cannot, be “outside” a technologically
mediated situation in order to discern its non-neutrality (Ihde, 1990). In the
example above, it is precisely because the background presence of the ser-
vice provider can be discerned by the caller, that he is able to acknowledge,
accept, or resist its influences when talking to other people over the phone.
This is not the same as holding that interpersonal phone exchanges can hap-
pen outside the influence of network providers. The point is that influences
from these providers should not be feared on basis of a misguided belief that
they are entirely surreptitious and necessarily totalizing.
A few concepts from postphenomenological literature can be suggested for
expanding the notion of intersubjectivity delineated above. Drawing on the
Foucauldian concept of self-practice, Dorrestijn (2012) and Verbeek (2011)
argue that people can adopt and rehearse particular techniques of use in order
to take a stance toward the mediating effects of technologies. In the case of
the phoning a family member, for instance, one could deal with the “reduc-
tion” caused by network-controlled technology by saving money for making
long-distance calls, or by finding a calmer moment in a busy schedule in
order to place them. Another useful concept is that of “hermeneutic strategy”
(Rosenberger, 2011a, 2013a), which originally refers to perceptual habits and
theoretical underpinnings that underline image interpretation in science. If the
concept can be transplanted to the context of telecommunications, it might be
useful to point to particular cultural predispositions that can shape mediated
social encounters. For instance, one could imagine mother-daughter relations
as forged upon a logic of caring and love that is, if not impervious, at least
highly accommodating to the influences of the network provider.
These are relevant reminders that when engaging technologies human sub-
jects are always corporeally and culturally situated. Ihde (1990, pp. 42–71)
once posited that Galileo’s scientific discoveries made possible by the tele-
scope could only come about at a particular historical moment where spe-
cial ways of experiencing space and time through technologies had already
become sedimented in human perception. This cultural-historical embedding
of vision is further investigated by postphenomenologists in a number of
case studies about imaging technologies in science (e.g., Friis, 2015b, 2015a;
Hasse, 2008; Ihde, 1998; Rosenberger, 2008, 2011a).
To the extent that the situatedness of human perception mentioned above
can be in part attributed to sociality, postphenomenological research already
92 Fernando Secomandi

addresses the issue of intersubjectivity. But the studies above seem off the
mark of a true analysis of technological mediation. And that is because the
explanatory effort is mainly directed at social interactions that transcend
human-technology relations as such, in the sense of occurring “before” or
“around” them. For instance, the interpretation of visual evidence can be
explained with reference to previous training on the part of scientists or to
their affiliation to different research communities. But an account of the
intersubjective constitution of technologically mediated experiences should
not be limited to explanations of how a particular perceptive act is affected
by extraneously formed cultural-historical sediments. Instead, as in the case
of telecommunications analysis above, it is necessary to demonstrate how
social relations are enacted and are able to transform perception from within
the technologically mediated encounter. The study presented next attempts to
do precisely that, by describing how user and designer experiences are con-
stituted intersubjectively in mediated relations through the service interfaces
of DirectLife.

EXPERIENCING DIRECTLIFE’S SERVICE INTERFACES

Methodological Considerations
Data collection for this study of DirectLife ran from April to July of 2009,
around the time when this service was launched in Dutch and North Ameri-
can markets. At that time, DirectLife was under responsibility of New Well-
ness Solutions (NWS), a new venture located at the Philips Incubator, in
Eindhoven. They were experimenting with the business-to-business market-
ing strategy to sell DirectLife to organizations that would in turn make the
service available for employees, in an effort to promote workplace health.
Part of the study strategy involved field research at the DirectLife develop-
ment location, including observation of daily operations, in-depth interviews
with members of the administrative and design staff, plus collection of docu-
mentation from the digital platform used by the software development team.
These data concentrated on the design and implementation of a new func-
tionality of the DirectLife website dashboard for users: the goal adjustment
interface. The purpose of this interface was to allow DirectLife users to indi-
vidually adjust their targets for the end of the 12-week activity improvement
program on basis of information about actual performances during the initial
weeks. The intent of the design team was to make users more committed to
weekly targets, thus closer to reaching the end of the program successfully.
The analysis below of the designer experience of a DirectLife service inter-
face is based on data collected in this field study.
 Service Interfaces in Human-Technology Relations 93

The other part of the research strategy involved a usability study of

DirectLife. Besides completing a 12-week activity improvement program
myself, six participants from a Dutch university were recruited to test the
service for several weeks, until the day when they were offered the opportu-
nity to adjust their activity targets using the new goal adjustment interface.
At the end of their participation, semi-structured interviews were conducted
with all users in order to delve into their impressions and experiences about
DirectLife. This part of the study informs the analysis below about the user
experience of the website interface.
The way in which this empirical research was planned and carried out had
important implications for the findings that can be drawn from it. Assess-
ing the current state of postphenomenological literature, when the topic of
methodology is mentioned at all, it is mainly discussed in terms of broad
research heuristics, rather than systematic tools and techniques. Recently,
Rosenberger and Verbeek (2015, pp. 30–32) summarized the characteristics
of postphenomenological methodology as (1) “understanding the roles that
technologies play in the relations between humans and world,” (2) “[includ-
ing] empirical work as a basis for philosophical reflection,” (3) “[investigat-
ing] how, in the relations that arise around a technology, a specific ‘world’ is
constituted, as well as a specific ‘subject’,” and, as a result of the foregoing,
and (4) “[making] a conceptual analysis of the implications of technologies.”
Ihde, in the same vein, characterizes postphenomenological methodology
as the application of a Husserl-style “variational method” (e.g., Ihde, 1993,
2003, 2006, 2009); but whereas the method is carefully worked out through
an examination of visual illusions in the book Experimental Phenomenology
(Ihde, 1986), its application to the study of concrete technologies is much
less rigorously specified (e.g., Ihde, 2012, in special, Part III). In a reflective
note, Ihde (2003) has wondered if his own approach to study technologies,
although motivated by simplicity and clarity, had a special “selectivity” for
individual, subjective, and simple cases. To that, it would be possible to
add that a great portion of published postphenomenological studies rely on
secondary bibliographic sources, not primary data garnered by researchers’
immersion in social settings.
With regard to my own selectivity, I took an alternate track than Ihde,
because conceiving of DirectLife as a “service” technology focused the
inquiry not on any individual perspective, but the exchange relations between
providers and users. Even if I became a DirectLife user, conclusions could
not be drawn solely from my own experience, but had to be juxtaposed with
the impressions and interpretations of other participants of the usability
study. Moreover, the choice to visit the DirectLife development site fore-
grounded the topic of interpersonal relations, for I became immersed in the
social environment where real-life design work is done. With respect to
94 Fernando Secomandi

this ethnographically inspired part, methodological support was found

in a stream of science and technology studies about engineering design
practices that displays a higher sensitivity to the social context of image
interpretation and the data collection techniques involved in ethnographic
research (e.g., Bucciarelli, 1994; Henderson, 1999; Vinck, 2003). Such
a research strategy decisively inclined me into collecting data about and
reflecting upon the intersubjective constitution designer and user experi-
ences of DirectLife.

The User Experience of a DirectLife Service Interface

Figure 5.1 displays the history view interface, one of the main features of the
DirectLife website for users, regularly visited more than once a day from the
start of the activity improvement program (see Secomandi, 2013, for an anal-
ysis of user experiences with DirectLife involving other interfaces besides the
website). In the history view, users primarily consult the graphics displayed at
the center of the screen in order to gain knowledge about measured levels of
physical activity happening in the previous hours, days, weeks, and months
in the DirectLife program.
Users never experience the DirectLife history view independently from
the influence of the organization behind it. To the extent that Philips is
generally regarded a reputable innovator in the field of consumer electron-
ics, the history view might be initially accepted as a true representation

Figure 5.1 DirectLife’s history view interface (Fernando Secomandi).

 Service Interfaces in Human-Technology Relations 95

of users’ bodily activities. However, incongruences are often noted

between what is seen onscreen and what is believed to have actually
elapsed in lived experience. One of the main sources of incongruence is
related to how the activity monitor is worn. Users typically experiment
with DirectLife recommendations on how to carry the activity monitor,
for instance, wearing it inside a sock when cycling. Most come to recog-
nize that the history view is not a “transparent window” into their bodily
activities, but a reading of it performed by the monitoring technology that
the DirectLife service employs.
This influence of the service provider can be felt even more strongly when
considering the interactivity of the DirectLife website. Because the history
view is accessed as an online application, a dialogue between service users
and providers ensues. At the very least, users understand that what is dis-
played onscreen depends on instant retrieval, processing, and transmission of
personal data on the part of DirectLife. Depending on users’ technical pro-
ficiency, visualizations of physical activity through the history view can be
textured by knowledge about dedicated algorithms to estimate calorie expen-
diture and calculate targets, for instance. Other, design-conscious users might
notice in the visual elements of history view the “technical style” intended by
its web designers, or other possible navigation options that were or were not
made available by them.
Obviously, the most direct indications that DirectLife users interact with a
service provider come from the personal coach image right below the history
view and the Philips logo at the top-left corner. But while users can delib-
erately look and make sense of these peripheral visual elements, that is not
what normally occurs as the history view is used. Much like the network pro-
vider in the case of telephone communication before, personal coaches and
the Philips organization are at the fringes of experience, whereas the activity
graphs of the history view focalize the attention of users. Nonetheless, these
service providers influence the experience of users, in the case of coaches, by
making history view readings potentially a motive to look for help, and in the
case of Philips, by imbuing the whole experience with a sense of proprietor-
ship and authenticity.
To be sure, the whole perceptual field of users is impregnated with the
logic of their service exchanges with DirectLife and thereby arranged accord-
ing to “regions” of particular significance. The appearance of the history
view graphs at the very center communicates the kernel of DirectLife’s value
proposition: whether one is physically active or not. Peripheral options,
including clarifications over contractual agreements and privacy policies, are
secondary to that.
Postphenomenologically, I hold that the graphics of DirectLife’s history
view refers to objectified aspects of users’ own bodies, more precisely,
96 Fernando Secomandi

their body images. These body images are actualized through a DirectLife
interface, and as such, they become an infrastructural aspect of the service
experience of users. Because DirectLife has a role to play in these experi-
ences, users’ knowledge about their bodies are constituted intersubjectively
in relation to the service provider.

The Designer Experience of a DirectLife Service Interface

Figure 5.2 displays one of the many visualizations that were generated
during the development and implementation a new functionality to the
DirectLife website: the goal adjustment interface (see Secomandi, 2012,
pp. 81–118, for an analysis of the other visualizations used during the
design of DirectLife). This particular visualization emerged in the pro-
cess of “debugging” software codes of the goal adjustment interface,
before they were merged into the DirectLife website. Testing happened
on the “demo server,” which held copies of website software and user
data, in order to prevent disordering the software version that was online
for users. Visualizations created in the demo server were based on physi-
cal activity data from actual users that were merged with other “bogus”
information, like fake names, to ensure their anonymity. Software testers
imagined a number of use cases for DirectLife users and rehearsed their
behaviors by manipulating the goal adjustment interface, interpreting

Figure 5.2 DirectLife’s goal adjustment interface (Fernando Secomandi).

 Service Interfaces in Human-Technology Relations 97

what appeared onscreen on basis of their expectations of how users might

understand that.
The visualization above shows one of the bugs found by a software tester.
Very low activity counts are displayed for the previous several weeks in the
goal adjustment interface, as can be seen in the bars referring to “assessment”
and “weeks 1-3” (perhaps, the user has regularly forgotten to carry the activity
monitor). The unmatched activity targets, the gray line partly covered by the
“contact your coach” pop-up, nonetheless remain high and coherent with what is
considered in this case a “healthy” level of physical activity. As the user reaches
week 4 (“now”) and is offered the opportunity to revise activity targets for the
end of the 12-week improvement program, the goal adjustment toggle (“new
goal”) illogically locks his options at very low levels of weekly activity (“20
Cal”). DirectLife’s promise to help people become more physically active would
be seriously undermined if users were forced to set activity targets at such levels.
For software testers, this bug could be logically explained in terms of a
poor fit between the new interface and underlying mathematical algorithms
and software codes. These had to be rewritten. However, it is important to
observe that the flaws were not discovered by directly examining algorithms
and codes, but instead by noting an unexpected onscreen appearance. What’s
even more important is that this mismatch had to be experienced by the soft-
ware tester vicariously, by putting himself “in the shoes” of future users and
imagining what they would feel were the new interface implemented in the
DirectLife website without further corrective actions.
From a postphenomenological standpoint, as in the case of the history
view, the graphics displayed in the goal adjustment interface refer to body
images. Differently from before, the objectified body is not an aspect of the
own body of the designer who is experiencing the interface, but of the user
who is experienced through it. Actualized by the interface, the bodies of users
are perceived by designers as infrastructural aspects of the service experi-
ence. Because this infrastructure entails information and behaviors that are
attributed to the users of DirectLife, designer experiences of the interface are
constituted intersubjectively in relation to them.

CONCLUSION

The chapter has developed several lines of reasoning that need integration in
this conclusion. The underlying motivation was to remark that postphenom-
enological philosophy of technology can fruitfully adopt qualitative research
methodologies from the social sciences. Doing so not only can help to “opera-
tionalize” postphenomenology when carrying out empirical research in social
98 Fernando Secomandi

settings, the results from such undertakings can also bring original insights to
postphenomenological theory. As mentioned before, the conclusions drawn
from this study of DirectLife are partly due to the methodological deci-
sion to study “service” technologies following an ethnographic approach to
design practices. This has presented an inclination to critically consider the
socioeconomic exchanges that happen through a service interface, both from
the user and the designer perspectives, and to delve deeper into the issue of
intersubjectivity.
Specifically with regard to the case of self-tracking technologies, intersub-
jectivity follows from the observation that user bodies are being “tracked”
through service interfaces, what makes the experience of them dependent
on reciprocal exchanges with the providers of these services. That raises
important questions about the “servicing” of bodies that are made possible
by self-tracking technologies: If user embodiment is revealed through a ser-
vice interface that is partly controlled by providers, then what is the nature
and extent of this influence? What type of user subjectivity can be forged in
mediated service encounters with providers of self-tracking technologies?
These are relevant questions that might be asked from a postphenomeno-
logical standpoint, in line with its predominant interest on user perspectives.
However, with this study I hope to have shown that the same questions can
be aptly taken up from the standpoint of designers as well.
More generally, the contribution of this chapter can be related to postphe-
nomenology’s interrelational ontology. Postphenomenological interrelation-
ality is itself an application of phenomenology’s concept of intentionality
to the case of human-technology relations (Ihde, 2003). Intersubjectivity, as
discussed here, can be seen as a special dimension of human-technology rela-
tions referring to the significant ways in which mediated experiences can be
textured by social interactions—in this case, interpersonal service exchanges.
To explain such texturing postphenomenologists need not transcend a techno-
logically mediated encounter in order to search “outside” or “backward” for
the cultural-historical conditionings of human perception. Instead, a rigorous
analysis of intersubjectivity can describe how social interactions are enacted
and are transformative in the mediated experience.
By advancing the concept of service interface, I hope to make postphe-
nomenological research better attuned to the issues of intersubjectivity. This,
I believe, is important not just for understanding the case of self-tracking
technologies, but the growing number of technologies that are exchanged in
the marketplace as services, in areas such as education, health care, transpor-
tation, retail, tourism, and others.
 Service Interfaces in Human-Technology Relations 99

NOTES

1. As of September 30, 2016, when this chapter was being finalized, the formerly
official DirectLife URL redirected to a webpage where Philips communicated the
discontinuation of the DirectLife service and website starting on July 1, 2016.
2. This problem refers to the distinction often made in postphenomenology
between isomorphic and translational images (see Ihde, 1998). Van den Eede and
I (Secomandi, 2013) apparently agree that the graphics generated by self-tracking
technologies are mostly translational depictions of users’ bodies, but he further
complicates this point by observing how these visualizations can also be isomorphic.
When seeing the numeric step count displayed by a pedometer, for example, the
“feeling” one has can resonate (isomorphically) with the experience of having taken
exactly that many steps. In fact, Ihde (1998, pp. 167–168) makes similar observations
regarding a “vestigial analogue” referentiality of some translational visualizations, for
instance, in the case of a thermometer’s mercury column “embodying the ‘higher’ and
‘lower’ temperatures shown.”
3. Adding slightly to Bakardjieva’s point, there is no reason why designed-in
mediations regulated by producers should only be worrisome for their technological
reductions. As seen in the case of gambling practices, technologies can also “lock-in”
users in exploitative relations with producers precisely because of their amplification
qualities.

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 Chapter 6

From Camera Obscura to fMRI

How Brain Imaging Technologies
Mediate Free Will
Ciano Aydin

Brain imaging technologies, such as positron emission tomography (PET)

and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), are increasingly used
not only to diagnose diseases and lesions but also to correlate brain activa-
tion with psychological states and traits. Many philosophers have become
interested in brain imaging technologies because the images that they display
seem to have bearing on philosophical issues such as consciousness, free will,
weakness of will, responsibility, moral deliberation, rational choice, agency,
and identity.
In this chapter I will critically discuss the role of brain imaging technolo-
gies in free will debates. I will also briefly review the arguments of advocates
and opponents of free will, focusing on how brain imaging technologies are
used to support their positions. Then I will show how data and images pro-
vided by brain scanners are used to draw causal relations between brain pro-
cesses and cognitive functions and discuss methodological objections against
this conception. Although these methodological reflections problematize, as
we will see, the view of brain images as valid and reliable representations,
they neither sufficiently challenge nor explicate how brain imaging technolo-
gies instigate a framework that allows the brain to be approached as an agent
that produces cognition and regulates behavior. Instead of taking brain imag-
ing technologies as “material objects” that can neutrally represent certain
faculties of the “subject,” a postphenomenological methodological approach
attempts to reveal the particular way these technologies frame the relation
between brain and self.
Drawing upon technical mediation theory, I will investigate how brain
imaging technologies mediate the conception of the brain as the locus of the

103
104 Ciano Aydin

self, which is then granted or denied free will. This particular notion of self
and freedom has, as I will demonstrate, a history that can be traced back to
Descartes: another, older technology, namely the camera obscura, inspired
Descartes’s view of the autonomous self, which is sustained and transformed
by brain imaging technologies that scientists and philosophers use today in
order to argue in favor of or against the existence of free will. Of course, I
do not claim that the camera obscura can exclusively explain, or that it is
the only source of, Descartes’s views of self and freedom. However, this
reconstruction will illustrate how technologies, which often remain virtually
unrecognized, co-constitute seminal ideas in the history of philosophy.
The aim of this genealogical account, which can also be seen as a postphe-
nomenological methodology, is not a plea to purify our self-identifications
from technological influences but rather to show the paradoxical account of
the Cartesian framework that is sustained in many free will debates: conceiv-
ing brain images as a “direct representation” of a brain that is unaffected by
external influences and, hence, is seen as the locus of our selves, excludes per
definition the conception that our self-identifications are technically medi-
ated. By showing that the notion of a pure, unaffected self was co-constructed
by the metaphor of a particular technology, I will argue for an alternative
anthropology that properly recognizes the mediating role of technologies
and propose a different interpretation of the images displayed by brain imag-
ing technologies. This alternative anthropology will also reframe free will
debates: brain scanners in themselves are not sufficient to display a brain
that can be seen as the locus of the self, which presumably would render free
will impossible, but could rather contribute to the formation of a self and the
advancement of its freedom.

FREE WILL DEBATES AND BRAIN

IMAGING TECHNOLOGIES

It is impossible, and also not my aim here, to provide an exhaustive discus-

sion of the different positions and arguments in the free will debate. A brief
account of the main arguments will be sufficient to set the stage for showing
that brain imaging technologies inform (and, as we will see, also misinform)
views on free will. It is almost undisputed that there are two minimal condi-
tions that any action that is said to be free has to meet: the “absence of com-
pulsion” and “the absence of pure chance.” These criteria positively entail
that my action is free if (and only if) it can be attributed to my (and not to
an enforced or a random) will (Pauen, 2004, 2007). From this perspective
we can come up with a working definition of free will: a person has free will
if she, and not someone or something else, determines her will, actions, and
 From Camera Obscura to fMRI 105

decisions. Most advocates and opponents of free will in the context of neu-
roscience approve this definition of free will but disagree on the question of
whether conscious intentions and decisions have causal efficacy and control
in regard to the organism’s behavior.
Advocates of free will attempt to demonstrate that (directly or indirectly)
conscious intentions and decisions, or other aspects of our mind, can have
causal efficacy and control, and are therefore not, or not completely, subject
to unconscious, automatic operating processes in the brain. Since, from this
perspective, we relate who we are to our mind, then what we think and do
is, at least potentially, up to us. Free will is therefore possible (Mele, 2009;
Libet, 2011; Baumeister, Masicampo, & Vohs, 2011; Slors, 2012, 2013).
Most opponents of free will do not repudiate the idea that there is con-
scious thought. What they deny is that my actions are caused by conscious
intentions or decisions. They believe that the vast majority of the decisions
and actions that we ascribe to our conscious intentions, including those con-
scious intentions, are in reality caused by unconscious brain processes. In this
instance, the stance taken is that, since we relate who we are to our mind or
certain contents of our mind, and our mind cannot control our brain, what we
do is not up to us. Therefore, free will is, for the most radical free will critics,
impossible, though we need to stress here that there are different forms and
levels of “disproof” of free will (Libet et al., 1983; Hassin, Uleman, & Bargh,
2005; Wegner & Wheatley, 1999; Soon et al., 2008; Swaab, 2010; Lamme,
2010; Fried, Mukamel, & Kreiman, 2011; Harris, 2012).
What sometimes confuses matters is the claim of some of the same oppo-
nents of free will that “we are our brain.” Because not consciousness but the
brain determines our actions and decisions, the brain must be considered as
our “real self” (Lamme, 2006, 2010). This seems to be inconsistent; if we
are our brain and our brain determines our actions, then we determine our
actions and are, therefore, free. That is, however, not how brain scientists
like Lamme, Haynes, and Harris understand the relation between brain and
self. They assume that the brain in one way or another produces conscious-
ness, and that we (from a scientific point of view wrongly) identify ourselves
with that consciousness. Since not consciousness but the brain determines our
actions, and the brain—they assume—is not affected by consciousness, then
the consciousness that we identify ourselves with is no more than a powerless
epiphenomenon of the brain.
Both opponents and advocates of free will often strongly base their views
on brain imaging technologies. Of course, neither here can I give a complete
overview but rather will discuss a couple of experiments that illustrate how
brain imaging technologies are used in this context. It is at least safe to say
that Benjamin Libet, who has become famous for his finger wagging experi-
ment (Libet et al., 1983), has inspired many opponents of free will. This
106 Ciano Aydin

experiment shows that the moment at which respondents indicate awareness

of their decision to move their finger is slightly less than half a second after
the so-called readiness potential is observed in an EEG. On the basis of this
observation the (contentious) conclusion is drawn that before respondents are
aware of their intention the brain has already made the decision to move the
finger, which seems to undermine the concept of freewill.
Following Libet’s observations, more attempts have been made to conduct
increasingly sophisticated experiments and confirm that not our conscious
selves but our brains determine our actions. John-Dylan Haynes’s (in Soon et
al., 2008) MRI set-up provided improved spatial resolution and could be used
to survey the whole brain, whereas Libet’s EEG technique could only record
a limited area of brain activity. In this study, participants could freely decide
if they wanted to press a button with their left or right hand, but were asked
to remember exactly when they felt they had made up their mind, which was
registered by a computer. Haynes and his team claimed to be able to predict
with 60% accuracy which button subjects would choose six seconds before
they were consciously aware of their decision.
Fried and his team (2011) studied individuals with electrodes implanted
in their brains as part of a surgical procedure to treat epilepsy. This enabled
them to record the activity in single neurons using microelectrode systems,
which provided a more precise picture of brain activity than both EEG and
fMRI. In their study, they showed that there was activity in a small group of
neurons in particular brain areas before the subject made a conscious decision
to press a button. With about 700 milliseconds to go, the researchers assert
that they could predict which decision would follow with 80% accuracy.
Advocates of free will often draw upon the same brain imaging technolo-
gies but claim that they do not display the non-existence of free will. I will
again limit myself to a couple of examples (see Klemm, 2010, for a more
extensive overview). Some advocates of free will refer to another experiment
of Libet (2011) in which respondents are given a second assignment: when
they are aware of their intention to move their finger, they should try to go
against that inclination. On the EEG one can see again that the readiness
potential precedes the conscious intention by about half a second. However,
just before the expected action we see that the readiness potential discontin-
ues. Libet and some contemporary advocates of free will argue that it might
be true that we mistakenly believe that our actions are caused by conscious
intentions, but that does not exclude the ability to intervene in an impulse,
and consciously veto and stop the action that our brain has unconsciously
prepared. We do not have a “free will,” but a “free won’t.”
Trevena and Miller (2010) challenge the assumption that evolving brain
activity prior to conscious awareness of an intention to act is unambigu-
ously associated with preparation for movement. According to these authors,
 From Camera Obscura to fMRI 107

there is no evidence that electrophysiological signs before “a decision to

move” are stronger then electrophysiological signs before “a decision not to
move,” which would indicate that these signs are not specific to preparation
of movement.
Koechlin and Hyafil (2007) have pointed out that the brain regions most
frequently studied in the context of free will debates, namely the (pre-)
supplementary motor area and the anterior cingulate motor areas of the brain,
may be only involved in the later stages of motor planning. However, this
does not exclude the possibility that other parts of the brain, which are not
yet taken into account, are responsible for decision-making and exerting will.
According to Mele (2009), the readiness potential depicted by brain imag-
ing technologies does not necessarily exclude the influence of conscious
decisions on behavior. Forming certain habits could initially be the result of
a conscious choice. Once habits are initiated, they may be executed with little
or no conscious involvement. This explains why an intention to act in a cer-
tain way can arise without being actively formed from a decision process but
does not exclude the possible influences of consciousness on our decisions
and actions. This also does not exclude the possibility, as Libet suggested,
that a habit may be vetoed consciously.
Although opponents and advocates provide very different and contest-
ing interpretations of brain images, both groups often assume that data and
images provided by brain scanners in one way or another depict causal rela-
tions between brain processes and cognitive functions. In the following sec-
tion I will briefly examine, with reference to fMRI, what exactly brain images
represent or visualize and discuss methodological objections against the view
that brain images provide functional evidence.

BRAIN IMAGING TECHNOLOGIES

AS FUNCTIONAL EVIDENCE?

Brain images are colorized pictures of alleged brain activity, which can be
measured in different ways. fMRI, a dominant technology in brain map-
ping research, measures the so-called Blood Oxygenation Level Depen-
dent (BOLD) response. When a brain area is more active it consumes more
oxygen, which is delivered by an increase in blood flow in the activated
area. Oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin in the blood have differ-
ent magnetic properties. An MRI scanner can read changes in magnetiza-
tion and translate them into a computerized image (Matthews & Jezzard,
2004).
Neuroscientists and philosophers who draw a direct identity relation
between brain states and cognition, use data and images provided by brain
108 Ciano Aydin

scanners to infer something about the role of particular brain areas in cogni-
tive functions. Brain imaging data are also increasingly used, in particular in
free will debates, to make a so-called reverse inference: brain imaging data
are taken as evidence that a given brain region plays a particular causal role
during the performance of a cognitive task.
There are “neuro-optimists” who go even one step further and assert that
brain images will permit immediate access to our thoughts. Camerer et al.
(2005) state, for example, that brain images can open up the “black box” of
the mind to direct observation. Victor Lamme writes that an fMRI scan grants
“a glimpse into someone’s mind” and that we finally will be able to “measure
what someone sees with his mind’s eye” (2010, p. 264; see also Lamme,
2006). These views reminisce older speculations: Armstrong (1968/1993, p.
109) anticipated the idea that a “brain technician” with perfect understanding
of brain processes would be able to correct the mental states that someone
ascribes to himself.
A general objection against these kinds of assumptions is that brain
images are not simple pictures of BOLD signal differences. It is not possible
to directly measure quantitative signal magnitudes. General mapping from
BOLD signal to significant neural activity is lacking (Nair, 2005). In addition,
the BOLD differences that are associated to brain activity are small, noisy,
and multifaceted. According to Klein (2010), brain images do not provide
quantitative information but rather display statistical significant differences
in BOLD signal between different task conditions: inferential statistics are
used to contradict the so-called null hypothesis that indicates that an experi-
mental condition had no real effect on the observed MR signal. Brain images
do not directly display activation in brain areas but are rather maps of places
where we can assume with a certain probability that the presumed correlation
(speaking of “causation” is too premature) between data and a stereotyped
pattern of activation is unlikely to be the result of chance fluctuations from a
true zero signal (Klein, 2011).
Roskies (2007) draws a similar conclusion by arguing that brain images
should not be conceived as photographs of brain activity. Brain imaging does
not let us directly see properties carrying visual data of the brain. Unlike
photography, brain imaging is belief-opaque: the information crucial to its
correct interpretation is, Roskies argues, not contained in the image itself.
The assumed functional decomposition, the tasks involved in producing an
image and the chosen statistics are necessary for interpreting the image but
not recoverable in information inherent in it. Inferences are, therefore, depen-
dent upon the beliefs and experience of the researchers about how to analyze
their results. What complicates matters here is the question of whether “direct
representation” as such is possible. I acknowledge that certain conventions or
beliefs might always be involved in recovering information. However, it still
 From Camera Obscura to fMRI 109

seems to be possible to make a distinction between more and less common or

accepted conventions and beliefs, shared by a cultural community.
No less controversial is reverse inference: because brain regions can per-
form multiple functions and be involved in a variety of different processes,
a causal relation between activation of a certain brain area and a particular
cognitive function cannot be drawn (Klein, 2010). The many conceivable
mappings between brain regions and cognitive functions allow for a combi-
natorial explosion of possible explanations of observed brain activity (Klein,
2011). Discovering more systematicity in the visual field might strengthen
certain explanations (see also Klein, 2017). However, presently reverse infer-
ence provides virtually no evidence and is deductively invalid (Poldrack,
2006).
These objections against the validity of brain imaging indicate that brain
images are not direct representations of brain activity and that they provide
very weak functional evidence. However, for most critics these concerns
about validity and reliability do not render brain imaging worthless. Accord-
ing to Roskies (2007), “Imaging data is, within its limits, a reliable indicator
of brain activity” (p. 867). Caccioppo, Berntson, and Nusbaum (2008) believe
that brain imaging can help generate hypotheses in an exploratory way, which
can be tested in future studies. In a similar vein, Klein argues: “Neuroimages
do not confirm functional hypothesis, but they do show brain areas in which
the imaging data might be further used to confirm functional hypotheses”
(2010, p. 275).
These methodological considerations and evaluations have two relevant
implications within the scope of our investigation: on the one hand, they
clearly show that brain images do not directly display neural activity but are,
in fact, very much dependent on theoretical beliefs and statistical supposi-
tions. On the other hand, these methodological assessments regarding validity
and reliability neither challenge nor sufficiently explicate the particular way
brain imaging technologies frame the relation between brain, cognition, and
world.
By focusing only on methodological issues concerning functional evi-
dence, the more basic framework that allows the brain to be approached as
an agent that determines cognitive functions and utilizes the external world is
neither revealed nor questioned. The objection that brain regions can perform
multiple functions and be involved in a variety of different processes does
not challenge the idea of the brain as an agent that causes cognitive func-
tions. Although the discussed methodological reflections indicate that brain
images might not be reliable and valid pictures of brain processes, they do
reinforce the view of the brain as a causal agent by framing the brain as an
isolated realm that—if certain methodological problems are solved—could
provide functional hypotheses. This presumption has, as we will see below,
110 Ciano Aydin

far-reaching implications for how “free will” is conceived. A postphenom-

enological methodological approach allows revealing and challenging the
particular way brain imaging technologies frame the relation between brain
and self.

THE TECHNICALLY MEDIATED SELF

The idea that technologies frame our notions and experiences of both
the world and ourselves forms the core of technical mediation theory
(Verbeek, 2005). From this perspective technologies are not neutral tools
that measure certain conditions and properties of the world and ourselves
but they co-determine what they measure. Let me illustrate the general
idea behind technical mediation theory with an example: “health” greatly
derives its meaning from technologically generated measurements of
variables like weight, heart rate, blood pressure, and diabetes. Today more
and more people use apps to watch their health: running distance track-
ers, calorie counters, nutrition assessors, sleep cycle analyzers, and so on.
These technologies are not neutral tools that merely measure “health,” in
fact “health” is codetermined by what these tools measure (and what is
not disclosed and left out). They provide norms for what is considered as
“healthy” and influence whether people consider and experience them-
selves as healthy.
From a technical mediation perspective brain imaging technologies are,
as I will show, in a similar vein, not neutral instruments but frame the brain
and its relations to cognition, self and world in a particular way. Conse-
quently, through what they (presume to) measure (and what is not disclosed
and left out) they strongly influence how “free will” is approached and
understood.
I will prepare this analysis by drawing a parallel between Descartes’s
account of the relation between consciousness/self and freedom, which was,
as I will illustrate, also influenced by a particular technology—namely the
camera obscura—and assumptions regarding the relation between brain/self
and freedom in free will debates. Next, I will discuss similarities but also one
important difference between both technologies’ framing of the notion of
freedom. Finally, I will discuss why the notion of “freedom” that brain imag-
ing technologies bring about is problematic.

The Camera Obscura, the Self, and Autonomy

How an idea, view or, theory emerges is often considered to be part of
the “context of discovery” and is not seen as important or relevant for its
 From Camera Obscura to fMRI 111

validation. I believe that in certain cases recognizing the “context of discov-

ery” can help to uncover relevant presuppositions of the theory in question
and indirectly provide cues that could be used to challenge its “context of
justification.”1
Recognizing how the camera obscura played a role in Descartes’s “con-
text of discovery” will help to uncover an assumption that not only greatly
determined his view of the self but also has been preserved in the view of
the self that is often supposed in free will debates. Although most neurosci-
entists consider, in contrast to Descartes, the brain and not consciousness as
the center of the self and the regulator of our cognitions and actions, there
are certain similarities relating to notions of self and freedom that, from my
perspective, are transferred.
I am not the first person to highlight the connection between technology
and Descartes’s view of the self. Lee W. Bailey (1989) argues that the camera
obscura is one of the root metaphors that helped generate the image of the
mind as an inner realm, ontologically separated from the external world, an
image that is characteristic of our modern suppositions of subjectivity and
autonomy. Technical mediation theorists Petran Kockelkoren (2003) and Don
Ihde (2007) have explored this view along similar lines.
In the 16th century the camera obscura was widely used for perspective
drawing. Descartes was very familiar with this piece of technology. In his
Optics, he describes it and uses it as a metaphor to explain how the world
enters our mind through our senses:

The objects we look at do imprint very perfect images on the back of our eyes.
Some people have very ingeniously explained this already, by comparison with
the images that appear in a chamber, when having it completely closed except
for a single hole, and having put in front of this hole a glass in the form of a lens,
we stretch behind, at a specific distance, a white cloth on which the light that
comes from the objects outside forms these images. For they say that this cham-
ber represents the eye; this hole, the pupil; this lens, the crystalline humour, or
rather, all those parts of the eye which cause some refraction; and this cloth,
the interior membrane, which is composed of the extremities of the optic nerve.
(Descartes, 1965, p. 91)

Descartes argues that in methodical self-contemplation, the self discovers

that our access to the contents of our thoughts (introspection) radically differs
from how we encounter the external world of material things (extrospection):
we can have an authoritative (others cannot challenge our belief of being in a
particular mental state), privileged (we know the contents of our own minds
always better than we know the contents of the minds of other people), and
immediate (knowledge of our mental contents is non-inferential and non-
evidence based) access to the contents of our thoughts, which we lack toward
112 Ciano Aydin

the external world of material things. Extrospective beliefs about the outside
world are indirect and dependent on deceptive sense experience (Macdonald,
2007).
This capacity makes the fundamental distinction that Descartes draws
between our thinking (res cogitans) and the material world (res extensa)
appear reasonable: since introspective beliefs about my mind are radically
different from my beliefs about the outside world, my mind must be a com-
pletely different substance than the outside world, including my body. This
argument has also another implication: since we have this privileged access
to our mind and not to our body and the world, which makes us doubt their
existence, we identify ourselves primarily with our conscious thought: I
think, therefore, I am (Cogito ergo sum; Descartes, 1641/1985). Moreover,
the mind is, says Descartes, in one way or another able to exert control over
brain, body, and environment via the pineal gland, whereas the body is a
machine that is subject to mechanistic laws (Lokhorst, 2008). The sense of
being an autonomous agent is derived from the cogito, which is ontologically
separated from the external world but in some way capable of controlling it.
The imperative prejudice that Descartes did not put in brackets in his
methodical doubt experiment is that it is altogether possible to fundamentally
detach oneself from the world and evaluate different ideas on the basis of
clarity and distinctness. Although this assumption has been extensively chal-
lenged throughout the history of philosophy, especially from phenomenologi-
cal perspectives (intentionality, being-in-the-world, etc.), not much attention
has been given to the material/technological conditions that made this view
appear cogent. Bailey and others show that the camera obscura has influenced
this view because its central perspective makes the idea of an aloof spectator
position, as opposed to a geometrical res extensa, a plausible starting point
for reasoning. The camera obscura is, thus, not an innocent and neutral meta-
phor that Descartes used to explain his epistemology but mediated the idea
of the mind as an internal representation of a world that can be observed (and
acted on) by a little autonomous spectator, a homunculus situated somewhere
outside the world.
This particular framing of the relation between mind, world, and self has
also far-reaching consequences for conceptions of freedom. The metaphor of
the camera obscura reflects the idea of freedom as a quality that is characteris-
tic of an agent that is independent of the world and the laws and mechanisms
that determine it, and, at the same time, has control over it on the basis of
the images that are reflected on the screen of its (the agent’s) internal con-
trol room. This framework, inspired by the camera obscura, does not mark
a historical event that we have left behind, but one that has been transported
and rehabilitated by other technologies, such as contemporary brain imaging
technologies, which currently have become in the context of neuroscience the
 From Camera Obscura to fMRI 113

dominant mediating technologies on the basis of which the self is granted or

denied free will.

From Camera Obscura to fMRI

It must be clear that many participants in current free will debates believe
that not consciousness but the brain is the locus of the self and regulator
of behavior. Although Descartes would never have situated cognition in or
reduced it to brain processes, since brain and body are also part of the res
extensa, the division between “internal” and “external” that breaks along
the line of an independent agent is, as Rouse (1996) has pointed out, a
Cartesian legacy.
What is relevant here is that brain imaging technologies mediate and trans-
fer similar Cartesian notions of self and freedom. By focusing on the inside of
the head and (interactions between) certain regions of brain activity an fMRI
image depicts the brain as an isolated realm and allows approaching it as an
independent inner agent (see also the thought experiment discussed in Dorris
[2015, 37–38], in which this is taken a step further). This way a categorical
distinction between “inside” and “outside” is preserved. The brain is attrib-
uted a privileged status because of its presumed capacity to detach itself from
the outside world, process information that is collected by the senses, and
determine, as a kind of causa sui, our decisions and actions.
This view of the self not only represents a Cartesian anthropology but
also evokes particular notions of “control” and “freedom.” Advocates and
opponents of free will do not agree on the question of whether consciousness
can be attributed causal efficacy (see also the entry “epiphenomenalism” in
Stanford Encyclopedia). However, they often share the view that freedom can
only be attributed to an agent (consciousness or brain) that is detached or has
the capacity to detach itself from its environment or other external influences.
They believe that freedom can only exist in a separate, autonomous realm,
that is, a realm that is not fundamentally affected or determined by external
factors. Only then is it possible to process external input by virtue of which
behavior can be controlled and the external world can be utilized.
There is for our approach one important and relevant difference between
the camera obscura and fMRI. The camera obscura frames how a subject
acquires knowledge of self and world. In Descartes’s epistemology, how-
ever, it remains rather unclear how this knowledge is obtained and used to
form decisions and execute actions. The cogito is a “black box” that is only
accessible through subjective introspection. It cannot be scientifically objec-
tified and investigated (in the modern sense of the word). In contrast, fMRI
has, according to optimistic neuroscientists and philosophers/psychologists
(like Haynes and Lamme) who think that this technology can settle free will
114 Ciano Aydin

debates, the potential to eventually display the interior of the “dark room” and
to disclose not only what really determines our mind and behavior but also
how it is able to do it. From this perspective knowledge of the “real agent”
of our actions and decisions—that is, of the brain—is no longer based on
speculative, subjective assumptions but can be scientifically investigated and
validated.
The assumption that fMRI can provide objective knowledge of how the
brain causes decisions and actions does not weaken the camera obscura
framework of freedom but rather reinforces it and makes it more cred-
ible. The idea of freedom as “not being determined by something else but
capable of determining behavior and utilizing the world,” which is now
attributed to the brain—and instead of “free will” often is translated as
“control”—appears more credible because it is investigated in a scientific
setting.

The Illusion of a Pure, Unmediated Self

If technologies mediate to a great extent our conceptions and experiences
of the world and ourselves, what then is wrong with the conception of self
and freedom/control suggested by brain imaging technologies? It must be
clear that the problem is not that this conception is technically mediated. The
problem lies in (1) the particular self-identification and self-interpretation
that brain imaging technologies encourage and (2) the insufficient acknowl-
edgment of and accounting for the mediating role of these technologies in
self-identification and self-interpretation processes. Both impediments are, as
we will see, related.
I will first discuss and challenge the particular self-identification and self-
interpretation that brain imaging technologies generate. Brain researchers and
philosophers who identify “our real self” with the brain and attribute to the
brain causal efficacy and control conceive the brain, relying on fMRI images,
as some kind of causa sui that is detached from the outside world and can
determine our decisions and actions. By correlating “our real self” with the
brain, detaching it from the outside world and approaching it as an inner regu-
lator of behavior, they rehabilitate a problematic “inside-outside” distinction.
This distinction has been challenged from different “externalist approaches”
that attempt to show that what we consider our “real, inner self” is greatly
dependent on factors in the “outside” world. An important implication of
these challenges is that the criteria for what it means to be an “independent,
inner self” are blurred and, hence, the very distinction between “internal” and
“external” becomes opaque (see Dennett, 2003; Hutchins, 2011; Kirchhoff,
2012).
 From Camera Obscura to fMRI 115

It must be remarked that contemporary externalist accounts often concern the

status of mental contents and their influence on our behavior, However, their
arguments still affect positions that correlate the self or “real self” to the brain
(see Aydin, 2015). Taking the brain, instead of consciousness, as some kind of
inner homunculus (or a multitude of homunculi) that instigates and regulates
cognitive processes and utilizes its external environment also requires clear
criteria that ensure the brain (together with its physically realized mental states)
is a kind of isolated “inside” that can be detached from the “outside” world (see
also Rouse, 1996). These criteria are, as stated earlier, lacking.
In addition, various empirical studies challenge the view of the brain as an
autonomous agent that is not fundamentally influenced by the outside world.
These studies indicate that the brain is substantially affected and altered by
external influences; sociocultural practices can reshape certain cortical areas
of the brain or transform the brain’s representational capacities (see Näätänen
et al., 1997; Dehaene et al., 1999; Wheeler, 2004).
Gallagher and Crisafi (2009) and Aydin (2015) take this one step further
and try to show that brain/mental contents and world are not only reciprocal
but also interdependent: cognitive processes do not travel from one autono-
mous sphere (brain) to another (world) and vice versa (Clark, 2008, xxviii).
Rather, cognition can be understood as a self-organizational process in which
brains, bodies, and world simultaneously participate and depend on one
another (I will elaborate on this alternative view in the next section).
The view of the brain as an autonomous agent underlies our second imped-
iment: the effect of insufficiently taking into account the mediating role of
fMRI technologies in self-identification and self-interpretation processes. The
idea of the brain as an autonomous agent—a detached causa sui—is tenable
insofar as the mediating role of the technology that co-instigates that idea
remains in the background and is disregarded. It validates itself insofar as the
technical conditions that have generated it remain invisible.
A parallel can be drawn again between the idea of an autonomous brain and
Descartes’s account of unmediated mental contents: Descartes’s assumption
that we can have unmediated, introspective access to our own ideas provides
the alleged certainty of a self that is essentially unaffected by external influ-
ences, which presumably would secure the autonomous formation of judg-
ments and execution of actions. In the same vein, fMRI images are believed
to represent an isolated brain that is essentially unaffected by external influ-
ences, which would make its capacity to determine our decisions and actions
presumably intelligible. Whether, to what extent, and in what sense mind/
brain can influence our actions, I leave here in the middle (see for example
Slors, 2013, for an interesting, nuanced account). What is relevant here is
providing an alternative framework for understanding “free will.”
116 Ciano Aydin

Our reconstruction of the genealogy of the Cartesian self and the influence
of the camera obscura on its emergence shows that even the notion of a pure,
unaffected self was co-produced by the metaphor of a particular technol-
ogy (see also Tenner, 2003). This genealogy highlights the impossibility of
detaching our self-conceptions and self-identifications from influences of our
surroundings. We tend to oversee these influences, which are increasingly
technological, especially when they become part of commonly accepted
practices. They then become, as Andy Clark (2003, 123) (uncritically) states,
transparent. In the next section I will discuss how recognizing the mediat-
ing role of imaging technologies could help us to reinterpret the meaning of
“free will.”

RECOGNIZING THE MEDIATING ROLE OF IMAGING

TECHNOLOGIES AND REINTERPRETING “FREE WILL”

From a technical mediation perspective, which is rooted in the postphenom-

enological approach, it is possible to recognize the structural influence of
fMRI and other brain imaging technologies on our conceptions of the rela-
tion between brain, behavior and world, as well as the particular way these
conceptions frame “free will.” It also enables us to put forward a different
interpretation of what brain imaging technologies display. This requires, first
of all, an acknowledgment that brain images are not “immediate” representa-
tions or photographs of brain processes. Not only because of methodological
difficulties concerning reliability and validity but also because fMRI images
necessarily frame the brain in a particular way, making the very notion of
“direct representation” untenable. The proposed postphenomenological meth-
odological approach helps in revealing this particular framing. Secondly,
brain images do not show that the brain is the “locus of the self” or our “real
self” but rather mediate a particular conception of the relation between brain
and self: brain images, in so far as they are taken as potential functional
evidence, bring about the idea of the brain as an agent—and hence as a real
or deep self—that instigates cognition and controls behavior. Third, brain
images do not prove the existence or non-existence of free will but rather
mediate a particular conception of freedom: by framing the brain as an iso-
lated region, the (Cartesian) idea of freedom as an independent realm that is
unaffected by external influences is sustained and rehabilitated.
If technologies mediate our conception of the self, as well as the self’s
capacity for free will, then it does not make any sense to try to acquire an
unmediated, original conception of free will. We should rather acknowledge
that our view of free will is and always has been influenced by the tech-
nologies that we employ to identify it. The definition of “free will” as “the
 From Camera Obscura to fMRI 117

capacity of an agent to determine itself and not be determined by someone or

something else” disregards the fact that the medium (in our case fMRI) that
is expected to establish whether “free will” exists (i.e., whether we are able to
determine ourselves) co-determines how we conceive “free will.” However,
brain images cannot provide us with direct access to a “within”—the brain—
that is not affected by a “without” because our very notion of that “within” is
codetermined by external influences. The brain as an independent realm that
is unaffected by external influences can only be validated in the context of
neuroscience by making the external, technical conditions that have gener-
ated it invisible.
Recognizing the mediating role of brain imaging technologies in self-iden-
tification and self-interpretation processes has a bearing on the positions of
advocates and opponents of free will. The idea that fMRI images could render
free will an illusion is brought about by framing the brain as an isolated agent
that is attributed causal efficacy, which is then considered as the locus of the
self. Since fMRI images cannot provide us direct access to a “within”—in
this case to a brain as an isolated and autonomous agent that determines both
mental contents and bodily movements—depicting the brain as an irreduc-
ible, original, and unaffected locus of the self and the sole determinant of our
behavior is impossible. The same argument applies to advocates of free will
who attribute causal efficacy to consciousness and take consciousness as the
locus of our self and the sole determinant of our behavior. Although I do not
want to deny their influence on our behavior, neither “brain” nor “mind” can
be seen as an inner agent of the self that necessitates our behavior.
Does this mean that the information that fMRI images provide is com-
pletely irrelevant? Not at all! Although fMRI images do not display an
isolated realm that we can consider as the locus of our self, they can display
certain correlations between brain activity and behavior. Because we can crit-
ically relate to this information provided by fMRI images, we are able to ask
ourselves whether we want to identify ourselves with these habits that seem
to be, at least partly, instigated by certain brain patterns or mechanisms. From
this perspective, fMRI images are not used to represent the “real” determi-
nants of a person’s behavior and show that she cannot control her actions and
is a powerless spectator but rather practically confront the concerned person
with her actions and enable her to change them in such a way that they better
correspond with the way she would like to act. From this perspective the self
is not an isolated, a priori existing entity that is “immediately” determined by
something “within”—consciousness or brain—but rather continuously dis-
covers and forms itself by virtue of its identifications and non-identifications
with its determinants. I cannot provide a full argument here but have elabo-
rated elsewhere in more detail this interpretation of “free will,” not in terms
of “self-determination” but rather of “self-formation.”
118 Ciano Aydin

An example that may illustrate very roughly how brain imaging technolo-
gies could be reinterpreted is “neurofeedback” (Sulzer et al., 2013). People
with, for example ADHD or autism receive, via real-time displays of EEG
or fMRI, feedback on the way they respond to certain situations. That self-
reflection enables them to actively influence their brain activity in order to
attend in a more focused manner or respond more sociably using video or
audio. Of course time will tell whether this technology is really effective.
It shows, however, how brain imaging technologies could contribute to the
formation of a self that better satisfies our ambitions and life projects. Since
technologies mediate our self-identification, they can be integrated in our
practices in such a way that they can help to bridge possible tensions between
how we act and how we would like to act.
This approach puts free will in a different light. If there is no independent
self that coincides with something “within” (consciousness or brain), then
there also cannot be an a priori existing “free” or “unfree” self that is com-
pletely dependent on that “within.” Acting freely in the sense of acting in
such a way that I act, may well not have the implication that my action is the
immediate result of conscious intentions, it, does, however from the proposed
perspective mean that critical self-identification allows me to work on my
undesirable habits and to gradually become the self that I want to be (which is
always a “self in the making”), which might be a better indication of freedom.

NOTE

1. Since I reflect on the “context of discovery” only as a means to point at “blind

spots,” I disregard Kuhnian challenges to the distinction between “context of discov-
ery” and “context of justification.”

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 Part III

ROBOTIC TECHNOLOGIES
 Chapter 7

Paleoanthropology and Social Robotics

Old and New Ways in Mediating
Alterity Relations
Michael Funk

INTRODUCTION

This chapter investigates the relations between social interactions and techni-
cal practice. Therefore, two examples will serve as empirical basis for the
philosophical approach. On the one hand, insights of paleoanthropological
research are emphasized in order to understand material cultures and the usage
of handcraft tools (e.g., hand axes). Especially alterity relations—the social
perspectives and interactions—play a major role in the complex processes of
phylogenetic developments of mankind. There are the old ways, which tell
something about human-world relations within histories of evolution. On the
other hand, a second empirical spotlight focuses on social robotics—the new
ways of social practice. With respect to both sides of the coin—phylogenetic
development and current human-robot interactions—postphenomenological
frameworks of alterity relations are emphasized on an epistemological level.
With this I want to work out the different layers and forms of so-called quasi-
others and second-person-perspectives. Therefore I raise a question, which
has not been profoundly discussed within postphenomenological research
yet: How are alterity relations possible and how might robots mediate social
alterity?
From an anthropological point of view, technological processes mediate
human perception per se, as technical practice is multi-perspective and cul-
turally embedded. Cognitive evolution or the development of modern human
anatomy (encephalization/brain development, erect posture of man, free
hands for tool usage, etc.) have been linked to societal and sensory multista-
bilities (non-stable social interactions). Erect posture enables free hands for

125
126 Michael Funk

usage of tools or carrying of babies. But also the visual level was enhanced as
the position of the head was higher, and better geographical orientation while
constantly walking on two feet became possible. More complex forms of
gestures and body language could be realized and served as booster for social
capacities as well. Today human social capacities are—if not replaced—at
least also challenged by new technological interfaces such as emotional and
social interacting robots. Reflecting both the old and new ways of socio-
technical mediation bears fruitful insights for conceptual progressions of
postphenomenological frameworks. Therefore a hermeneutical epistemology
will be elaborated in order to illustrate processes of knowing and understand-
ing. Knowledge belongs to human persons, whereas robots remain certain
forms of technical functionality. Introducing a systematic heuristics of dif-
ferent forms of knowing and its multi-perspective mediations, I develop a
visualization that can serve as pragmatic template for interpreting concrete
socio-technical actions.
Conceptual roots of my investigation can be found in the interpretations of
technical practice, technical mediation and techno-material cultures as they
have been elaborated by Don Ihde (1979), Albert Borgman (1984), Carl Mit-
cham (1994), Bernhard Irrgang (2001), Peter-Paul Verbeek (2005), and Mark
Coeckelbergh (2014). Following Hans Achterhuis and the empirical turn in
the philosophy of technology, I include the two mentioned empirical cases
into my analyses (Achterhuis, 2001). An initial starting point of my investi-
gation is the approach of postphenomenology following Don Ihde. In terms
of embodied/bodily, hermeneutic, background and alterity relations, the con-
cept of technical mediation has been introduced in his book Technology and
the Lifeworld (Ihde, 1990). Ihde’s argument is that technologies transform
perceptions and experiences, and thereby play an important role in sensory
human-world relations. Instrumental Realism describes a somehow material-
istic approach, in which scientific reality is ensured (in contrast to idealistic
platonic or positivist philosophy) and investigated within technical practice
(Ihde, 1991). There is an innate close link between technological develop-
ment and scientific research. For Ihde, Galileo with his telescope is a classic
example of technical mediation and technoscience. Experiments and labora-
tory research, and usage of computers and computer models are other forms
of technical mediations and illustrate the high impact of material embodiment
on scientific research practices and methodologies. With Postphenomenology
and Expanding Hermeneutics, the author further developed his approach by
conceptually embedding the instrumental practice of technosciences into the
philosophical approaches of empiric-pragmatic phenomenology and non-
linguistic material hermeneutics (Ihde, 1993, 1998).
 Paleoanthropology and Social Robotics 127

With my (2015) paper entitled “Post-Telescope-Postphenomenol-

ogy? . . . and a Little Locomotive History,” I intended to formulate some
impulses for further conceptual developments. By focusing on the Holy Grail
and locus classicus of postphenomenology—Galileo and his telescope within
astrophysical observations—I suggested to develop a less physics- but more
biology-oriented approach. Therefore I introduced the metaphorical term
“post-telescope-postphenomenology” (Funk, 2015d). In this chapter, it is my
aim to further develop this idea. I want to understand how mediating tech-
nologies and especially alterity relations shape human knowledge in a more
detailed way. That will be my contribution to the discussion of postphenom-
enological methodologies.
First, a material hermeneutic approach of paleoanthropology will be intro-
duced, with a special focus on social behavior, alterity, and second-person-
perspectives. This might be the biology-oriented side of the coin. Second,
human-robot interactions, especially in social robotics, are investigated. With
this physics-oriented side of the coin, again, genuine aspects of alterity are
associated. At this point I conclude by outlining the heuristical scheme of
several forms of knowing and perspectives. It is my aim to structuralize dif-
ferent ways of technological mediations by systematically enfolding a visual
template of embodied (leibliche) human-world relations. With this approach
I do not want to justify the one and only ontological essence of mediating
technologies. Moreover, I am following an empiric-pragmatic (postphe-
nomenological) approach in combination with methodological constructivist
and culturalist elements (Methodischer Konstruktivisimus, Methodischer
Kulturalismus).1 So, the heuristic scheme is not a platonic idealist theory of
ontological truth. Instead, it is treated as a practical tool for interpreting con-
tingent technological actions in concrete cultural situations. With this tool it
is possible to better understand not only human-robot interactions.

OLD QUESTIONS AND NEW TECHNOLOGIES:

MATERIAL HERMENEUTICS OF
PALEOANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH

Paleoanthropology is an area of research that employs a transdisciplinary

methodology (Funk, 2015c; Mittelstraß, 2007). The basic question is a
philosophical one: What is the human being? While following a biological
approach in the trajectory of evolutionary theory (mutation, selection, and
isolation of populations) it also includes elements of a wide range of other
disciplines such as primatology or geological sciences and many more.2
128 Michael Funk

Investigating the phylogeny (tribal history, Stammesgeschichte) of mankind

includes both natural-scientific and cultural-scientific elements. By recon-
structing the phylogenetic development during the last seven million years,
paleoanthropologists need to address questions of natural and cultural
evolution at the same time. Biological genesis of mankind is treated as a
genuine amalgamation of nature and culture, between organic-genetic and
material-social genesis3—with genuine methodological challenges. Linked
with the natural-scientific and cultural-scientific approach is an engineering
approach of molecular biology and synthetic biology.4 Genetic technologies
and genome sequencing up to bioengineering are not only applied in natural
sciences. The intimate relations between knowing and acting (also within
technical, social, and historical laboratory situations)5 causes not only an
introduction of biology to engineering, but also a high-tech embedding of
natural sciences as such. With technosciences like these, the borderlines
between constructivist engineering and natural-scientific investigations
become blurred. The Human Genome Project (Junker, 2008, p. 8) or the
sequencing of the Neanderthal genome6 are milestones in the technoscien-
tific development of paleoanthropology, and are examples for a develop-
ment where engineering technics meet biology.
Laboratory research and computer models, as well as fieldwork, play a
major role (Henke, 2007a, pp. 5, 8). A crucial impact of handcraft knowledge
can be revealed within the usage of instruments in laboratories as well as in
outdoor environments. At this point Don Ihde’s and Peter-Paul Verbeek’s
concept of material hermeneutics (Ihde, 1998; Verbeek, 2005) is closely
linked to paleoanthropological research practice. Paleoanthropologists inter-
pret fossils and find their different contexts. Whereas historical investigations
are characterized by interpreting certificates, dossiers, or documents, for
prehistoric times nearly no text-like pieces can be found—written or artistic
symbols rarely survived. Close to archaeology, the primary task of paleoan-
thropology is material interpretation. Whereas archaeologists are able to draw
on the theoretical knowledge of inscriptions or cuneiform scripts, paleoan-
thropologists relate their material interpretations to the propositional context
of evolutionary theory, geological, medical (anatomy, etc.), or primatological
knowledge. Investigations about social behavior or societal-cultural develop-
ments of mankind in prehistoric and pre-archaeological times are even more
difficult, as such human practices are not often fossilizing. Very few so-
called Verhaltensfossilien (performance fossils, behavioral fossils), that tell
something about practice, were excavated. For instance, footprints help us to
understand the bipedal movement of early hominid ancestors (Henke, 2007a,
p. 11; Schrenk, 2008, p. 8; Schrenk, 2009, p. 197; Schrenk & Müller, 2010,
 Paleoanthropology and Social Robotics 129

p. 83). Also, scenarios of the usage of early handcraft tools are interpreted.
Experimental archaeology plays a crucial role when possible usage of hand
axes or other tools is emphasized. Therefore, recreated fossil tools are applied
by today’s skilled and experienced handcraft masters in the most realistic
environments. On the basis of their practical evaluation, hypothetical conclu-
sions about prehistoric hominid habits might be drawn (Mathieu, 2002).
Whereas paleoanthropology is a transdisciplinary biology-oriented cultural
technoscience, it also includes some methodological and hermeneutic issues
of classical Geisteswissenschaften. Close to historians, paleoanthropologists
tell (hypothesis- and scenario-related) stories. A genuine characteristic is the
development and evaluation of genealogical trees. Those graphic phylogenetic
trees or even bushes (Stammbaum, Stammbusch) are visual interpretations of
potential familial developments from early Australopithecinae to modern
Homo sapiens sapiens (Henke, 2007a, p. 6f.; Schrenk, 2008, p. 30, 56; Sch-
renk, 2009, p. 299). Thereby, paleoanthropologists tell stories (Blumenberg,
2006; Funk, 2015e; Merker, 2013) that serve as hypothetical interpretations
linked to material fossils, data of genome analyses, and other anatomical or
geological facts. Within those stories, material fossils are linguistically inter-
preted by including self-images in form of an as-if story. Genesis of mankind
is treated as if a certain phylogenetic interpretation would be true. Somehow,
close to physicists, paleoanthropologists are observers relating to a specific
perspective. But in contrast to physicists, paleoanthropologists observe their
own human organic and cultural genesis. Interpreting hominid fossils means
talking about the concrete, and interpreting scientists’ hominid past at the
same time. In this context, as well as in many others, language is not neutrally
used. When a person talks about human past (as such), cultural and social
self-images are—at least indirectly—implemented automatically.
In ordinary life this could cause strong ideological and religious conflicts.
This happened, for example, in the 19th century when Charles Darwin pre-
sented his theory of evolution and thereby broke with the Christian doctrine
of creation. Today, in the context of technoscientific research methodologies,
the explication of self-images in paleoanthropological phylogenetic narra-
tives is approved as a methodological axiom (Gutmann, Hertler, & Schrenk,
2010; Janich, 2006; Kambartel, 1989). The bodily observer is always pres-
ent in the stories of human evolution. As paleoanthropological research is a
form of technoscience, we can come to the conclusion, that concrete ways of
bodily mediation are also directly or indirectly implemented into those sto-
ries. Without computer models or visualizations of genome sequences, there
would be less meaningful histories of mankind. The human genome is not
only a laboratory product or material interpretation, moreover, it is also part
130 Michael Funk

of a (controversial) narrative self-image. It is not only a thing, it is a history,

a self-mediation and a self-alterity.

Thus, my first thesis is that technological mediation and narrative (lin-

guistic, storytelling) mediation both play an equal role in the hermeneutic
embodiment of paleoanthropological observers’ perspectives. My second
argument is that a genuine way of alterity relation becomes a methodologi-
cal fundamental within this research practice: the technological and narrative
position of an embodied observer is temporally and spatially altered. I like
to call this concrete cultural and historical location “observer’s self-alterity”
(both temporal and spatial), which methodologically enables paleoanthropo-
logical research including technological and narrative mediations.

For example, consider the perspective of Svante Pääbo and Michael Toma-
sello, who are able to apply genome sequencing technologies or computer
models systematically, in difference to Louis Leakey, who did classical field
work and material interpretations before gene analytic technologies were
invented.7 The difference is not only the mediation of the concrete percep-
tion. Of course, laboratory technologies and genome sequencing technologies
reveal totally new fossil microworlds, which could not be accessed without
these methods. Here, the basic argument of biological mediation is close to
physical mediation. When we come to temporal mediation, we will also real-
ize the historic macroworlds because fossils tell something about millions
of years of evolution. Again, temporal macroworlds like these might also
be found, for example, in astrophysics. But a paleoanthropological specialty
is the observer’s self-alterity, because the genesis not only of inorganic or
organic materials, life as such, or mammals is emphasized, but moreover the
rise of hominid life and therefore the historical background of the observer
itself is touched immediately. With a certain methodological distance,
paleoanthropologists tell stories about themselves and our prehistoric roots.
Thereby, a methodological distance to hominid pasts is important. This form
of observer’s self-alterity is one reason why there are strong controversies
and ideological fights about the “true” history of mankind. Those histories are
not only scientific hypotheses or arguments in scientific discourses, but also
technologically mediated narrative self-images. We alter our past. And the
self-alterity of an evolutionary biologist differs to the self-alterity of Christian
religion. That’s one reason why Darwin was not only scientifically but also
socially forced to fight for his ideas.
Alterity relations are, in this sense, methodological distances. But “alter,”
“alterity,” or “alteration” also means “variation.” Alternate interpretations of
human phylogeny enables differentiated interpretations of human evolution
 Paleoanthropology and Social Robotics 131

and thereby scientific hypothesis. There are many observer’s self-alterities

within paleoanthroplogical discourses. Many histories of mankind can be
told. Many perspectives to hominid pasts are accessible. Or as Friedemann
Schrenk puts it, there are at least as many phylogenetic trees as paleoanthro-
pologists (Schrenk, 2008, p. 30). A crucial point is that alterity relations and
several forms of technical mediations have both a strong impact on meth-
odologies of current technosciences, as well as on the object: mankind. At
this point old ways and new ways meet, as social behavior, cooperation, and
empathy have become prominent research topics in paleoanthropological
investigations during the last years (Stix, 2015; De Waal, 2015). Social inter-
action is interpreted as one fundamental factor of human evolution. Therefore
second-person-perspectives and mirror neurons became prominent research
topics as well.

To put it into trenchant words: alterity relations are also one of several
causal factors of human evolution. This is my third hypothesis. Thereby,
alterity as causal factor (in the sense of emergence) of hominid phylogeny
includes at least three aspects:

1. social alterity in human-human interactions (social behavior, 2nd-PP, mir-

ror neurons);
2. animistic alterity in human-environment interactions (treating trees or
stones as entities with souls, natural spirits, or ghosts);
3. techno-material alterity that is cultural-bodily mediation (by using tools,
hand axes, body decorations, etc.). The third case also includes rituals, for
example, usage of drugs for shamanistic reasons (by ritually leaving their
bodies shamans use imaginary/fantastical self-alterity in order to create
visions and prophecies).

My claim in this section was related to paleoanthropology, the old ways.

I argue that paleoanthropologists follow a material hermeneutical approach
by interpreting fossils and their embedding (finding context). Fossils are
included in phylogenetic trees and hypothetically implemented in a scenario
(a story of the human past which itself needs to be proved by fossil evidence).
My first methodological hypothesis is that technical mediation is closely
linked to narrative mediation. Fossils are also interpreted by using computer
models and complex genome sequencing technologies. Those technologies
reveal information about human evolution that are not accessible by the
unweaponed eye—and therefore mediate the sensory perspective to our own
hominid histories. At the same time there would be neither meaning nor sense
to this technical information without narrative frameworks wherewith the
132 Michael Funk

hypothetical stories of human evolutionary developments are linguistically

expressed.
With the second hypothesis I argue for a genuine alterity relation that
fundamentally shapes paleoanthropological research methodology. The
technologically and narratively mediated observer’s position is temporally
and spatially altered and depends on her/his concrete cultural and historical
location. Observer’s self-alterity is a methodological term, which describes
these spatial and temporal alterations. Therefore a paleoanthropologist quasi-
observes her/his own past in a fossil appearance, even when the fossil is
temporally 200,000 years altered and spatially 10,000 kilometers altered
(so maybe found in China or Africa, but investigated in a European or US-
American laboratory). Putting it into other words, by telling scientific stories
of human phylogeny, the storyteller needs to keep methodic distance to her/
himself.
Due to current research, which is focusing on social behavior and differ-
entiated causal factors of human evolution, I argue that alterity relations that
might enable complex social interactions not only serve as methodological
foundations of paleoanthropologist observers but also as one concrete causal
factor of human evolution (and it is evident that technical mediation also
plays a causal role here).
But how do technologies like social robots challenge social practice today
(and thereby might become material factors of human evolution)?

OLD DREAMS AND TALKING TOOLS:

SOCIAL ROBOTS MEDIATE THE STAGE

While in the previous section I described the old ways by presenting three
hypotheses, it is time for the new ways now. Thereby, the three previous
arguments will be supplemented by four theses related to social robots. Why
confront paleoanthropology with social robotics? Because of the initial philo-
sophical question: What is the human being?
Generally, manifold ways in which technics shape sensory perceptions can
be differentiated. One example is astrophysics high-tech telescopes which
technologically transform invisible space phenomena into visible computer
screen images (Ihde, 2009). Micro- and macroworlds that are locked for the
unweaponed eye become accessible by tools like microscopes or telescopes.
Mediating technologies emphasize other senses as well, for example, acoustic
technologies and musical instruments. Amplifiers, synthesizers, effects ped-
als, or computer software play major roles here (Ihde, 2007, 2015). In this
section, I focus on social robots8 in terms of technical mediation. There are
 Paleoanthropology and Social Robotics 133

at least as many ways of mediation as sensory modalities that are affected

by robots: visual, acoustic, tactile (including proprioceptive self-sensation,
maybe the most important one?), but also smell or taste. Imagine, for exam-
ple, a toy robot in a nursery. The tool is bought for pedagogical reasons (and
imagine a perfect world without any privacy or data security issues), like any
other material object, the toy robot becomes embodied by the child in ways of
whole body perception: seeing its colors and motions, listening to its sounds,
grasping its surface, but also smelling and biting and tasting its appearance.
One of the main differences between industrial robots and social robots
is the multistable potentiality of direct interaction in everyday life. While
industrial robots could be interpreted as functional means for technical aims
(e.g., the economic production of cars), social robots appear as functional
means for social aims and therefore include human everyday life apart from
isolated industry facilities. A constitutive form of mediation is the robot as
“quasi-other” (Ihde, 1990, pp. 97–108; Coeckelbergh, 2011b)—pitch point of
the old ways and new ways:

The robot becomes a “you”—not as a stand-in for someone else (which we

might call a “delegated second person”) but a “you” in its own right, an artificial
second-person, which has a claim on me as a social being. . . . By talking to the
robot in second-person terms, they [people] also construct it as a quasi-other.
(Coeckelbergh, 2011a, p. 65)

Social interactions, whether relating to “quasi-other” or real second-

person-perspectives, involve a “mirror-effect”: “seeing other humans and
recognizing their shapes, we refer back to ourselves with the other-as-mirror”
(Ihde, 2010, p. 42). As a technoscientific emulation (not recreation) of sec-
ond-person-experience, in this sense social robots serve as mirrors of interac-
tion. But also the design and development of social robots is challenged by
a “mirror-effect.” In the previous chapter, methodological self-alterity and
self-expression were introduced as aspects of paleoanthropological research.
A similar methodological form of alterity can be detected in robotics research
as well: understanding mankind by rebuilding humans/constructing human-
oid robots. The old dream to build artificial humans in combination with
the will to learn something about ourselves becomes a characteristic of the
constructivist engineering approach in humanoid robotics (Coeckelbergh,
2011b, p. 200; Decker, 2010, p. 46). But even if social robots do not neces-
sarily provide a humanoid appearance, this argument remains valid. Social
robots might look like animals, toys, or robotic chimera and could touch ani-
mistic behavior. In consequence, we might treat robots as entities with souls
and lived emotions (the same way we do with teddy bears). Whether a robot
134 Michael Funk

looks like a human, a teddy bear, or a car, social robots are characterized by
manifold capacities for social interaction. Thus, a challenge for engineers
and designers is the reconstruction of social practice. The related approach
includes the paradigm of understanding social interaction by rebuilding
social interaction.

My fourth hypothesis is that the—explicit or implicit—consideration

of social relations in engineering methodology leads to a physics- and
cybernetics-oriented form of technoscientific self-alterity. Whereas paleoan-
thropologists want to understand mankind in terms of evolutionary biology—
including genetics, physiology, and so on—roboticists try to pragmatically
capture human characteristics by creating humanoid functionality. In both
cases, observer’s self-alterity—that is, perspective distance of the concrete
bodily scientist or engineer toward his own human point of view—becomes
a crucial part of the research methodology.

Social interaction includes language, words, symbols, body gestures, and

so on. Social robots have capacities for verbal and gestural interaction and
therefore a profound impact on human communication (Nishida, 2009, pp.
107f.). With body movement or natural language we talk to robots and robots
talk to us. “In current human-robot relations, we can observe a shift from
talking about robots and about human-robot relations to talking to robots”
(Coeckelbergh, 2011a, p. 63). How could social robots challenge alterity rela-
tions and thereby also change human communicative competences?
One possible answer is related to the approach of methodological construc-
tivism and culturalism (Methodischer Konstruktivismus und Kulturalismus).9
Peter Janich analyzes that because of its multi-perspective situatedness within
intentional actions, human communicative competences are principally not
substitutable by technical systems (Janich, 1999, 2006, 2010). I follow this
argument and apply it to social robots. This also means not to understand
social robots as “autonomous,” “intelligent,” or “creative” actors, but as
technical tools and aspects of means-end oriented social practice. Those tools
can be considered as parts of techno-material cultures10—even if robots are
technically more complex means than hand axes or hammers. Six forms of
technical tools can be summarized:

Form 1: handcraft;
Form 2: machine;
Form 3: automat;
Form 4: embedded technical autonomy;
 Paleoanthropology and Social Robotics 135

Form 5: technical semi-autonomy;

Form 6: autonomy.

A differentiation between these six forms is enabled by the categories

“energy,” “movement/process,” and “control/framework.” Forms 1 to 3
belong to “pre-modern and modern technologies” including early handcraft
instruments, wooden and stone tools like hand axes (Form 1), which are fully
controlled and applied by human actors with sensorimotor skills. Hereby the
energy, movement (including routine, as well as new ways of usage), and the
framework (including the end and surveillance) of a technical action are fully
provided by the human body. Success of a technical performance while using
hand axes depends on the sensory capacities of a person using the tool. Forms
2 and 3 include, for example, weaving machines or excavators—tools where
the energy afforded for technical success comes from the artifact, and aspects
of routine are implemented as well. Praxis, such as problem solving and find-
ing creative solutions for various contingent and unintended situations, as
well as setting the aims of a technical procedure, and the surveillance, remain
human bodily embedded.
Forms 4 and 5 are related to “hypermodern technologies,” including com-
puters and robotics. The term hypermodern (e.g., Borgmann, 1992) means
that modern, industrial technologies are not redeemed by postmodern, 20th-
century developments; moreover, when it comes to technologies, modern
developments are boosted and enhanced in the 20th and 21st centuries.
“Hypermodern” in this sense means not a historical cut but a further step
on the developmental path that started in early modernity, 16th- and 17th-
century technosciences. Social robots belong to Forms 4 and 5, not to Form
6, which is a postulate or a posit of something that eventually becomes real: a
tool that is totally autonomous. Probably, in such a case it might be adequate
to avoid the word tool (Form 6). But current robots and technical systems
will not belong to this postulate in the foreseeable non-science-fiction future.
What is the difference between Forms 4 and 5, on the one hand, and Form
6 on the other hand? In contrast to Forms 1 to 3, the Forms 4 and 5 include
aspects of praxis, problem solving, and settings of aims on the part of the
technical system. The success of a technical practice, especially in Form 5, is
more independent from the human body. Human actors remain in the position
of surveillance and intervention in case of a functional defect. For this reason,
Form 4 is called “embedded technical autonomy”: to make sure that some
aspects of creative problem solving in contingent situations are emulated (not
a 100% copy of human creativity or autonomy!) in the technical tool. As the
means-end setting (e.g., of social robots) is generated by human actors, this
136 Michael Funk

category of technical tools includes the word “embedded.” It is a technical

form of autonomy which enables capacities of social interaction—for exam-
ple, giving a spontaneous verbal reaction to an unintended sentence of a user.
But caused by epistemic reasons, this is not the same as human autonomy.
Moreover, in Form 5, tools like social robots functionally capture parts of
the framework (the “embedding” of Form 4). Here, the system sets some aims
of its own functionality—always under surveillance of human actors: for
example, when social robots include complex user profiles based on manifold
sensor data. The robot starts “learning” about its environment and thereby
enables capacities for functionally finding its own aims. For instance when a
user of a social robot often forgets his house door key, the robot might include
this issue in the user profile and independently start some games or exercises
with the user in order to train his skills in memory and attentiveness. Again,
surveillance and intervention in case of dysfunction are related to human
bodily actors. This Form 5 is called “technical semi-autonomy” as it is not a
replacement of human intelligence, creativity, or autonomy, but a technical
functionality which includes the emulation of some means-end capacities.
Form 6, in contrast, is the hypothetical postulate of total autonomy in a tech-
nical entity.11 Here, all (possible) sensory layers and cognitive domains of
human bodies would be represented in the “tool.” This is science fiction, but
not totally inconceivable.
The table12 in Figure 7.1 illustrates my fifth hypothesis and should summa-
rize the abovementioned differences between the tool hand axe and the tool
social robot. It would be interesting and intellectually profitable to further

Figure 7.1 Forms of technical tools, including hand axes and social robots (Michael
Funk).
 Paleoanthropology and Social Robotics 137

develop this approach including the several meanings of autonomy. But in the
scope of this paper, it is more important to see that social robots are technical
tools (Forms 4 and 5) and to further focus on the epistemic ways in which
these technical systems/tools have an impact on alterity relations and mediate
human communication. Therefore, social robots are interpreted as aspects of
techno-material culture, where robots mediate sensory perception and bodily
practice in particular situations.13 With a heuristics,14 the epistemological and
multi-perspective range of these mediations can be brought in the form of a
lucid depiction.15 Philosophical depictions, like the following, can serve as
hypotheses as they enable hermeneutical interpretations of concrete technical
practice. So, this is my sixth hypothesis16 (see Figure 7.2).
The basic idea of the scheme in Figure 7.2 is to combine several forms of
knowing with perspectives in order to schematically illustrate processes of
knowing. It serves as a toolbox and template for the interpretation of con-
crete situations. Social performance plays a crucial role in human knowing,
therefore the heuristics does not reduce knowledge to an abstract matter of

Figure 7.2 Forms of knowledge and multi-perspective bodily interactions (Michael

Funk).
138 Michael Funk

disembodied isolated subjects. Instead, cultural and material embodiment

(Leiblichkeit)17 becomes a conceptual starting point for three epistemic layers:

• Implicit layer: tacit knowledge, intuition, skills, perceptions (inter- and intra-
modality), body movement, emotions, and proprioceptive self-sensation
(e.g., Jean Piaget, Michael Polanyi, Hubert Dreyfus, Eugene S. Ferguson,
Helmuth Plessner, but also Aristotle, and even Plato in some dialogues);
• Explicit layer: propositions, abstractions, and visualizations (like geometri-
cal proofs) (e.g., Plato, Immanuel Kant, Gottlob Frege);
• Positional layer: multi-perspective reflection, imagination (e.g., Boethius,
Augustin, Cusannus, Kant, Friedrich Kaulbach), and the double aspect of
having a body (Körper) while existing as body (Leib) (Helmuth Plessner).

Technical mediation could affect each layer, or all of them, in a particular

way. While a deep bass tone mediated by an amplifier affects our proprio-
ceptive (mostly tactile) self-sensation—you can feel it in the stomach and
groove with the whole body without explicitly knowing, what the muscles
are doing—social robots mediate the positional layer. The conceptually most
important point—also for social robotics—is the double aspect of having
body and being body. This concept was investigated by Helmuth Plessner
since the 1920s and became influential, especially in German Leibphilosophie
(philosophy of human lived body): “Ein Mensch ist immer zugleich Leib . . .
und hat diesen Leib als diesen Körper” (Plessner, 1941/2003a, p. 238). That
means that, in an existential way, we are our bodily actions and at the same
time access our body in an instrumental way. We have it like a tool—always
mediated by a concrete organic and bodily position—and we exist as it (both
at the same time).
“Nur in der Vermittlung durch meinen Körper, der ich selbst leibhaft bin
(obwohl ich—ihn habe), ist das Ich bei den Dingen, schauend und handelnd”
(Plessner, 1941/2003a, p. 247). Plessners point is that mediation starts with
the human body. Even if we use tools, to some extent the double relation
remains active: we are our body-tool-relation in existential ways and at the
same time we keep distance to body and tool in order to instrumentalize it.
Again, music serves as an example. When we play a piano, at a certain level
of exercise and practice we become in unity with it. Emotions are expressed
and mediated both by our body gestures and the technical instrument. But at
the same time we also keep distance—so to say intentional alterity—to the
piano. The distance allows us to follow certain intentions like “becoming bet-
ter in blues style” or “trying Beethoven scores instead of Chopin this time.”
In order to realize those intentions we keep distance to our body-piano rela-
tion, exploit our body, and start learning new skills. Without this intentional
alterity, we could not generate new competences. But at the same time the
 Paleoanthropology and Social Robotics 139

trial and error feedback of the environment is important. At this point, social
robots enter/mediate the stage.
Social robots, as aspects of techno-material culture, provide trial and error.
Capabilities for interaction with gesture-like movements or in natural lan-
guages are characteristic for social robots, in contrast to hand axes, and so
on. Thereby, the concepts of synesthesia and sensorimotor unity play a cru-
cial role. The alterity of social robots is mediated by a synesthetic unity that
combines the three domains of human knowing: implicit layer, explicit layer,
and positional layer. Unity is primarily ensured by sensorimotor actions,
where perceptions, movements, emotions, proprioceptive self-sensations,
and propositional aspects are interrelated with whole body performances.
The argument of a sensorimotor lifeworld unity (in contrast to abstract ideal-
istic unity) has been developed by Helmuth Plessner (1970/2003b), but also
applied by Jean Piaget and the enactive approach of Varela, Thompson, and
Rosch (1997) and other authors: “Die Lösung des Problems ergibt sich nur
in Anwendung des Prinzips der sensomotorischen Einheit oder Aktionsrela-
tivität der Sinne, wohlgemerkt unter Berücksichtigung der dem Menschen
eigenen Art von Aktion,” (Plessner, 1970/2003b, p. 388).18
The term synesthesia in the heuristical scheme of this chapter is used in
a wide meaning. It summarizes many aspects of the linking of perceptions,
symbols, movements, images, and so on. As medical phenomenon, so-called
genuine synesthesia describes a very seldom habit (e.g., when a person oblig-
atory associates a number with a certain color or the taste of coffee with the
sound of a violin). But my understanding of synesthesia in this epistemologi-
cal scheme appreciates a general human feature that usually remains implicit
in the cognitive background. Social robots do not feature synesthesia and no
sensorimotor unity as well.

My seventh hypothesis holds that tools of Forms 4 and 5 change the ways
in which humans organically embed alterity into synesthetic sensorimotor
unity. To put it another way, social robots, especially on the level of lin-
gual interaction, touch alterity and thereby challenge the ways in which we
socially exist as bodies and the ways in which we instrumentalize our bodies.

Time and place shape the concrete point of view. Moreover, in the heu-
ristic scheme, the positional layer is related to techno-material culture and
social culture which both belong to transsubjectivity. The concept of trans-
subjectivity (Transsubjektivität) is related to the approach of methodological
constructivism (Methodischer Konstruktivismus). It has been developed by
Paul Lorenzen (1985) and Jürgen Mittelstraß (1980/1984/1995/1996/2004) in
order to describe the (ethically important) circumstance, that we as humans
always live in shared social interactions and languages. There is no subject
140 Michael Funk

without reasonable community (Kambartel, 1989, p. 25; Kambartel, 1996).

Insofar, transsubjectivity is the basis of all three layers: epistemic position,
implicit knowing, and explicit knowing. I doubt social robots will replace
transsubjectivity as such, but, as tools of Forms 4 and 5, they are aspects of
techno-material cultures with strong impact on human capacities of commu-
nication. With the distinction in techno-material culture and social culture, I
pay attention to the idea that the human body includes both a material (Mau-
rice Merleau-Ponty) and a social (Michel Foucault) dimension (Ihde, 2002).
Hand axes (Form 1) and social robots (Forms 4 & 5) are sensory multistable
parts of human interaction. Hand axes could be used for gestural communica-
tion. Social robots talk to us immediately as “quasi-others” causing a “mirror-
effect.” Thus, a certain technically mediated alterity relation can be revealed
with a clear impact on the positional layer of human self-experience and
extrinsic-experience (including both layers of implicit and explicit knowing).

Therefore a phenomenological sketch could look like this:

organism—environment
Which means concrete:
human—robot—world
including the cases:
human—robot—technology (e.g., another robot)
human—robot—human
human—robot—lived and non-lived environment (e.g., a dog or
kennel)
For relations in social practice a scheme like this might be applied:
human—social gesture19—social robot
As human bodies are shaped by a sensorimotor synesthetic unity embedded
in transsubjectivity, a phenomenological structure of alterity could look
like this:
transsubjectivity—synesthesia—social gesture—social robot—social
gesture—synesthesia—transsubjectivity

This might be a new way, or more precisely a new feedback loop, of

mediating techno-human cultures. The old way, for example, of hand axes, is
somehow similar insofar as Form 1 tools also mediate experiences and can be
embedded in human gestures to express a meaning. On the other hand, there
are also large differences. Hand axes do not give a verbal response, even if
someone is angry and throws it away. There is no “quasi-other” or “mirror-
effect” with hand axes or handcraft tools.20
In this section, I argued that social robots, just like milk and cultures
of breeding cows or goats, will become factors of material cultures and
 Paleoanthropology and Social Robotics 141

therefore will access the complex causal area of human evolution. The
impact, especially on social behavior, might be bigger than with handcraft
tools, like hand axes. My claim is that social robots do not replace social
interaction but mediate it in new ways of verbal interaction. The com-
petences we learn while interacting with social robots will influence the
competences and practices by which we interact with real human beings. In
order to illustrate, I summarize several phenomenological relations at the
end of this section.
In my seventh hypothesis, I argued that social robots will touch the ways
in which humans organically embed alterity in social life. Synesthetic sen-
sorimotor unity, and the ways in which we socially exist as bodies, and the
ways in which we instrumentalize our bodies, will be challenged at the same
time. Robots become a causal (autopoiesis-like, emergence-like) factor of
social behavior and human natural history (not as new or better humans, but
as environmental material-cultural circumstance that provokes human cre-
ative adaptation).
Before that step, as a sixth hypothesis, I introduced an epistemic heuristi-
cally scheme in order to sketch epistemic issues of human-world relations.
This scheme shall serve as a template for interpreting concrete situations of
human-robot interactions and the many ways in which social robots affect
complex capacities of human knowing.
In a previous fifth hypothesis, I initialized the sixth and seventh arguments
by interpreting social robots not as human-like, but as tools and means for
human ends. I differentiate six forms of technical tools and illustrate the con-
ceptual differences of hand axes (Form 1, old ways) and social robots (Forms
4 & 5, new ways).

CONCLUSION: TECHNICAL MEDIATION,

ALTERITY, AND KNOWING

In this contribution, subsequent to an introduction, paleoanthropology and

social robotics have been discussed in two separate sections. Conceptual links
have been drawn by interpreting both cases as examples for mediation in cur-
rent technosciences. Old ways meet new ways, where paleoanthropologists
investigate social behavior as a factor of human evolution and roboticists
also emphasize social life by trying to reconstruct it. A special focus of this
chapter was on alterity relations and their impact both on research methodol-
ogy and everyday life. Therefore, the approach of postphenomenology has
been combined with methodological and cultural constructivism. I developed
seven theses:
142 Michael Funk

1. Paleoanthropologists are hermeneutically embodied observers and inter-

pret human evolution both technologically mediated and narratively medi-
ated (linguistically, story-telling).
2. (Biology-oriented) “observer’s self-alterity” becomes a methodological
fundamental within paleoanthropological research practice. Biologists tell
stories from technological and narrative points of view, from a concrete
cultural and historical location, that is temporally and spatially alterated.
They do not stand inside the last seven million years of phylogeny and
cannot enter any past place at any time.
3. Alterity relations in the sense of social behavior are one of several causal
factors of human evolution, including (a) social alterity in human-human
interactions, (b) animistic alterity in human-environment interactions, (c)
techno-material alterity that is cultural-bodily mediation (tool use).
4. Roboticists try to rebuilt capacities of social interactions and thereby
follow a physics- and cybernetics-oriented form of technoscientific
self-alterity as methodological fundamental.
5. A table of six forms of technical tools, where hand axes belong to Form 1
and social robots belong to Forms 4 and 5.
6. A heuristic scheme of multi-perspective forms of knowing (Leib) includ-
ing the implicit, explicit and positional layer, synesthesia and sensorimo-
tor unity, but also techno-material culture and social culture as issues of
transsubjectivity.
7. Especially talking and gestural interacting social robots (Form 4 and 5)
change the ways in which we socially exist as bodies and the ways in
which we instrumentalize our bodies as “quasi-other.”

More research needs to be done. Many more old ways meet many more new
ways in many more ways. So, this paper is not the philosophical end to alter-
ity relations and mediating technologies; but I hope to have provided some
fruitful ideas and arguments to current discussions of postphenomenological
methodologies and new ways in mediating techno-human relationships.

NOTES

1. The position of methodological constructivism (Methodischer Konstruktivis-

mus) goes back to the works of Wilhelm Kamlah and Paul Lorenzen (also labeled
as Erlanger Konstruktivismus in the earliest historical version). Inspired by Hugo
Dingler, ideas of Martin Heidegger and Gottlob Frege-like philosophy of logics and
mathematics have been combined in order to understand the practical lifeworld basis
of scientific research, technologies, and rational justification since the 1960s. For
 Paleoanthropology and Social Robotics 143

current discussion of roboethics and means-end schemes, see, for example, Grunwald
(2012).
2. For more details and schematic overview of the integrated disciplinary
approaches, see: Gruppe et al. (2012, pp. 22–23); Henke (2007a, pp. 4–8); Henke
(2007b, pp. 4–6, 41–42); Henke & Rothe (1994, p. 3); Henke & Tattersall (2007, pp.
vii–xi); Schrenk (2008, p. 7, 88); Schrenk (2009, pp. 197–199).
3. The evolution of mankind, oscillating between the spheres of nature and cul-
ture, has become an established research topic during the last years and is emphasized
by Compagna (2015); Gerhardt (2010); Illies (2010); Irrgang (2009, pp. 47ff.); Janich
(2010); Köchy (2010); Müller-Beck (2008, pp. 18–30); Schrenk (2008, pp. 77, 99,
122); Schrenk (2009, pp. 206f.); Toepfer (2013, pp. 92ff., 137ff.); Weigel (2010).
4. For latest investigations, see: Engelhard (2016); Hagen, Engelhard, & Toepfer
(2016).
5. Technical, social, and historical issues of scientific research became more and
more important in sociological and philosophical investigations since the 1920s with
authors, like Gaston Bachelard, “phénoménotechniques,” phenomenal techniques
(Rheinberger, 2007, pp. 40ff.; Rheinberger, 2010; Rheinberger, 2012, p. 290); Lud-
wik Fleck, “Denkstile,” stiles of thought (Fleck, 1935); Thomas Kuhn, paradigms and
their dynamics (Kuhn, 1962); Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, sociology of labora-
tory practice (Latour & Woolgar, 1979); Karin Knorr-Cetina (1981), or Ian Hacking,
turn to research practice (Hacking, 1983); and others.
6. As it has been realized only few years ago, on December 18, 2013, the Max
Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology announced: “An international research team
led by Kay Prüfer and Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, has determined a high-quality genome sequence
of a Neandertal woman” (https://www.mpg.de/7666848/neandertal_genome_project
[last visited April 1, 2016]). See also, Schrenk, & Müller (2010, pp. 106–110).
7. See, for example, Pääbo’s publications on the Neanderthal genome in the
1990s; Tomasello’s book Primate Cognition, 1997; Leaky’s book Unveiling Man’s
Origins, 1969.
8. Social robotics includes several kinds of applications, such as care robots,
entertainment robots, education robots, sex robots, but also combat robots. For the
ongoing discussion including conceptual analysis, ethical or legal issues, see Breazeal
(2002); Lin, Abney, & Bekey (2014); Seibt, Hakli, & Nørskov (2014); Nørskov
(2015); Seibt, Nørskov, & Andersen (2016).
9. See footnote 1.
10. Here, I am further developing my pre-study (Funk, 2014).
11. Terminologies and concepts of technical autonomy or semi-autonomy are
treated in ongoing controversial discussions (e.g., Lin, Abney, & Bekey, 2014;
Wallach & Allen, 2009). The concepts of “embedded technical autonomy,” “technical
semi-autonomy,” and “autonomy” presented here are not a summary of these debates,
but my interpretation of one plausible approach to differentiated forms of technical
tools.
144 Michael Funk

12. Presented and critically discussed at the 2nd TRANSOR (“Research Network
for Transdisciplinary Studies in Social Robotics”) workshop “The Significance of
Simulation” (2015, June 18–19, in Kolding, Denmark).
13. Whole situations generate frameworks for the interpretation of practice. There
is no action isolated from its context. But the contexts also differ. Insofar, no master-
situation can be defined. This methodological impact has been philosophically inves-
tigated as apriori situation (Situationsapriori) (Rentsch, 1999, pp. 68ff.; Rentsch,
2003, pp. 75ff.).
14. Knowledge research includes non-reducible forms of knowing that epistemo-
logically can be brought into heuristical schematic forms in order to create something
like a philosophical toolbox (Abel, 2012, pp. 10–12).
15. Ludwig Wittgenstein developed in his late writings a methodology of philo-
sophical depiction. Philosophy becomes a practice itself and investigates the—tacit,
meaningful—grammar of bodily actions (Wittgenstein, 2006). Lucid depiction (über-
sichtliche Darstellung) becomes hereby one possible tool for clarifying the many
ways in which we use words in a meaningful way (Gabriel, 1995).
16. The following is a synopsis and further development of my pre-studies (Funk,
2015a, 2015b), including ongoing research that I have presented and that has been
critically discussed at the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd TRANSOR workshops (2015, January
28–30, in Aarhus, Denmark; 2015, June 18–19, in Kolding, Denmark; 2016, April
20–21, in Copenhagen, Denmark).
17. When it comes to “body,” Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty are
prominently integrated, by such as the late Edmund Husserl, as well in the postphe-
nomenological approach of Don Ihde. Also emphasized by Helmuth Plessner, the
concept of body (Leib) became a particular research topic in German 20th-century
philosophy. For a current discussion, see, for example, Irrgang & Rentsch (2016).
18. “A solution of the problem only results in an application of the principle of a
sensorimotor unity or action relation of the senses—notabene, under consideration of
a peculiar human kind of action,” (Plessner, 1970/2003b, p. 388; translation by the
author, Michael Funk).
19. For terminology of gesture, social gesture, and musical gesture, including
epistemological analysis, see also the pre-study (Funk & Coeckelbergh, 2013).
20. Here, I exclude animistic positions and follow an anthropocentric approach.

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 Chapter 8

Lost in Translation?
Getting to Grips with Multistable
Technology in an Apparently Stable World
Lasse Blond and Kasper Schiølin

INTRODUCTION

The former creative director of the houses of Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent,
Tom Ford, once remarked, “Fashion is what you buy, style is what you do
about it.” The same could be said about technology: “Technology is what you
buy, technological style is what you do about it.” In other words, technologi-
cal style is how you embed technology in your daily life to fit your specific
world. This saying also fits with Danish anthropologist Cathrine Hasse’s
call for better analytical concepts to understand how tools transform human
activities and professional identities (Hasse, 2013, p. 96). In this chapter, we
acknowledge the need for better analytical concepts, but we also emphasize
the importance of understanding how culture transforms tools. We refer to
the work of Don Ihde, who claims there is a need for a deeper insight into
the ways in which technologies relate to cultural gestalts (Ihde, 1993, p. 26).
However, while we recognize that technology shapes culture (a view also
expressed by Verbeek, 2005), we seek to nuance Ihde’s understanding of
cultural responses to adopted technologies (Ihde, 1993, p. 28) by suggesting
that culture also shapes technology (Rammert, 2002).
Reconsidering Ihde’s cultural hermeneutics (Ihde, 1990), postphenom-
enology seems particularly well placed to comprehend the importance of the
cultural context of technology. However, we suggest that Ihde’s notion of the
macro-perceptual field could be improved by the concept of “technological
style,” which would recognize that technology is shaped by external cultural
factors, resulting in a distinctive style (Hughes, 1977). We would therefore
like to re-emphasize the cultural level of human-technology relations and

151
152 Lasse Blond and Kasper Schiølin

suggest that postphenomenology has placed too much emphasis on technol-

ogy, leaving the mediated human “I” and the world in the dark. To com-
pensate for this imbalance, we investigate how the human “I” and the world
might be grasped within a postphenomenological framework. Recognizing
the difficulty of this task, we introduce the notion of “human instability” and
thereby underline the need to understand that the human mediated by technol-
ogy is never a stable subject.
Our focus on the cultural context of technology naturally leads to an
inquiry into what the world is. We suggest it is possible to handle this daunt-
ing philosophical question by paying attention to informants in the empiri-
cal field and their comprehension of their “apparently stable world.” Thus
technology, and especially the phenomenon “transfer of technology” (i.e.,
the relocation of a technological artifact), exposes cultural factors that are
distinctive of the apparently stable world; it prompts postphenomenology to
consider them and, in our case of a travelling technology, to ensure they are
not lost in translation.
We recognize the incitement within postphenomenology to make the
philosophy of technology more empirical. However, if postphenomenol-
ogy is to progress beyond program 1—Ihde’s basic scheme of different
human-technology relations, which structures much postphenomenological
analysis—the philosopher, social scientist, or contemporary historian needs
to leave the office and search for humans in their worlds. By doing so, they
can avoid the danger of their fascination with new technology coloring their
comprehension of the human-technology relationship. Thus, we would like
to highlight our analytical points by considering an empirical example of the
human-technology relationship(s): the transfer of the social robot Silbot from
Korea to Denmark and Finland.

TRANSFER OF TECHNOLOGY

Peter-Paul Verbeek commends Don Ihde for being the first to explicitly con-
nect phenomenology with the philosophy of technology (Verbeek, 2005), but
Ihde should also be lauded for his willingness to scrutinize the phenomenon
of the transfer of technology (TOT)—a domain thoroughly explored by
economists (e.g., Ruttan & Hayami, 1973; Rosenberg, 1976) and historians
of technology (e.g., Lindqvist, 1984; Pacey, 1990).
What characterizes Ihde’s writings about TOT is his understanding of
the complexity of the phenomenon in Technology and the Lifeworld (Ihde,
1990, p. 128). As the economist Nathan Rosenberg so incisively identifies,
TOT is not merely a question of relocating “a piece of hardware” (Rosen-
berg, 1976, p. 174). This is also acknowledged by Ihde, who calls for a more
 Lost in Translation? 153

multidimensional and phenomenological model to understand TOT and to

recognize the “basic cultural and existential interchange” as part of the phe-
nomenon (Ihde, 1993, p. 34). However, Ihde also emphasizes that adaptation
of the transferred technology is determined by its ability to be incorporated
into an “extant praxis” in the recipient country. Ihde further elaborates on this
essential point: “But even when it is adapted, the context of significations
may differ quite radically relative to the sedimented type of praxis in the
recipient culture. One does not need to go to exotic examples to take note of
this phenomenon” (1990, p. 127).
Thus Ihde stresses the importance of recognizing how technology is cul-
turally embedded (Ihde, 1993, p. 27), thereby highlighting that the cultural
contexts of TOT should be taken into consideration for a more comprehen-
sive understanding of the phenomenon. However, a more nuanced compre-
hension of the recipient culture is not the only aspect of TOT that needs to
be accounted for, the “multistability” of technologies is just as important.
In other words, focusing on the multiplicity of uses of a technological arti-
fact and the fact that a technology may be understood differently in various
cultural contexts and thus be embedded varyingly (Ihde, 1990, p. 144). Ihde
remarks that the use of a technological artifact is “deeply unpredictable and
uncontrollable” (Ihde, 1993, p. 37).
According to Ihde (1993, p. 39), it is inevitable that TOT causes cultural
change; however, he does not focus on this aspect when exploring the phe-
nomenon. Instead, he focuses primarily on the preconditions for TOT. For
Ihde, the embedding of a transferred technology and its contact with “recog-
nizable praxis, the familiar” (Ihde, 1993, p. 40) seems particularly important.
For this reason, he never loses sight of the significant cultural context that the
recipient country constitutes. The cultural level of human-technology rela-
tions is the focal point of his cultural hermeneutics and the macro-perceptual
field “within which our bodily involvements take place” (Ihde, 1990, p. 124).
In his seminal work What Things Do, Peter-Paul Verbeek applies the
postphenomenological perspective as a framework for understanding tech-
nological artifacts, and aims to expand postphenomenological philosophy by
approaching Bruno Latour and his theory of technical mediation. Although
he acknowledges that Latour’s Actor-Network Theory and the phenomeno-
logical perspective seem an odd couple, this does not hamper his ambition
to understand reality by extending the postphenomenological perspective
with Latour’s concepts (Verbeek, 2005, p. 162). Inevitably, this courting of
Actor-Network Theory gives Verbeek’s ontology an excessive focus on the
mediating role of technologies. This gives rise to his idea to anticipate the
consequences of the mediation of artifacts by designers inscribing ethics into
their products (Verbeek, 2005, p. 218), thus materializing morality (Verbeek,
2006, p. 379).
154 Lasse Blond and Kasper Schiølin

Although profound, this focus on mediation of technology does not pre-

clude Verbeek from recognizing the multistability of technological artifacts,
which obviously complicates anticipating “the eventual character of media-
tion” (Verbeek, 2005, p. 217). Yet, multistability seems to yield to mediation
or “technological shaping”:

Technology is never purely determinative, for in principle other cultural rela-

tions with a given artifact are always possible. But neither is it purely instru-
mental, for when an artifact receives a particular definition within a cultural
context—and thus becomes stable rather than multistable—it still contributes to
shaping that context. (Verbeek, 2005, p. 138)

Anticipating this shaping is being aware of the materialized morality (Ver-

beek, 2006). According to Verbeek, the question of how technology shapes
culture constitutes the main focal point (Verbeek, 2005, p. 138). The ques-
tion of how culture shapes technology is secondary. However, we argue that
it is too narrow to focus on the technological transformation of culture, thus
neglecting the cultural shaping of technology. We wish to explore how cul-
ture limits multistability, or, to use Peter-Paul Verbeek’s words, how “con-
ventions” come into place concerning given technological artifacts (Verbeek,
2005, p. 217).
This seems particularly relevant in relation to TOT. What is in fact at
stake in TOT is a relocation of culture or a “cultural instrument” (Ihde,
1990). By examining the transfer of the South Korean robot Silbot to a Dan-
ish rehabilitation center, we aim to provide a more elaborate way of under-
standing how technological ensembles are adopted into praxes. However,
before we do so, it is first necessary to explain the term “cultural shaping”
and to introduce the term “technological style” into the postphenomenologi-
cal vocabulary.
Although he does not use the term “cultural shaping,” the distinguished
historian of technology Thomas P. Hughes describes the phenomenon of
cultural shaping in his magnum opus Networks of Power: “The local con-
ditions external to the technology can be defined as cultural factors; the
technology they shape, a cultural artifact” (Hughes, 1983, p. 405). In this
sense, Hughes’s argument is similar to Ihde’s (1993, p. 13) description of
technologies as “cultural instruments” that have to be embedded in daily
life praxes. The German sociologist Werner Rammert also shares this view.
Rammert believes that shaping is a two-way interaction, as opposed to a
determined one-way course, and that cultural patterns shape the devel-
opment of technology more than we realize (2002, p. 174f.). However,
Rammert does not focus specifically on the cultural exchange caused by
international TOT, whereas Hughes writes extensively about international
 Lost in Translation? 155

TOT (cf. Hughes, 1962, 1983, 1987, 1995). In many ways, Hughes’s work
on TOT complements Ihde’s work, but the former elaborates our under-
standing of how technologies are adopted into or embedded in praxis by
working with the concept of technological style. This focal point is essen-
tial for comprehending TOT and grasping the phenomenon as a two-way
interaction.
Hughes introduced his concept of style in the late 1970s while writing
about regional technological styles in connection to power systems in Eng-
land, Germany, and the United States and recognizing that factors external to
technology should be emphasized in order to explain the different shapes of
these systems (Hughes, 1977, p. 230). The shape of a technology can be elu-
cidated by taking non-technical factors into consideration; factors descriptive
of the cultural context. In Networks of Power, Hughes defines technological
style as follows: “Technological style can be defined as the technical charac-
teristics that give a machine, process, device, or system a distinctive quality.
Out of local conditions comes a technology with a distinctive style” (Hughes,
1983, p. 405).
For this reason, local conditions viewed as the cultural context should not
be underestimated when trying to understand the development of technology
(Pantzar & Shove, 2010, p. 456). Instead, they should be regarded as equally
important aspects of TOT, because “adaptation is a response to different envi-
ronments and adaptation to environment culminates in style” (Hughes, 1987,
p. 68). This adaptation into or embedding in a local praxis can be seen as a
cultural shaping of technology. Hughes’s primary example is the transformer
developed by Lucien Gaulard and John Dixon Gibbs, which had a “decidedly
British style” (Hughes, 1995, p. 455). These specific British features were a
result of requirements of the British Electric Lighting Act of 1882 that had
resulted in a very complex transformer difficult to export—yet adaptable to
several different voltages. To overcome this challenging import, the recipient
countries had to adapt it to their local conditions and strip it of its British char-
acteristics (Hughes, 1995, p. 453). For example, by redesigning the Gaulard
Gibbs transformer in the United States, Westinghouse produced an American
transformer with a distinctive American technological style, not having to
pay attention to British legislation. This case is by no means exceptional. The
history of technology is full of examples of technologies shaped by recipient
cultures: For example, the steam train acquired a distinctive Russian style
when transferred from the West by reinventing their cylinder system (Pacey,
1990, p. 152). Similarly, the French Fouga airplane acquired a distinctive
style adapted to local cultural preferences in Israel by replacing various metal
parts of the plane with fiberglass solutions in order to reduce weight and cost,
which gave early indications of what Israeli technology would be like (Bloch,
2004, p. 26). Indeed, the historian of technology Arnold Pacey believes the
156 Lasse Blond and Kasper Schiølin

way to avoid negative results of TOT is to create space for a dialogue that
may lead to modifications (Pacey, 1990, p. viii), thus acknowledging the two
dimensions of the shaping of technology.
Hughes and his associates in the field of the history of technology have
introduced the idea that embedding technology in daily life praxis is
understood more profoundly by incorporating the concept of technologi-
cal style into the cultural hermeneutics. Hughes describes this as follows:
“To see culture as a shaper of technology suggests a broader range of
influences affecting technology not simply the social” (Hughes, 1995,
p. 451; our emphasis). Thus, the cultural context of technology must be
taken into consideration as a shaper of technology but also as a constraint
to the multistability of a technological artifact transferred from one
culture to another culminating in a culture-specific technological style.
Besides from recognizing the social shaping, this implies paying proper
attention to spatial and temporal aspects (Hughes, 1983, p. 405; Shove,
Watson, & Pantzar, 2012, p. 123). This is particularly important if we
require postphenomenology to explain how the “conventions” of use of
a technology emerge (Verbeek, 2005, p. 217) and if we wish to grasp the
notion that technologies continuously shape and are shaped by cultural
contexts. The cultural level of human-technology relations should not be
underestimated.
Finally, Sheila Jasanoff’s extensive works in science, technology and tech-
nology studies (STS) should be mentioned as a resource to better understand
the cultural diversity of the spaces in the world, in which humans and tech-
nologies reside and relate to one another. Comparing various technological
innovations in different national settings by studying the different regulatory
and legislative practices and, more recently, the different socio-technical
imaginaries (Jasanoff & Kim, 2009, 2015) accompanying them,1 Jasanoff has
persistently advocated for the methodology of comparison in STS:

Comparison thus solves the problem of the “view from nowhere”—that position
of mythic neutrality that no analyst can achieve in practice. Instead, this method
allows different, actual “somewhere” to be brought into productive contrast,
revealing patterns and persistences that might otherwise remain unperceived.
(Jasanoff, 2012, p. 7)

From this point of view, the “where” question becomes essential: Where is
technology? That is, in which relatively, or at least apparently, stable “dis-
cursive tracks, laid down on historically contingent institutional foundations,
and lubricated by repeated articulations for audiences attuned to specific
modes of demonstration and argument” (Jasanoff, 2012, p. 19) is technol-
ogy to be found? And how do these cultural tracks differ and influence the
 Lost in Translation? 157

human-technology relations? If we do not want to be caught in the abstract

view from nowhere, such questions cannot be ignored.

SILBOT—THE TRAVELLING ROBOT

As a way of illuminating this point further and remaining true to our postphe-
nomenological methodology, let us examine an empirical and contemporary
example of TOT: the transfer of the robot Silbot from Korea to Denmark
and Finland.2 By doing so, we acknowledge Verbeek’s attempt to make the
philosophy of technology empirical by trying to understand technology in
terms of “concrete artifacts” (Verbeek, 2005, p. 6). In order to get a deeper
understanding of the transfer of Silbot to Denmark and Finland, central par-
ticipants of the Finnish and Danish project were interviewed and the original
test facilities were visited in both Helsinki and Aarhus. Furthermore, exten-
sive participant observation has clarified the continuous development and
appropriation efforts undertaken by the Municipality of Aarhus to adopt the
Silbot robot into local elderly and health care praxis.
The social robot Silbot was developed by the Korean Institute of Science
and Technology (KIST) to teach English to school students in Korea. Origi-
nally called EngKey, the idea was to facilitate real-time interaction between
students and the robot, which was controlled by the students’ teacher from
another room. Besides this, the director of the robotics department at KIST
believed the egg-shaped robot might have the potential to treat or slow down
the progression of dementia. The robot was then reprogrammed to facilitate
cognitive exercises through interaction with elderly citizens by means of
tablets.
The municipalities of Helsinki, Finland, and Aarhus, the second largest
city in Denmark, displayed an interest in testing the robot for this purpose. In
cooperation with KIST, test beds were built in a center for the elderly on the
outskirts of the Finnish capital and at a center for rehabilitation in Aarhus. In
these two locations, cognitive exercises were carried out with elderly volun-
teers from the fall of 2011 to February 2012.3 Thereafter the pilot-tests were
evaluated with varying results.
The Finnish project team did not find Silbot “reliable enough” and the
robot was deemed “not ready for recreational services.”4 Although the Dan-
ish project team identified technical as well as cultural challenges, they were
more lenient toward Silbot’s limitations and, to this day, they continue to
work with the robot in close cooperation with KIST.
A closer look at the Finnish and Danish evaluation reports5 reveals other
interesting aspects of the transfer of the Korean robot. Both parties stressed
the need for a mediator between the students or elderly citizens and the robot;
158 Lasse Blond and Kasper Schiølin

the Finns found that the robot could “not replace human instructors” and the
Danes found that Silbot required “a lot of intervention from the teacher in
relation to the pedagogical content” and that the teacher could by “no means
be dispersed.” The Finns even bemoaned the fact that the robot did not sup-
port the work of the teacher and that the robot was too complicated for the
teacher to use.
However, the main reasons why the TOT project failed for the Finnish
team was that it was a technological “push project” that lacked the “flex-
ibility that is sometimes needed in innovation projects”; also, Silbot was
unable to “answer” the users’ needs, because it was “predesigned” before
arriving in Helsinki.6 Therefore, the whole project lacked “flexibility,”
and instead of responding to the elderly citizens’ challenges directly, the
question became how the robot could help the professionals. In other
words, the Finns were unable to adopt the robot into their praxis. During
the interviews both users and the project team members deemed the robot
unnecessary, underdeveloped, inflexible to even smaller adjustments and
too expensive.
In Denmark, Silbot’s use of the Danish language caused some raised eye-
brows. The robot was prone to scolding the elderly citizens when they did
not solve the cognitive exercises within the predetermined time frame. The
robot’s use of “inappropriate” and abusive language (for example, suggesting
that the elderly participants were drunk when they failed to solve the cogni-
tive games), as well as incomprehensible phrases, was also noticed. These
translational problems were deemed counterproductive to Danish learning
styles and a barrier to creating a positive learning environment for the elderly
citizens, as was the very rigid test schedules designed by the Koreans (and
similarly used at a center for Dementia in Seoul where Silbot was tested as
well). These schedules dictated 90 minutes of uninterrupted cognitive train-
ing. The Danes quickly shortened the duration of these training sessions to
make them less demanding for the elderly citizens and requested the cogni-
tive games be reprogrammed in order to provide the elderly citizens a longer
time to respond.
The Danes concluded that Silbot needed to be “more adjusted according to
Danish culture” and that the “cultural dimension” should be seen as a “serious
challenge” to be “addressed in the future.”7 However, the Danes continued
to use the robot. They compensated for these challenges and reported its
shortcomings to KIST, but, perhaps more importantly, they also outlined their
expectations for the design of the new version (or update), the present Silbot
3.0. Thus the Danes directly shaped the Silbot robot. The present version still
has grave technical challenges, but the language, the design, and the cognitive
exercises have been adjusted and the Danes continue to exchange and report
defects to be remedied by the South Koreans.
 Lost in Translation? 159

How could we understand the transfer and use of Silbot from a postphe-
nomenological perspective? It seems evident that the transfer of Silbot to
Finland and Denmark is an example of cultural interchange(s), which Don
Ihde believes should be taken into account in TOT. In accordance with his
perspective on transfer, the praxis in the recipient culture should not be under-
estimated; indeed, it seems crucial for the success of the transfer, understood
as the cultural embedding of the transferred technology.
At this stage, it remains unclear how Silbot has shaped the culture at the
elderly center in Helsinki and the rehabilitation center in Aarhus. In order to
establish this, it would be necessary to gather more empirical findings at the
sites. However, the effort to comprehend the transfer of Silbot to the Nordic
countries underlines the importance of keeping cultural hermeneutics as a
part of the postphenomenological perspective. As Ihde originally proposed,
the macro-perceptual field seems essential to comprehend the phenomenon
of TOT.
We would like to argue that it would also be worthwhile to include the
concept of technological style in Ihde’s cultural hermeneutics. Observing
Silbot, it becomes clear that the robot has distinct Korean features; the design,
the visual content of the cognitive games and the characteristic graphic that
constitutes the “face” of the robot are clearly foreign. Did this technological
style prevent Silbot being embedded in Finnish praxis? Certainly some of the
elderly Finns found the exaggerated facial expressions of the robots naïve
and childish and not to be expected from a robot with the duty to function as
a teacher and instructor. Whereas the Koreans deemed evident facial expres-
sions highly important in order to provide trustworthy communication.
Should the new version of the robot, which is based more closely on Dan-
ish system requirements, be seen as a case of stripping the robot of its Korean
characteristics in the continuous effort to give Silbot a Danish technological
style? These are central questions regarding the application of the concept of
technological style in the understanding of the transfer of Silbot; however, it
is difficult to provide definitive answers at this stage.
In the Danish case, it seems the conventions of use are still being negoti-
ated and the efforts to embed the robot in praxis are continuing. Silbot has
definitely been stripped of some of its Korean characteristics. The content of
the cognitive games have been altered; and the robot’s repertoire of songs
and stories now includes tales of Danish Viking Kings, runic stones, and
popular ballads to be memorized by the participating elderly citizens. There-
fore, although its use in Denmark continues to be shaped by specific Danish
demands and praxis, Silbot remains multistable. Thus the Silbot case can
be seen as an exchange between two technological traditions or styles: the
South Korean and the Danish. In any case, this two-way exchange must be
recognized from a postphenomenological perspective as culture shaping and
160 Lasse Blond and Kasper Schiølin

cultural shaping. The conditions external to a technology should also be con-

sidered. By elaborating the understanding of cultural shaping and introducing
the concept of technological style, we aim to respond to Don Ihde’s call for
“a deeper insight into the ways in which the ensemble of technologies relates
to cultural gestalts” (Ihde, 1993, p. 26).

BEYOND “PROGRAM 1”

We suggest that the problem of recognizing conditions external to technology

in postphenomenology may be embedded in the very core of the theory, or
at least in one of its most well-known programmatic trademarks: Don Idhe’s
(1990, p. 72ff.) program 1, which categorizes different human-technology
relations. Through Verbeek’s (2005, p. 122ff.) reception of program 1, it has
indeed become the locus classicus of postphenomenology and the point of
departure for many newcomers and students in the field.
The overall argument in the program is that humans always perceive the
world through technology: “It is something humans have always—since they
left the naked perceptions of the Garden—done” (Ihde, 1990, p. 72). Sche-
matically, this idea is usually explained as:

I—Technology—World

Humans do not perceive the world directly but through mediatory layers; for
example, they see the world through glasses or feel the world through clothes.

The installment of technology as a mediator between the human and

the world has indeed transcended the somewhat rigid Cartesian dualism
between the subject (res cogitans) and the object (res extensa). But while
postphenomenology, through comprehensive accounts of technology, has
done an excellent job providing flesh and blood to the neglected perceptual
technological mediator, both the human “I” and the world still seem to lead a
lifeless existence as bare Cartesian subjects and objects; as if the world were
not really a lifeworld, and the human, paraphrasing Schopenhauer, were “a
winged cherub’s head” without a body in pain, lust and desire, a language, a
gender, or a nationality. Verbeek is also aware of this potential danger with
human-technology relations: “By saying that mediation is located ‘between’
humans and world (as in the schema I–technology–world), Ihde seems to
put subject and object over against one another, instead of starting from the
idea that they mutually constitute each other” (Verbeek, 2005, p. 129). While
Verbeek acknowledges that, in Expanding Hermeneutics, Ihde makes it clear
that “subject and object are mutually interrelated,” he also claims that Ihde
 Lost in Translation? 161

“does not connect this thought with his earlier analysis of human-technology
relations” (Verbeek, 2005, p. 129). We agree with Verbeek entirely on this
issue. Like Verbeek, our aim is “to hone” the theory of human-technology
relations.
A clear indication of postphenomenology’s preference for the technologi-
cal mediator is its selective use of other philosopher’s works. For example,
when Merleau-Ponty is mentioned, it is primarily to elaborate on his feather
or his cane, not on his great insights into human psychology. The same is true
with Heidegger; his persistent attempt to unfold the human Dasein by map-
ping its existential structure—its being toward death, its anxiety, its historic-
ity—remains almost untouched, whereas the Heideggerian hammer is turned
upside down. To say it simply: It seems as though postphenomenology has
been blinded by its urgent task to investigate the technological mediator, and,
in doing so, it renders the two mediated parts of the equation more or less
unknown.
What is needed, we suggest, is an expansion of the postphenomenological
program 1, driven by two fundamental questions: “What/who is the human?”
and “What/where is the world?” Of course, one could object that such big
questions cannot be answered at all. But then the same is true with the ques-
tion “What is technology?” and this question has kept postphenomenology
and the philosophy of technology occupied for years. Once in a while, it
is necessary for an academic field to reflect and explicate the fundamental
concepts it takes for granted; sometimes, even mathematics asks: What’s a
number? In postphenomenology, the human and the world are indeed such
axiomatic concepts. Although we do not pretend to answer these questions,
we hope to identify possible ways for postphenomenology to reflect on hith-
erto unquestioned aspects of its conceptual framework. We hope that this will
be conceived as an invitation to discuss these questions further and elaborate
on the meaning of the human and the world within a postphenomenological
framework.

TOWARD A POSTPHENOMENOLOGICAL
ANTHROPOLOGY: HUMAN INSTABILITY

The question “What is the human?” can be treated in many different ways.
Within a philosophical scope, it is usually a matter of “philosophical anthro-
pology.” In the 1920s, Max Scheler (2009), Helmuth Plessener (1981),
Arnold Gehlen (1988), and others established philosophical anthropology as
an independent discipline that draws on insights from such different fields
as biology, anthropology, psychology, and philosophy to approximate an
understanding of what the human is. In a less strict sense, philosophical
162 Lasse Blond and Kasper Schiølin

anthropology is practiced throughout the entire history of philosophy. Each

time a philosopher tries to sketch out some fundamental features of being
human, (s)he engages in philosophical anthropology. For instance, Aristotle’s
definition of the human as “animal rationabile” can be understood as philo-
sophical anthropology.
However, as mentioned above, postphenomenology lacks an anthropology.
In his inaugural talk at the University of Twente, Verbeek (2009) very cau-
tiously anticipated philosophical anthropology as an important component in
a contemporary philosophy of technology, so perhaps it is not far from post-
phenomenology to think along these lines. However, Verbeek is yet to con-
nect philosophical anthropology directly to the human-technology relation to
ask who the “I” is that encounters the world through technology.
The postphenomenological “I” does not have specific characteristics, such
as a gender, an age, or feelings. However, in the human-technology rela-
tion, such specific characteristics can be significant. In the Silbot case, it is
important to consider that the people interacting with Silbot are elderly and
suffering from dementia. This could be one of the explanations why Silbot’s
language was deemed inappropriate in Denmark but not in South Korea,
where Silbot was interacting with healthy school children. Age and health—
and presumably many other human features—thus seem to shape the relation
to technology. For instance, if one seeks to understand the relation between
a human driver and a car, it is not enough to presuppose an anonymous and
abstract “I.” On the contrary, one must ask about the driver’s age, gender,
nationality, medical history, possible previous drug use, and other factors.
Just as the object is transformed into full-fledged technology through post-
phenomenological analyses, the subject must also be provided with human
traits to become a full-fledged human being.
To create such an anthropological awareness, we would like to contribute
another concept to postphenomenology’s analytical toolbox: “human insta-
bility.” Just as the technology is always multistable, the human is always
unstable. While Ihde (2012) uses the Necker cube and other technologies to
show that technology is multistable—that is, that it has no stable essence—
he (or Verbeek) never questions whether the human is (multi)stable. We are
left with no information about the mood or state of the human looking at
the Necker cube—for example, whether it is an angry old woman, a lustful
young man or a sleepy child—or how different moods and states shape the
human-technology relation. However, if the human-technology relation is
understood as a relation between an “unstable human” and a “multistable
technology,” one could better appreciate how basic human features, such as
moods, influence the use of technology. Moreover, the concept of instability
would also explain the diverse ways in which the same person could relate
to the same (multistable) technology; for instance, how a person’s relation
 Lost in Translation? 163

to the same computer can change by the minute when switching between
serious work, online chess, or porn. When the “I” acquires an age, a sex, and
is seen as lustful, playful, rational, irrational, sleepy, lively, sad, happy, or
libidinous—in other words, as an unstable human being—justice is done not
only to the human part in the human-technology-world scheme but also to
the understanding of technology. Emphasizing the instability of the human
being could thus be a first step in exploring the philosophical anthropology
of postphenomenology.

A WORLD OF . . . ?

As described above, postphenomenology’s notion of the world is not as

underdeveloped as its notion of the human, and Ihde’s focus on the Husser-
lian lifeworld and technology’s dependence on context is indeed a good start-
ing point to discuss “what the world is made of.” Nevertheless, there seems to
be some unknown factors in the postphenomenological concept of the world,
which become explicit when the theory of human-technology relations is con-
fronted with empirical findings. These unknown factors are also what Hughes
is trying to highlight in the earlier cited quotation suggesting that there is a
broader range of influences that affects technology than the social.
One of the reasons why the Danish rehabilitation center experienced prob-
lems embedding the Silbot robot in its daily life praxes was that Silbot needed
to be “more adjusted according to Danish culture” and that the “cultural
dimension” was seen as a “serious challenge.” These quotations underline
that the notion of culture is decisive to understanding this specific human-
technology relation. However, the notion of culture, which is not developed
further by the informants, seems very abstract; and, contrary to the predomi-
nant, more relativistic notions of culture, it indicates that, to a certain extent,
culture is somehow fixed or stable. Yet if we are to take our informants seri-
ously and try to understand the world they live in, we cannot simply brush
them off with a relativistic remark that there is no such thing as a “Danish
culture,” suggesting that they are suffering from false consciousness.
We therefore suggest that the world(s) in which human-technology rela-
tions are played out is considered an “apparently stable world,” since this is
how the world is comprehended in many human-technology relations. While
the world is not a specific world in Ihde’s classic program 1, the apparently
stable world is defined by factors such as nationality, history, cultural his-
tory, language (even dialects), nature, tradition, religion, economics, law, and
ideology.8 Such factors are generally taken for granted, but when a foreign
technology such as Silbot is placed between the “I” and its familiar world,
they suddenly—in the same way as the hammer does in Heidegger’s trite, yet
164 Lasse Blond and Kasper Schiølin

apt, example of the breakdown of ready-to-hand tools—re-appear as matters

of concern.
Of course, it is impossible to write an exhaustive list of what an apparently
stable world comprises. Nevertheless, the concept of an apparently stable
world could help us understand with more sensitivity the technology that
mediates between this world and the “I.” Inspired by Jasanoff we understand
the apparently stable world as a (often nationally) demarcated world of “his-
torically contingent institutional foundations” (Jasanoff, 2012, p. 19) and of
collectively held imaginaries of the future (Jasanoff & Kim, 2015). These
cultural structures shape our different “civic epistemologies” (Jasanoff, 2005,
p. 247)—that is, the way in which nations are collectively reasoning. Hence,
to understand technology and its mediating role is necessarily also a question
of understanding how the world, in different ways, can shape how the tech-
nology mediate and how the subject reasons. Furthermore, at an even deeper
cultural layer, the apparently stable world is also a world of what Ardener
(1982) calls semantic densities. In the “world of Finland” these might consist
of such immanent and intuitively meaningful phenomena as Jean Sibelius,
Kalevala, pines, cold winters, saunas, Uralic language, the Winter War, and,
of course, the Moomins and mediating, while the world of pungmul music,
calligraphy, mountains, monsoon, bathhouses, the Korean War, major hi-tech
industries, and, not least, K-pop, is of course the “world of South Korea.”
Studying the human-technology relations that occurred with Silbot would
therefore most likely benefit from a detour into the different apparently
stable worlds of Finland, Denmark, and South Korea. Theoretically stated,
the expansion of postphenomenology’s human-technology relations involves
expanding the hermeneutic circle; that is, to see, listen, and tune into the spirit
of the world in which the human-technology relations are played out and to
understand the world as the cultural context that seems so essential to the
embedding of technology culminating in technological style.

CLOSING REMARKS

In this chapter, we have aimed to grasp TOT within a postphenomenological

framework by recognizing the complexity of the phenomenon and describ-
ing it as a two-way interaction. As such, the transferred technology, like the
socially assistive robot Silbot, shapes the recipient culture, but the recipient
culture also seems to shape the technology in the continuous effort to embed
it in a recognizable, familiar praxis. Hence, the endeavor to understand the
phenomenon of technology transfer calls for the cultural context of technol-
ogy or external factors to be taken into consideration; in other words, it urges
us to deal with the world. As we have claimed, in the well-known program 1,
 Lost in Translation? 165

postphenomenology seems overly focused on comprehending the technologi-

cal mediator that separates the human from the world. It takes the human “I”
and the world for granted. We argue that the postphenomenological concep-
tion of both the human and the world need to be developed further.
To improve program 1, we introduced the notions of the unstable human
and the apparently stable world. We suggested the “I” is always an unstable
human and that a multistable technology mediates between the “I” and an
apparently stable world. These notions can be seen as part of an effort to
revive Ihde’s cultural hermeneutics (1990) and to comprehend how culture
shapes technology, or, put differently, how the world and the human medi-
ated by technology become enmeshed in establishing the conventions of use
of a given technological artifact. It is essential to consider these patterns of
use that are characteristic of different cultural environments if postphenom-
enology strives to understand how the cultural context shapes the human-
technology relationship and to pave the way for distinctive technological
styles reflecting the apparently stable worlds.

NOTES

1. Most well-known is perhaps Jasanoff’s works on biotechnology and genetic

engineering (to mention just one example, see Jasanoff, 2005), but also notable is her
comparison of nuclear-technology in the United States and South Korea (Jasanoff &
Kim, 2009), where she and Sang-Hyun Kim introduce the by now rather influential
concept of socio-technical imaginaries (see also Jasanoff & Kim, 2015).
2. This is the subject of Lasse Blond’s forthcoming PhD dissertation to be pub-
lished in 2018. Thus, some of the empirical examples are so far unpublished. Other
authors have also written about the transfer of Silbot to Denmark (e.g., Hasse, 2013).
3. SILBOT was actually accompanied by another robot called MERO. In the
shape of a bust, MERO could simulate different facial expressions, thus emphasiz-
ing Silbot’s oral presentation of the cognitive exercises. However, due to technical
problems, MERO was not used in Denmark, and, for comparative purposes, MERO
will not be accounted for here.
4. “Robots in the Kustaankartano center for the elderly—The Living Lab pilot
project and what was learnt from the INTRO Project” (2012) and “INTRO Interactive
Robot Project.” Final evaluation reports—unpublished.
5. “Final Evaluation Elderly Care Robot Systems in the City of Aarhus,” (2012).
Final evaluation report—unpublished. “Halvvejsrapport om Hjerne Fitness,” (2011).
Midway evaluation report—unpublished.
6. “Robots in the Kustaankartano center for the elderly—The Living Lab pilot
project and what was learnt from the INTRO Project,” (2012) and “INTRO Interac-
tive Robot Project.” Final evaluation reports—unpublished.
7. “Final Evaluation Elderly Care Robot Systems in the City of Aarhus,” (2012).
Final evaluation report—unpublished.
166 Lasse Blond and Kasper Schiølin

8. Like Hughes, we realize that these factors in writing become “overlapping, soft
categories,” (Hughes, 1986, p. 287).

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 Part IV

GENERAL METHODOLOGICAL
ISSUES
 Chapter 9

Why It Takes Both

Postphenomenology and STS to
Account for Technological Mediation
The Case of LOVE Park
Robert Rosenberger

Perhaps you’ve seen them. Small nubs, often metal, can be found affixed to
horizontal surfaces in many urban spaces. They are called “skatestoppers,” or
“pig ears,” among other colloquialisms. Their purpose is to discourage skate-
boarders from “grinding” their boards against these surfaces specifically, and
to discourage them from skating in the area more generally.
There are several fascinating aspects of these common, low-tech devices.
Despite their seeming innocuousness, they are a contested social maneuver.
That is, although they are only small and simple protrusions, they repre-
sent a step in an ongoing dispute over the proper usage of public space. In
addition, if you are not yourself a participant in this dispute—as perhaps a
skateboarder, property owner, or some other stakeholder, advocate, or local
government official—then it is possible to remain entirely unaware of these
devices even as you make use of spaces that have them.
One thing that brings about this conflict between skateboarders and their
antagonists is a particular skateboarding ethos, an aspect of skateboard-
ing culture in which a special value is placed on exploring the streets and
searching out new areas and surfaces that can be skated. In his book, Skate-
boarding, Space, and the City, Iain Borden (2001) analyzes this culture and
concludes that skateboarding should be understood as a kind of performative
critique of urban space. According to Borden, skateboarding is an “implicit

171
172 Robert Rosenberger

Figure 9.1 Skatestoppers built into a ledge in New York City, NY (Robert Rosenberger).

yet ongoing tendency to critique contemporary cities for their meanings and
modes of operation, and to prefigure what a future unknown city might be. As
one skateboarder declares, ‘Skating is a continual search for the unknown’”
(2001, p. 180).
In any case, when skateboarders make use of an urban space, it is often
in discord with the plans for that space maintained by developers and own-
ers. Sometimes those developers and owners have a different clientele in
mind for their space. Sometimes they take exception to the damage to curbs
and ledges that can be caused by grinding, or by the wax that skateboard-
ers sometimes use to make such surfaces more suitable for grinding. In
response, cities sometimes enact skateboarding bans, threatening skate-
boarders with fines and potential jail time for skateboarding in particular
areas.
Such anti-skate laws often function in concordance with the skatestop-
pers and other anti-skate redesigns of physical space, like the skatestoppers.
Skatestoppers are a paradigmatic example of what is variously called “hos-
tile,” “disciplinary,” or “defensive” architecture—objects which control what
people can and cannot do in certain spaces. A small skatestopper industry has
even developed, with websites such as stopagrind.com and grindtoahalt.com.
But many skateboarders resist these attempts to close off spaces. They
skate in defiance of bans. They develop new tricks that can work despite the
existence of skatestoppers. And they even sometimes forcibly remove the
skatestoppers themselves through the use of crowbars, hammers, and portable
grinders or other power tools. The skatestopper manufacturers respond with
the development of devices with greater tamper resistance. And the cold war
 Why It Takes Both Postphenomenology and STS 173

Figure 9.2 & 9.3 “No Skateboarding” signage and rail-mounted skatestoppers at
Midtown MARTA Station, Atlanta, GA (Robert Rosenberger).

between these two social factions, built right into the architecture of public
space, continues on.
It is my contention that despite their seeming simplicity, it requires the
combined resources of social theory and the philosophy of technology to
account for technologies like skatestoppers. In particular, I argue that insights
from the field of science and technology studies (STS) are needed for captur-
ing the ways that technologies are redesigned for the purpose of controlling
specific social agendas. And I argue that we also need ideas from the philo-
sophical tradition of phenomenology, and in particular the burgeoning school
of thought called “postphenomenology,” to conceive of the ways technologies
are always open to multiple uses, even uses for which they were not designed.
I will show that STS accounts of technology and postphenomenology are
each incomplete—even in their own terms—without insights from the other.
As a plan for what follows, I begin with a review of some of the central
ideas from postphenomenology and STS accounts of technology, and con-
sider how these insights apply to the example of skatestoppers. Next, I review
and expand arguments in favor of combining these two perspectives. Finally,
I instantiate these ideas with the case of the history of Philadelphia’s JFK
Plaza, or “LOVE Park” as it is locally known, an area of the city’s downtown
that became an internationally renowned skateboarding destination, that is,
until a strategic redesign and law enforcement crackdown largely forced the
skaters out.
174 Robert Rosenberger

POSTPHENOMENOLOGY

As a blossoming international and interdisciplinary school of thought, post-

phenomenology provides and original account of the ways that technologies
“mediate” human experience (e.g., Ihde, 1990, 1998, 2016; Verbeek, 2005,
2011; Hasse, 2015; Friis & Crease, 2015; Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015).
This focus sometimes earns this perspective the alternative moniker “media-
tion theory.” Postphenomenology builds on classical phenomenology and
American pragmatist philosophy to articulate deep descriptions of the various
ways that human experience is transformed through technology usage. Rather
than understand technologies to be like any of the other things we perceive
or act on in the world, under this perspective technologies are conceived as
transformative mediators of experience, coming between the user and the
world, and changing the possibilities for perception and action. Peter-Paul
Verbeek goes so far as to claim that users and the world itself become what
they are through the mediation of technology (2011).
One of the key contributions of this school of thought is the list of dif-
ferent forms of human-technology relations developed by this perspective’s
founder, Don Ihde. Ihde explores the various ways that users engage with
devices. He establishes a useful distinction between technologies that we
take up with our bodies, and those we perceive directly and interpret. In
what he calls an “embodiment relation” to technology, a device is brought
into our bodily experience and transforms our capacities for perception and
action (Ihde, 1990, p. 72). A pair of glasses, to review the default example,
is not one of the objects I perceive in my environment, but something which
transforms my visual capabilities. A hammer is not one of the objects of the
world that I act upon, but something which transforms my capacity for action
as it is embodied. This embodied form of human-technology relation can be
contrasted with another, which Ihde calls “hermeneutic relations.” This term
refers to relations that involve looking at, listening to, or otherwise directly
perceiving a device’s readout (Ihde, 1990, p. 80). For example, a wall clock
provides transformed access to the precise time of day when I look at and
interpret its face. Hermeneutic relations are also at work when we interpret
technologies that produce images, and a bustling line of postphenomeno-
logical research explores our relations to imaging technologies in everyday,
medical, and scientific research contexts (e.g., Ihde, 1998; Hasse, 2008; Friis,
2012, 2015; Rosenberger, 2011, 2013; Forss, 2012; Carusi & Hoel, 2014;
Wiltse, 2014; Vallor, 2015).
Ihde notes that our relations to technology at times become more or less
“transparent.” This refers to the degree to which a technology recedes into
the background of our awareness, growing more and more unnoticed as it is
used. Despite the fact that they sit perched on my nose, and despite the fact
 Why It Takes Both Postphenomenology and STS 175

that they radically change my entire field of vision, I am so accustomed to

my glasses that they often remain deeply transparent as they are worn. As I
hammer nails into a piece of wood, the project I am attempting to accomplish
is more present to me than my grip on the hammer itself.1
Several other forms of human-technology relations can also be identified.
Ihde uses the term “alterity relations” to refer to technologies we interact
with as if they have a “quasi-Other” presence, like the ATM machine with
its question and answer format, or personal assistant smartphone applica-
tions (like the iPhone’s Siri) that are voice interactive (Ihde, 1990, p. 98).
Ihde also identifies “background relations” as those technologies that trans-
form our environmental context while remaining off “to the side” in our
experience, like a building’s climate control system, or the gently humming
refrigerator (Ihde, 1990, p. 109). More recently, Verbeek has tested the limits
of this embodiment-to-background spectrum of relations. He suggests that
technologies that are implanted into the body, such as a neurostimulator in
the brain or a bionic eyeball, should be considered “fusion relations” since
they problematize the very idea of user, usage, embodiment, and indeed the
human-technology relation (Verbeek, 2011; Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015,
p. 21). On the other side, he identifies “immersion relations” in which the
environment does not simply take on a backgrounded status, but instead
actively shapes our experience, as in the case of “smart” homes (Verbeek,
2011; Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015, p. 21).
Another central commitment of the postphenomenological perspective is
that technologies always remain “multistable,” that is, they have the capacity
to mediate human relations to the world in multiple ways. As Cathrine Hasse
explains, “In postphenomenology, multistability refers to technologies that
vary in how their meanings are stabilized as they cross time. . . . Multistabil-
ity emerges in the meeting of different kinds of practices in relation to the
affordances offered by the design” (2015, p. 164). Any technology can be
used in different ways for different purposes and can find different mean-
ings in different contexts. At the same time, the notion of multistability also
denotes the fact that technologies, as concrete material objects, do not simply
enable just any mediated experience; a technology cannot be used for just any
purpose, be meaningful in just any manner, or facilitate just any perception.
The concrete materiality of the device places limitations on what kinds of
relations can occur.
Even within the multiple possible uses and meanings of a given technol-
ogy, there will often be a “dominant” one (or a few dominant ones), a main
usage, usually the same usage for which the device has been designed and
manufactured. When I wear my eyeglasses to see, I use them in their domi-
nant stability. But other stabilities are possible, such as using them as a mag-
nifying glass, or keeping an old pair for the sake of nostalgia.
176 Robert Rosenberger

Ihde uses the term “variational analysis” to denote the method of search-
ing out the various stabilities possible for a given technology, be it through
empirical investigation, armchair brainstorming, anthropological study, or
other means. Ihde contrasts his own conception of variational analysis with
the similar-though-not-identical version used by classical phenomenologist
Edmund Husserl. If you want to appreciate postphenomenology’s pragmatic
commitments to anti-essentialism and nonfoundationalism, it is crucial to
understand the difference between Ihde and Husserl on this methodological
point. Ihde writes:

Husserl’s investigative method, patterned on mathematical variational analysis,

was the use of what he called “imaginative variations,” for which the result
was supposed to be to determine invariants or essences. As argued, variational
theory, in my estimation, is what gives phenomenology its rigor. But, again fol-
lowing Husserl, this time first in the first edition of Experimental Phenomenol-
ogy, what I found was not a stable essence as Husserl also called his result, but
multistability. (2016, p. 127)

That is, where Husserl’s investigative method sought a target phenomenon’s

essence, postphenomenology seeks an appreciation of its multistabilty. As
Shannon Vallor clarifies, “Ihde’s concept of multistability undermines Hus-
serl’s original claim in Ideas to have founded a descriptive science of static
eidetic essences; indeed, Ihde’s explorations of human-technology relations
have shown us that phenomena appear to us in far more fluid and open-ended
ways than Husserl understood” (2015, pp. 19–20).
In recent work, I have expanded on the insights of Ihde’s method of
variational analysis, and developed a second step in this line of thinking
for postphenomenology. My suggestion is that after variational analysis has
been performed, and multiple stabilities have been identified, the investiga-
tion should continue through the critical contrast of those stabilities against
one another. This enables postphenomenological methodology to do more
than simply demonstrate the fact that a technology is multistable. Under
this method, new things can be uncovered about the technology through
the critical comparison of its various stabilities against one another. In this
way, postphenomenological investigations can generate new insights without
an appeal to either a foundational conception of truth or a transcendental
account of essence; things are learned about particular stabilities through
their comparison with other stabilities. This can be especially enlightening
when investigating a technology’s dominant stability, whose features can be
occluded by its instantiation in the everyday lifeworld of many users. I refer
to this second step for postphenomenological methodology as “variational
cross-examination” (Rosenberger, 2014, 2017b; and, for an application to
qualitative research methodology, see Aagaard, forthcoming).
 Why It Takes Both Postphenomenology and STS 177

We can consider the multistability of public-space devices in terms of

skateboarding culture. As noted in the Borden quote above, a central aspect of
this culture is the continual search through urban space for terrains available
for skateboarding. Sidewalks and urban plazas become skate parks. Ledges
and handrails become surfaces for grinding, as well as many other objects,
from stone roadblocks to large planters. All of this is to say that through the
lens of skateboarding we see many of the objects of public space to be mul-
tistable in a particular way: in addition to the designed and dominant usage
of these objects of the urban landscape, they also afford stable possibilities
for skating.

STS ACCOUNTS OF TECHNOLOGY

Some of the most influential thinking on the philosophy of technology over

the past 30 years has come not from the philosophy of technology, but from
sociologists and anthropologists in the larger and overlapping field of science
and technology studies (STS). It is important here to consider some of the
central ideas coming out of two theoretical perspectives from this field, actor-
network theory and the social construction of technology.
The “social construction of technology” (SCOT) has been developed by
Weibe Bijker, Trevor Pinch, and others (e.g., Pinch & Bijker, 1984; Bijker,
1995; Collins & Pinch, 1998; Pinch & Trocco, 2002; Oudshoorn, 2003). This
view emerged as an offshoot of the “social studies of knowledge” (SSK)
account of scientific practice. According to SSK, scientific knowledge devel-
ops through conflicts between research groups with competing social inter-
ests. In this account, focus is placed on the social factors involved in bringing
closure to such conflicts. SCOT builds from these insights to develop a view
of how technologies evolve through histories of disputes between collectives
of people with competing interests within society. This view presents a pow-
erful counter to any intuition that technology possesses an “internal logic”
that determines how it should be constituted, and that technologies move
forward only through the work of engineers and designers (Bijker, 2010, p.
71). Instead, in this view, the composition of any contemporary technology is
the result of a social history in which one group’s interests regarding how the
technology should be used and composed won out over others.
SCOT researchers conduct detailed histories in order to discover what
factors were important to the now-settled disputes that inform established
technologies. A foundational study in this perspective is Bijker and Pinch’s
investigation of the history of bicycles (Pinch & Bijker, 1984; Bijker, 1995).
According to this account, the shape of contemporary bicycles—with their
two wheels of similar size—is not simply the result of the development of
178 Robert Rosenberger

an ideal form independent of the context of concrete interests. Rather, the

interests of those who wanted bicycles to be used primarily for travel won
out over those who wanted them to be used for athletics and thus preferred a
bicycle of a different shape (e.g., a bicycle with a very large front wheel). In
the terminology of SCOT, any technology initially possesses an “interpreta-
tive flexibility,” that is, a stage in which multiple designs coexist as debates
occur over what that technology’s form should take. Over time, social con-
flicts determine which particular purpose is the one a community prefers, and
the technology develops along those lines (Pinch & Bijker, 1984, p. 421).
Other examples of seminal case studies include Pinch’s investigation of the
development of electronic instrumentation, and Nelly Oudshoorn’s history of
oral contraception (Pinch & Trocco, 2002; Oudshoorn, 2003).
Another influential STS perspective is known as “actor-network theory”
(e.g., Latour, 1992, 1999, 2005; Law & Hassard, 1999; Mol, 2002). Like the
way that SCOT began as an application of insights from the SSK concep-
tion of scientific practice to technological development, the actor-network
perspective also began as an account of science. It too conceives of scientific
work in social terms, exploring the social factors involved in the closure of
debates and the establishment of accepted facts within scientific communi-
ties. But in a crucial difference from SSK and SCOT, the actor-network
account expands the kind of participants that should be analyzed as a part
of social collectives. Under this view, such collectives should be conceived
as “networks” that consist not only of human “actors,” but also “nonhuman”
actors, which in a scientific setting can include things such as laboratory
space and instrumentation, patents, publications and their prestige, and affili-
ation with granting institutions.
The actor-network account of technology similarly looks at contemporary
rivalries between social groups, and includes a conception of material objects
as potential “actors” contributing to those networks. Under this view, tech-
nologies can be enrolled into networks to help enact the network’s agenda.
Human actors can do the work of “delegating” duties to nonhuman actors
(Latour, 1999, p. 187). Bruno Latour, a leading light of the actor-network per-
spective, provides the example of the speed bump. We can imagine someone
who would like to speed in their car down a particular roadway, and we can
imagine this driver encountering a rival network of powerful actors that want
that driver to slow down. These actors include the police department with
its power to issue traffic citations as well as the state itself with its ability to
determine traffic law. But in addition to the strategy of distributing tickets to
those who are caught breaking the speed limit, the slow driving network has
another option available to it: the task of forcing the driver to drive slowly
can be delegated to a speed bump. In this way the speed bump, as a material
actor (through the work of the engineers and construction workers that design
 Why It Takes Both Postphenomenology and STS 179

it and put it in place), does the work of the police officer. Latour writes, “Not
only has one meaning, in the example of the speed bump, been displaced into
another, but an action (the enforcement of speed law) has been translated into
another kind of expression. The engineer’s program is delegated in concrete”
(1999, p. 187). And he notes that in many countries speed bumps are referred
to as “sleeping police officers.” The work of those legislators, engineers, con-
struction workers, and others all confront the speeding driver in the form of
the bump. As Latour summarizes, “Think of technology as congealed labor”
(1999, p. 189).
Madeleine Akrich contributes to this line of thinking by describing the kind
of work that must be done to a material object to enroll it into a particular net-
work (1992). To describe the agenda of a network, she makes a metaphor to
the “script” of a movie or a play, the narrative according to which the various
actors follow a role. We can thus think about the material modifications that
are made to technologies to better align them with their roles in the network
as a kind of “inscription,” inscribing the script of the network into the device
to make it a better actor. She writes, “A large part of the work of innovators
is that of ‘inscribing’ this vision of (or prediction about) about the world in
the technical content of the new object” (Akrich, 1992, p. 208). In the case
of the speed bump, we could potentially even consider the bump itself as an
inscription into the roadway, further enrolling the street into the slow speed
network. We could think of additional material changes, such as painting the
bump so that it is more visible, or planting a sign beside the bump to further
warn drivers, as additional material inscriptions.
In my view, STS accounts of technology in general, and actor-network
theory in particular, are particularly well positioned to account for the social
dynamics of skatestoppers. We can conceive of the skateboarders and those
who oppose the skateboarders as rival networks. Under this account, the
various potentially skateable objects of public space can be understood as
material nonhumans that each network attempts to enroll. Thus, the skate-
boarding network enrolls the various sidewalks, plazas, handrails, benches,
ledges, and other skateable spaces and objects into its network. The wax
that skaters sometimes apply to ledges to render them more grindable can be
conceived as a material inscription. And thus the skatestoppers themselves
can be conceived as material inscriptions as well, but ones implemented by
the anti-skate network. The skatestoppers are modifications to those ledges
and handrails to which are delegated the task of discouraging skateboarding.
The postphenomenological method of variational cross-examination
adopts some of the ideas from actor-network theory (Rosenberger, 2014;
2017b). Recall that this method involves first identifying different stabilities,
and then cross comparing them. One of the features of the various stabilities
that can be cross compared are the different ways that each stability may have
180 Robert Rosenberger

been materially inscribed to better fit its usage. This can be important if we
do not already know the functions of all of the parts of our object of study.
And it can be especially important when the dominant stability of a device is
under examination. As noted above, it can be difficult to ascertain many of
the features of a dominant stability since it may be suffused in normality, set
in the habits of the everyday world. This is even more the case if a powerful
network has further tailored the device to the specifications of this dominant
stability. It can become even easier to believe that the device is only “for”
this dominant purpose.
Think again of the skatestoppers. If one is neither a skateboarder nor famil-
iar with the debate over skateboarding in public space, then one might not
even notice skatestoppers in one’s everyday environment. And even if one
does, one may not guess their purpose since the device may have effectively
pushed away the skateboarders (and since the dominant anti-skate network
may have also additionally effectively pushed them away through other
means, such as anti-skate laws).

ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE NOTIONS OF

INTERPRETIVE FLEXIBILITY AND MULTISTABILITY

At this point a clarification should be made: the postphenomenological notion

of “multistability” and the SCOT notion of “interpretive flexability” should
not be understood as entirely interchangeable. Because they point to similar
phenomena—the general variability of technology usage and meaning—
these two concepts are sometimes mistakenly understood to point to the exact
same thing. It appears that even Verbeek conflates the two when he writes
that “the existence of multistability—a product’s ‘interpretative flexibility’ as
Bijker (1995, p. 20) calls it—need not hamper designers in explicitly trying
to anticipate the mediating role of products in their use context” (Verbeek,
2005, p. 217).
My insistence here to keep the notions of multistability and interpretive
flexibility distinct is no mere quibble. Not only does each concept point to
a subtly different phenomenon, they both are individually important. Where
the notion of interpretive flexibility refers to a technology’s status in a social
community, the notion of multistability refers to a quality always inherent in
all technology.
Let’s spell this out further. Interpretive flexibility is in the end a social
concept. It points to a technology’s particular relationship with a larger com-
munity of human users. As Bijker puts it, “Because the description of an
artefact through the eyes of different relevant social groups produces differ-
ent descriptions—and thus different artefacts—this results in the researcher’s
 Why It Takes Both Postphenomenology and STS 181

demonstrating the ‘interpretative flexibility’ of the artefact” (2010, p. 23). A

technology is understood to have interpretive flexibility when its most basic
aspects, its very definition, its default form, its agreed up function, are up for
debate. This can occur in the early stages of a technology’s development. We
see this in the example of the bicycle. If a group of people were asked today
to imagine a normal bicycle, it is most likely that most people would think of
the same image, one in which the bicycle’s design has wheels the same size.
Sure, any of these people will also recognize there to be any number of other
bicycle designs out there, from tiny-wheeled models, to three-wheeled mod-
els, and more. But these alternative bicycle designs will be recognized for
what they are: atypical ones. Thus today the technology of the bicycle does
not possess much interpretive flexibility. Socially speaking, the basic defini-
tion of the bicycle, its standard and nonstandard designs, and its normal and
atypical uses, are generally agreed upon. Indeed, to even remember a time
in which this was not the case requires the work of opening the blackbox of
history on this topic, as Pinch and Bijker have done.
As we have seen, when that historical investigation is performed, it is
revealed that in an earlier time the term “bicycle” referred to things with
very different basic designs and uses. If a group of people were polled at that
earlier time to determine what the term “bicycle” meant, then more than one
agreed-upon answer would have been given. That is, in the early chapters of
the story of the bicycle, there was interpretive flexibility.
It is of course not only in the early stages of a technology’s place in a
community that interpretive flexibility can occur. As changes occur over the
course of technological development, and as a community changes over time,
a previously settled technology can once again become interpretively flexible.
This appears to be the case for our contemporary relationship to the computer.
In the 1980s and 1990s, if you asked a group of people to imagine a computer,
then most answers would have pointed to the same thing: a desktop model
with a keyboard, mouse, and monitor. Today it is quite possible that the same
question would prompt a variety of answers, including laptops, tablets, smart-
phones, wearables, as well as desktops. In this way, we could say that there is
currently interpretive flexibility with regards to the computer.
Perhaps adding to the confusion between these concepts is the fact that
both postphenomenology and SCOT differently use the term “stable.” Where
postphenomenology refers to the “stabilites” of a multistable technology,
STS accounts refer to the “stabilization” of a technology with regard to
interpretive flexibility. In SCOT terminology, as a technology becomes less
interpretively flexible, as its basic design and purpose becomes settled within
the community, the technology is said to “stabilize.” As Bijker explains,
“‘Stabilization’ stresses the process character: a process of social construction
can take several years in which the degree of stabilisation slowly increases up
182 Robert Rosenberger

to the moment of closure” (2010, p. 69). Again, like interpretive flexibility

itself, for SCOT the notion of stabilization is a social concept, referring to the
social state of a community of people with respect to a technology.
In contrast, the notion of multistability points to an always-present condi-
tion of all technology. It points out the pragmatic nature of the relationality
between material devices and users. In its simple but important claim that the
materiality of a technology always makes possible multiple relations to the
world—while simultaneously also always constraining possible relations—
the notion of multistability constitutes a kind of metaphysics. To say that
technologies are always multistable is to make an ontological claim, but an
odd one. It’s odd in that it is an ontology that is nonetheless non-essentializing
and non-foundational and non-deterministic. It is a metaphysical claim about
the always-present pragmatic relationality between users and technologies.

THREE ARGUMENTS FOR AMALGAMATION

The basic observation behind the push to bring together postphenomenology

and STS accounts of technology is that each perspective appears to possess
strengths that the other lacks. They have complimentary specializations. In
the view of those who favor putting together these two approaches, the STS
accounts capture the ways that technologies are shaped by social collectives,
and also the ways those technologies themselves contribute to the ongoing
dynamics of those collectives. The postphenomenological account instead
captures the relations between individual users and technologies. In this sec-
tion, I not only support amalgamation, but argue for a strong version. This
strong case for amalgamation, as I identify it here, includes not only stressing
why it would be beneficial to combine these theories, but also arguing that
each of these perspectives is incomplete even in its own terms without the
integration of insights from the other. That is, I argue that without the insights
of the other, each of these perspectives are inadequate even for approaching
its own main object of specialization.
Let’s consider three arguments in favor of amalgamation. The first, which
can be called the “argument from interface,” claims that postphenomeno-
logical insights are important to STS accounts for the way they articulate
the details of human-technology relations. Versions of this argument have
been advanced by Peter-Paul Verbeek and Aaron Smith, and I build on
their insights here. The second, which can be called the “argument from
multistability,” is my own. I suggest that postphenomenological insights are
additionally crucial to STS accounts for the way they articulate the nature
of technological materiality and its inherent openness to multiple uses and
meanings. The third and final argument, which can be called the “argument
 Why It Takes Both Postphenomenology and STS 183

from inscription,” spells out the way that postphenomenology itself requires
ideas from STS accounts of technology, and in particular its insights into the
ways that technologies are materially inscribed into social networks. Each of
these arguments is clarified through its application to aspects of the example
of skatestoppers.

The Argument from Interface

When postphenomenologists have urged for the importance of the insights of
their perspective for STS work on technology, they have tended to make this
case in terms of the following reasoning.
First, it is understood generally that postphenomenology shares many
philosophical commitments with STS accounts of technology, and with actor-
network theory in particular. They share, for example, a commitment to a
relational ontology, that is, the basic idea that things and people can only be
understood in terms of their relations to other things and other people. Or as
Donna Haraway puts it, “beings do not preexist their relatings” (2003, p. 6).
From here, the argument goes that while STS accounts of are good at spell-
ing out the relations between groupings of people and things, and how these
groupings work together to enact agendas, these accounts are not as strong
when it comes to articulating the details of the relations between individual
humans and devices. Thus, according to this line of thinking, STS accounts
and postphenomenology should be combined because postphenomenology
fills in this gap; it is good at articulating the details of individual human-
technology relations. Put differently, postphenomenology and STS should be
combined because the former crucially supplements the latter with an account
of the “interface” between individual humans and technologies. Let’s refer to
this general line of reasoning here as “the argument from interface.”
The two fullest articulations of this argument have appeared in the work
of Peter-Paul Verbeek and of Aaron Smith. In a chapter in Chasing Tech-
noscience, a book which cross compares several different philosophical
approaches to the study of materiality, Smith offers a clear formulation of
this reasoning, writing that, “Latour’s view, however, does not develop in
nearly the same depth the direct personal relationships with artifacts that
Ihde’s does. Instead, Latour’s project could be seen as picking up where
Ihde’s ends because it emphasizes systems of relations” (Smith, 2003, p.
189). But it is in the work of Verbeek (2005, 2011) that this argument
receives an extended treatment. He writes, “Actor-network theory is pri-
marily interested in unraveling the networks of relations by virtue of which
entities emerge into presence, while a postphenomenological approach, by
contrast, seeks to understand the relations that humans have with those enti-
ties” (Verbeek, 2005, p. 164f).
184 Robert Rosenberger

One way that both Verbeek and Smith articulate this view is in terms of
Latour’s comments on gun usage. Latour cleverly clarifies the importance
of a relational conception of ontology through the analysis of the rhetoric
around gun control. He notes that gun rights defenders like the National
Rifle Association (NRA), a powerful anti-gun control lobbying group in
the United States, often point out that “guns don’t kill people; people kill
people.” The claim of these lobbyists is that responsibility for shootings
must always rest only on a person, thus as a community we should not place
limitations on access to guns. Latour spells out this logic: “The gun is a tool,
a medium, a neutral character of human will” (1999, p. 196). This reveals
how the shallow rhetoric of the NRA works to obscure the issue. As Verbeek
further explains:

A gun is not a mere instrument, a medium of free will of human beings; it helps
to define situations and agents because it offers specific possibilities for action.
A gun constitutes the person holding the gun as a potential killer and his or her
adversary as a potential lethal victim. (2011, p. 64)

Or as Latour puts it:

You are a different person with the gun in your hand. (1999, p. 179)

But the example of gun usage does more than only helpfully instantiate
actor-network and postphenomenological concepts. It also serves as an exam-
ple of the importance of postphenomenological insights for actor-network
theory’s account of technology. Verbeek writes that, while Latour’s frame-
work enables us to identify chains of actors, “the postphenomenological per-
spective, for instance, offers a more nuanced look the connections between
the entities in its chains. Latour views these connections simply as ‘associa-
tions,’ as a kind of cement between actants” (2005, p. 165). And Verbeek
notes that this nuance is lacking even in Latour’s iconic example of the gun,
since in Latour’s account gun usage reduces to a description in which a new
entity emerges as “gun + human = gunman.” Where Latour’s account can
only get us to the understanding that a user and a technology come together
to form a new networked entity with new capacities, postphenomenology has
the potential to spell out further how this happens. It does so with its concep-
tions of the human embodiment of technology, hermeneutic interpretation
and perception, and the experiential transparency involved in bodily habitu-
ation and training.
I’d add as well that Latour’s conceptual vocabulary is not neutral with
regard to the description of individual human experience within networks;
it actively obscures certain dynamics (Rosenberger, 2014). Latour’s project,
 Why It Takes Both Postphenomenology and STS 185

at least in his pioneering mid-nineties work on technology, is to draw out

the sociality of objects, and also the sociality of human bodies. That’s why
he uses the term “delegation” (a word usually used only to describe relations
between human bosses and human subordinates) to denote the assignment
of a task to a device. Conversely, he uses the term “incorporation” (a word
usually used to describe something done to objects) to denote the enroll-
ment of a human into a network (Latour, 1992, p. 231). While these moves
are helpful for Latour’s particular project, rhetorically emphasizing the
transfer of “competences” between humans and nonhumans, I suggest that
they have the effect of actively obscuring (and perhaps also downplaying)
issues of individual human experience. Latour is sometimes criticized on
the grounds that his conceptual framework has a leveling effect, reducing
important differences into a flat ontology in which everything is just another
actor (e.g., Lee & Brown, 1994). The argument from interface, exemplified
by the gunman critique above, is a particular version of this criticism of
actor-network theory’s flattened ontology. While it is at times important to
emphasize the larger sociality of objects and human bodies, this should not
always be done at the expense of a nuanced account of human experience
itself, the details of which are at times crucial to understanding the dynam-
ics of a network. Postphenomenology can provide a valuable corrective on
this point.
The discord between the ultimate project at hand for STS accounts of tech-
nology and postphenomenology thus runs so deep that it is fixed within the
connotations of the very vocabulary of each perspective. This underscores an
important point: just because these perspectives happen to specialize in the
articulation of things the other lacks, that should not imply that the amalga-
mation of the two will be an easy matter. Indeed, just the opposite appears to
be the case. Because the lenses offered by each perspective have been grinded
to enable a focused view upon different aspects of the world, it may be dif-
ficult, or even perhaps impossible, to entirely reconcile the two such that a
complete amalgamated account can be taken up together in a given moment.
These points crystalize in a simple example: rumble strips. Recall that in
the case of Latour’s example of the speed bump we get a simple instance in
which the capacities of the state’s police institution are transferred to a par-
ticular device. The state’s agenda of forcing drivers to slow down is delegated
to the speed bump. Rumble strips offer a related and equally simple example,
but with different processes at work. By “rumble strip,” I refer to the practice
of cutting a series of grooves into the road that produce a rumbling sound
and tactile sensation when the car rides over them (or installing mini-bumps
that create a similar effect). These kinds of grooves are sometimes installed
within roadways to alert drivers to upcoming changes, for example, issuing a
186 Robert Rosenberger

reminder that a toll both is ahead. They also are sometimes added to the sides
of the road to alert drivers who have veered too far out of their lane.
Although they are built into the roadway, the rumble strips play a slightly
different material role from the speed bump. Where the speed bump coerces
the driver by force, threatening to damage a car’s suspension like the way a
police officer threatens the driver with a fine, the rumble strips instead only
supply information. In this way, they are functionally more like a street sign,
but the form of their mediation is different. In the case of visual signage,
spelled out in words and symbols, a sign’s content is apprehended through a
visual hermeneutic relation to technology. If the driver already knows how to
read those words and symbols, then she or he experiences their meaning in
a visual gestalt. The rumble strip also relays a signal to the driver through a
hermeneutic relation, just like the visual signage, but a tactile one. And this
haptic hermeneutic relation occurs through the context of a driver already
deeply embodying the car.
There’s more. Depending on the particular driver’s experience with indi-
vidual instances of particular rumble strips, their tactile perception may come
as more or less of a surprise. A driver already deeply familiar with a particular
rumble strip (say, one passed over as part of a daily commute) may experi-
ence it with some degree of transparency, anticipating the tactile sensation
before it occurs, already aware of the information it transmits. A driver unac-
customed to a particular strip, or otherwise unready for its sensation, may
experience it as a jarring alert which pierces into their overall awareness.
Thus, although in a certain sense very similar to the speed bump (i.e.,
both are built into the road in order to influence the behavior of drivers that
ride over them), the example of the rumble strip entails many distinct details
usefully captured by postphenomenology. And these are details that actor-
network theory alone may actively obscure, accounting for only another
“association” between an “incorporated” driver, a car, and a roadway altera-
tion, themselves all actors.
The argument from interface is relevant to the example of skatestoppers.
It perhaps goes without saying that skateboarding is an activity that requires
finely developed bodily skills. This is the case not only for everyday skat-
ing, and for performing tricks off of common objects like railings, ledges,
and roadblocks. It is also true for those who develop the ability to skate
across surfaces studded with skatestoppers, and even also for those who
become proficient in skatestopper removal. Put into the terminology of actor-
network theory, postphenomenological insights are useful for describing the
nuances of the bodily incorporation involved in the enrollment of contested
public-space actors into their network. And more, there is a hermeneutic skill
involved in the search through public space for zones suitable for skating.
Part of the perceptual hermeneutics of skateboarding involves the bodily
 Why It Takes Both Postphenomenology and STS 187

perceptual training involved in seeing and feeling the environment to afford

new possibilities for skateboarding.
Thus, while STS accounts are perhaps ideal for capturing rivalries between
these social collectives (collectives that can include material actors), postphe-
nomenological insights are useful for articulating the very different ways that
human users within one network relate to contested devices differently than
users from the rival network.

The Argument from Multistability

I argue that STS accounts of technology are incomplete, even in their own
terms, without a conception of multistability. My suggestion is that while
STS accounts of technology are ideally situated to capture many of the ways
that social rivalry shapes technology, and the parts technologies can play
within those rivalries, these accounts still require an additional philosophical
conception of materiality if they are to apprehend the reasons why particular
groups come into conflict over particular technologies in the first place. And
I suggest that the notion of multistability is well suited to the task.
The notion of multistability is useful for conceiving of the ways that tech-
nologies, as material artifacts, are at the same time both open to multiple
uses and yet also not open to just any usage. As noted above, this means that
multistability is not an exclusively social concept. In this way, the notion of
multistability does provide an ontological conception of technology, but a
non-traditional one since it does not point to transcendental essences. It is
instead a practical concept emphasizing any object’s limited-though-multiple
potential fit into human ends and interpretations, in tune with postphenom-
enology’s commitments to the tenets of American pragmatist philosophy.
This is all to say that the reason that particular material artifacts have the
potential to afford different uses and meanings to different social groups is
exactly because technology is multistable.
The example of skatestoppers is a case in point. STS accounts of
technology provide an ideal means for following out the social conflict
over public-space objects between skaters and those looking to deter
skateboarding. But an ontological conception of materiality in general,
and the notion of multistability in particular, is useful for explaining how
particular devices draw these two particular groups into conflict in the
first place. The technology’s role in drawing these two groups together
is non-determinative; it didn’t force them into conflict. But it’s openness
to supporting both the skating and non-skating relations was one of the
conflict’s necessary conditions.
For example, we can imagine a story in which a particular alleyway has not
historically been a special draw to skateboarders. The network of the private
188 Robert Rosenberger

alleyway owner and the network of local skaters were not in conflict. Then
imagine that a new staircase is installed in that alley, and it includes a handrail
that happens to afford skateboard grinding in a way that raises the interest of
the local skater community, and let’s imagine that in this story the alleyway
owner is displeased with these events. In this way, the very particular multi-
stability of the device itself is part of what makes the conflict between these
two networks (and not just any two networks) possible. Sure, the railing may
then be retailored with skatestoppers to enroll it further into the anti-skate
alleyway owner’s network, and thus disenroll it from the skaters’ network.
And the tools of actor-network theory would be well suited for spelling out
those dynamics. But the original multistability of the handrail itself played
an indelible agential role in bringing about the rivalry of these two networks
in the first place.

The Argument from Inscription

I argue here that the postphenomenological account of technology is incom-
plete, even in its own terms, without incorporation of insights from STS.
My suggestion is that while postphenomenology is ideally situated for the
description of individual human relations to technology, this perspective
alone cannot account for the ways that the technology has been altered by
others for the purpose of changing these very relations. STS accounts are
well positioned to capture much of these additional relevant dynamics. Thus,
for postphenomenology to more completely accomplish the project of its
own specialization, it will be helpful to adopt ideas from STS accounts of
technology.
As a start, Akrich’s notion of “inscription” is, in my view, one that
should be of particular relevance to postphenomenology. As incorporated
into actor-network theory, the notion of inscription refers to the material
changes made to a technology so that it better fits into the “script” of a par-
ticular network. Such changes enable a device to better fulfill its role within
that network. When looked at in terms of the phenomenological experience
of individual users, such inscriptions can be understood to facilitate a par-
ticular relation set in terms of a network’s particular social script. That is,
the particular quality of a user’s experience, and the purpose most readily
afforded for that user by the device, are in part determined by a device’s
material inscriptions, engraved into the device through the work of power-
ful actors.
The effects of material inscriptions upon user experience can be most stark
when they work not only to facilitate a particular usage, but to also make it
difficult or impossible to use that device for a particular alternative usage.
I suggest that here is a place where postphenomenology and STS accounts
 Why It Takes Both Postphenomenology and STS 189

of technology can be combined in a technical and potentially fruitful way:

multistable technologies can be reconceived as maintaining various stabili-
ties that may be facilitated or shut down by social networks through mate-
rial inscription. It is possible to develop a theoretical framework to spell out
the ways that social groups “close off” or “reopen” or otherwise restrict or
broaden the particular stabilities that a technology enables (Rosenberger,
2017a, 2017b). That is, we can look into the ways a network utilizes material
inscriptions to “close off” a particular stability of a technology, rendering it
difficult or impossible to use for some undesired purpose. We can also look
into the ways a rival network may engage in a counter-inscriptive process,
and “reopen” that formerly closed stability. We could even look into inscrip-
tive strategies that work to facilitate multiple stabilities, that “open up” mul-
tiple usages, rather than close them off.2
Skatestoppers are a prime example of a material inscription that can be
understood in these terms. Public-space objects like handrails and ledges
are multistable, open to both their dominant stability and also the alternative
skateboarding stability. The skatestoppers are material inscriptions that work
to close off the skateboarding stability. When skaters return the favor and
forcibly remove the skatestoppers with crowbars or power tools, this can be
understood as an act which “reopens” those surfaces. These acts of removal,
these instances of vandalism, work to reinstate a stability formerly closed off
by the skatestoppers.3
Whether we should favor inscriptions that work to “close off” or “reopen”
a particular technology will depend on our values, agendas, and perspectives
on a particular case. None of this work is inherently better or even more pro-
gressive. It depends on what is actually happening in each instance.

THE CASE OF LOVE PARK

As I write these words, an area known as JFK Plaza in Philadelphia, PA, also
nicknamed “LOVE Park,” is undergoing a radical renovation. This construc-
tion project can be understood as a coda to a decades-long drama about a
struggle over the proper use of a particular plot of public land, but also, more
largely, over the identity of a city. This struggle has been waged through the
enactment of laws, police action, community activism, large-scale protests,
and civil disobedience. It was also crucially waged through the strategic rede-
sign of public-space objects.
Built in the l960s, JFK Plaza sits in Center City Philadelphia at the termi-
nus of the Ben Franklin Parkway, across from City Hall, and just a block from
Broad Street. It acquired the name “LOVE Park” as a reference to ­Robert
Indiana’s iconic statue of the word “love” (in big red capital letters with the
190 Robert Rosenberger

Figure 9.4 LOVE Park, Philadelphia, PA, USA (Robert Rosenberger).

“O” askew), first added to the plaza for the bicentennial, then acquired per-
manently in 1978.
As recalled by Edmund Bacon, the urban planner responsible for the plaza,
he and his colleagues “never would have had the slightest premonition that
our work would become world famous, and I think that if we had tried to do
something world famous we would have missed” (411 Productions, 5:25).
But that is exactly what happened. In the 1980s and 90s LOVE Park became
a major location for skateboarders, both as a training ground for local tal-
ent, and as a destination for visitors from around the country and around the
world. The plaza was featured on magazine covers, video games, and skate-
boarding industry advertising. Due in part to the visibility brought by LOVE
Park, Philadelphia was chosen in 2002 and then again in 2003 as the site for
the X Games, the nationally televised alternative sports competition.
Despite the fact that the planners and architects did not design LOVE Park
to be a skatepark, the space has proven multistable in just these terms. As
Philadelphia skater Josh Kalis explains at the start of the documentary LOVE
Story: The Saga of a Skate Landmark, “LOVE is so perfect, and it’s set up so
right, that, you know, you can’t get any better than that place” (411 Produc-
tions, 0:12).
A variety of individual elements throughout the plaza afforded a stable
skateboarding stability. Skaters would grind along ledges, steps, benches,
railings, and roadblocks throughout the space. Occasionally someone would
 Why It Takes Both Postphenomenology and STS 191

Figure 9.5 The steps leading down into the LOVE Park fountain (Robert Rosenberger).

“pop” a large ground tile, prop up one side, and use it as a makeshift jump-
ing ramp. The fountain, when empty, was a centerpiece of skating events, as
especially skilled skaters could jump the “gap,” launching over the steps and
down into the fountain bed.
By the turn of the century a powerful selection of government officials
decided that they had seen enough of the skateboarders’ antics, and worked to
shut down skateboarding in LOVE Park. Stated reasons for this push included
liability issues, and the cost of damage to the plaza from skateboarding. In his
study of these issues, Jeremy Németh questions whether these were legitimate
concerns, pointing out that the liability of the plaza should be no more than
other parks where sports are played, and that the damage costs were far lower
192 Robert Rosenberger

than the millions brought to the city through the X Games (and far lower than
the cost of the city’s later renovations), and also that private skateboarding-
related companies volunteered to pay for the damages (2006, p. 301).
In place of these stated reasons, we can look at the issue of skateboarding
in terms of disagreements about the future of downtown Philadelphia. On the
one hand, some saw value in the youthful energy and profile that the LOVE
Park skaters brought to the city, with bustling skate-related businesses, as
well as the presence of the X Games as an example of the positive national
attention accrued. Architectural historian Ocean Howell argues exactly this:
“Skateboarding may have been a wrench in the modernist ‘growth machine,’
but in Philadelphia, it has been retooled as a cog in the entertainment
machine” (2005, p. 41).4 On the other hand, others saw the skaters to run
against the image they desired for Center City, that is, that of a professional
business and tourist district. As Németh concludes, although it is difficult to
“uncover the City’s genuine rationale for their actions in the face of unrelent-
ing popular support for the skateboarders,” it can be reasonably speculated
that “the skateboarders’ ‘polluting presence’ in LOVE Park did not support
the City’s desired image for their redevelopment efforts” (2006, p. 315).
In an effort led by then-councilman (and later, Mayor) Michael Nutter,
the Philadelphia City Council passed a Municipal Code in 2000 that banned
skateboarding in LOVE Park. Then in 2002, in an effort championed by
then-mayor John Street, the city embarked upon an $800,000 renovation
of the plaza. As Rick Valenzuela wrote at the time for the City Paper, “It’s
doubtless that history will remember Mayor John Street as the hangman who
killed Love Park” (2002).
In his pan of the redesign after its unveiling, Inga Saffron, the architecture
critic of the Philadelphia Inquirer, explains, “To block the skateboarders’
path, they installed an array of sickly pink concrete planters and trash cans,”
and notes that, “It may be the first time in the history of park design that trash
cans are a dominant visual feature” (2002, p. D01). As Németh notes, the
renovation included replacing the skateable granite benches with “wooden
benches with crossbar dividers around the park to serve the dual purpose of
deterring both skateboarders and reclining homeless persons” (2006, p. 301).
The skateboarding community pushed back against these changes through
a variety of means. Skaters continued to make use of the plaza, despite occa-
sionally getting chased by cops, and despite the redesign (e.g., see the ledges
in Figures 9.6 and 9.7, darkened through grinding and waxing). Large rallies
were held in protest of LOVE Park’s closure for renovation. At one rally,
a then-92-year-old Edmund Bacon defiantly (and adorably) rode across the
plaza on a skateboard and shouted that he, “in total defiance of Mayor Street
 Why It Takes Both Postphenomenology and STS 193

Figures 9.6 & 9.7 Images of ledges in LOVE Park after the 2003 renovations, with
waxed ledges, and strategically placed planters (Robert Rosenberger).

Figure 9.8 A bench in LOVE Park after the redesign (Robert Rosenberger).

and the Council of Philadelphia, hereby exercise my rights as a citizen of the

United States. I deliberately skate in my beloved LOVE Park” (McQuade,
2016b). An advocacy group developed an alternative design for the renova-
tion, and worked with the skating industry to raise a huge sum of money for
renovation and continual upkeep the plaza. All of it ultimately came to little
avail.
Illegal skateboarding continued in LOVE Park until early 2016 when it
was closed down once again, this time for a much more radical renovation
that will add new green spaces, and at least from the appearance of the plans,
functionally cut off skateboarding in the park once and for all. As a nod to its
194 Robert Rosenberger

historic importance to the city, skateboarding was once again made legal for
five days before the area was closed off for construction (McQuade, 2016a).
New design specs for the park make it seem like it will be even less skateable
than it was even after the 2003 renovations.
The case of LOVE Park instantiates many of the concepts reviewed above,
and in extreme and instructive ways. We see an example of multistability
in which an entire area was designed and built for one purpose and became
world renowned for another purpose entirely. In this same case we see a
powerful network, including the mayor and part of the City Council, to work
against those who had taken up this area of the city for this second purpose,
and to decisively shut down the alterative usage through material inscriptions
in the form of large-scale renovations.

CONCLUSION

There are important political and ethical moments that occur at the junctures
between collective agendas and individual actors. They occur as individual
humans or technologies take part in the plots of those larger groups. They
occur as these people or devices run up against an agenda that moves in a
direction counter to their own. And they occur as those people or things sit
at the tense intersection between rival networks, and become, themselves,
the fought-over sites of that rivalry. I suggest that these crucial political and
ethical moments are best captured through a strategic combination of insights
from postphenomenological theory and STS accounts of technology. And I
suggest that these moments are best uncovered through the methodology of
variational cross-examination.
With the example of skatestoppers we see two important things at once:
the multistability of a variety of simple public-space technologies as viewed
through their alternative skateboarding stability, and a widely used material
inscription that targets that skateboarding stability. With the case of LOVE
Park we see these things in a specific and large-scale manner: the multista-
bility of a plaza that while not built for skateboarding nevertheless became
a skateboarding institution, and the forceful and effective effort to terminate
this alternative stability by a powerful rival network, namely the city govern-
ment and its affiliated business interests.
In closing, it should be noted that while I do hold that this combination of
postphenomenological and STS insights has the potential to reveal crucial
moments of politics and ethics in a way that perhaps no other theories can man-
age, I do not mean to imply (as others sometimes have) that these combined
theories have any potential to provide a complete account of politics or ethics.
 Why It Takes Both Postphenomenology and STS 195

They do not, for example, maintain accounts of political structures like democ-
racy, economic systems, rights, penalty, or difference. They do not provide
complete guidance on how to address specific ethical questions, or a general
account of the good life. However, I do suggest that the combined insights of
these theories do offer unique and essential contributions to the larger discus-
sions on ethics and politics that may not be available anywhere else.

NOTES

1. Postphenomenology is at once deeply and expansively indebted to the work of

Martin Heidegger, and at the same time an attempt to move beyond what is some-
times considered the foundation-seeking nature of his work in its attempt to catego-
rize the modes of being. In particular, Ihde’s notions of “embodiment relations” and
“transparency” straightforwardly borrow from Heidegger’s account of tool use (to
which the hammer is a reference), and also the work of Merleau-Ponty which resitu-
ates these ideas within an account of the body (Heidegger, 1996; Merleau-Ponty,
1962).
2. For example, I have explored the multiple stabilities afforded by public-space
devices such as benches, trash cans, and fire hydrants. In addition to their role in
fighting fires, hydrants are also sometimes opened as a way to keep cool during
the summertime heat, especially within economically disadvantaged communities.
Cities will sometimes close off this stability through the use of hydrant locks
(Rosenberger, 2017b). The homeless are a population often targeted by hostile
architecture designs. In conjunction with wide-ranging policies on loitering, pan-
handling, and camping, cities sometimes utilize dividers and armrests that cutoff
a bench’s use as a bed, and rainhoods and locks that cutoff a trash can’s use as
a source of food or recyclables, among many other hostile designs, all working
together to force homeless people out of public spaces and to render the problem of
homelessness less visible (Rosenberger, 2014, 2017a). See also my for-the-public
writing on the topic, for example: www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/06/
how-cities-use-design-to-drive-homeless-people-away/373067/
3. Snøhetta, the designers of the Oslo Opera House, also known as the Norwegian
National Opera and Ballet, consulted with skateboarders to learn how to include
outdoor surfaces that facilitate skating (Blum, 2008). This is in an example of work
that “opens up” stabilities. It reinforces the potential to approach the space through a
variety of stabilities.
4. Howell contrasts this view with the one attributed to Borden (2001) (who is
quoted earlier in this chapter), where Borden suggests that skateboarding can be con-
ceived as a form of critique, one that analyzes and exposes aspects of the city without
contributing to it. Howell (following the influential work of Ricard Florida) holds that
skateboarders should instead be understood as part of the “creative class,” drivers of
the economy through youthful image, artistic advance, and the economic benefits to
a city that come follow those virtues (2005).
196 Robert Rosenberger

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 Chapter 10

Describing and Valuing

Technological Mediation
From Postphenomenological Bridgeheads
to Technoethical Outposts
Michel Puech

INTRODUCTION

Our current lifeworld can be considered philosophically uncharted territory.

It is a technosphere: it is qualitatively and not only quantitatively different
from the technological environments of human existence since Neolithic
times. Here, I will not directly defend its disruptive character. I simply begin
from the intuition of a specific technosphere representing a kind of intellec-
tual frontier for philosophy. New territories are conquered (by the industry)
with a fierce determination that may be resented on the “user side” as a
violent intrusion into personal and social existence. This hectic frontier of
our global civilization challenges the existing methods in human and social
sciences. The societal demand for a pluralistic but definite set of norms
requires methodologies that the academy is still struggling to delineate and
to apply non-trivially to substantive issues. To focus on methods: we are
good at describing and denouncing, but not so good at valuing and providing
constructive guidance, particularly in ethics. How good we are at describing
and analyzing technological uses is particularly substantiated by postphe-
nomenological achievements in the last decades. The method for extending
these achievements toward ethical assessment is already active in postphe-
nomenology (Puech, 2016, sec. 1.1; Verbeek, 2011). I hope to contribute to
this extension by using resources from recent virtue ethics and from Asian
wisdom doctrines.
Postphenomenology offers an original method for assessing our elusive
mediation with the technosphere, probably because it stands neither on the
199
200 Michel Puech

objective side (easily leading to technological determinism) nor on the sub-

jective side (easily leading to “humanist” conservatism). Postphenomenology
concentrates on the emergence of both “human” and “world” in their specific
current avatars, a disoriented but frenetic Technosapiens and a tremendously
vibrant but terribly ambivalent technosphere. From the vast range of subjects
in this field of research, I address one precise issue: the ethical mediation
in ordinary techno-human relationships. On this issue, postphenomenology
can be complemented by other philosophical methods in order to expand its
descriptive and pre-normative assessment capacity into a fully evaluative and
hopefully constructive technoethics.
I will concentrate on one case study for making my points in this chapter:
data immersion, that is to say the infosphere as a dense and active interface
between subject and world. In this case study, one can easily imagine how
standing on the objective side of the interface leads to functionalist (not to
say business-oriented) and optimistic views, and how standing on the subjec-
tive side of the interface induces resistive (not to say politically prejudiced)
and pessimistic views. Considering the interface as a generative mediation
process, a postphenomological method in ethics has a chance to offer a con-
structive and specific view of Technosapiens’s opportunities in the radically
new infosphere.

THE EMPIRICAL AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL

TURN: DESCRIBING AND UNDERSTANDING
TECHNOLOGICAL MEDIATION

The main philosophical force in postphenomenology comes directly from

classical phenomenology, the apparently simple capacity to describe.
Descriptive assessment is a precious method, sometimes skipped in the
rush to “facts,” numbers, statistics, and all traditional forms of empirical
evidence. Radical description is made possible by the method of epochē, the
radical suspension of judgment. The most pressing issues in our civilization
of abundance (material and informational) are linked to abundance itself,
more precisely to its incessant material and informational solicitations. Pre-
existing interpretative systems (cognitive, symbolic, political, ethical) are
always already active and prejudicial in the “natural” attitude. How can we
maintain this methodological descriptive strength and put it at the service of
evaluation, norms, and the enlightenment of practical decision-making? Does
radical description imply a definitive ban on value assessment? Or can it be
a methodological step that allows a stronger evaluation and even a form of
ethical commitment? I opt for the latter scenario.
 Describing and Valuing Technological Mediation 201

Merleau-Ponty’s introduction to the phenomenological method has been

influential for postphenomenology. To what he dubbed “traditional preju-
dices,” he directly opposed the radical description motto of phenomenol-
ogy, “return to phenomena” (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, Introduction). Are these
prejudices cognitive or ethical? Far more cognitive than ethical according to
mainstream phenomenology. Thus, the phenomenological method, from Hus-
serl on, is predominantly an epistemic reform. But even in Merleau-Ponty’s
phenomenology of perception, not to mention in Heideggerian phenomenol-
ogy, cognitive or ontological prejudices are linked to evaluation issues. These
were not considered relevant to the core of the phenomenological method in
its first form, in either the German or the French schools.
In postphenomenology, which is essentially a philosophy of technology,
the subject of “technology” introduces a more interesting connection: the
cognitive and ontological prejudices concerning technology always carry
the threat of a prejudicial evaluation of technology. Resisting this threat is a
challenge. This axiological issue at the heart of the phenomenological method
is clearly perceptible in recent positions on postphenomenological methods
(Thomson, 2009; Mitcham & Waelbers, 2009; Rosenberger & Verbeek,
2015, pp. 30–32).
The methodological advantage of postphenomenology consequently lies
in the combination of a paradigm-neutral descriptive capacity with a specific
sensibility to questions of value. There is no paradox here because these value
questions emerge as questions only when the dominant interpretative systems
are turned off. To turn them off remains the unique strength of a phenom-
enological style in philosophy, provided it sticks to ordinary empirical uses.
The ethical strength of posts-phenomenological methods is the suspension
(epochē) of the overwhelming hermeneutic models, particularly the two most
pregnant ones: the intellectual routines of “social critique” of the 1970s and
at the other extreme the gullible eagerness for consumption. How can we see
the new smartphone as neither a manipulative capitalist abomination nor a
super-powerful innocent toy? How can we stop seeing it as both, actually?
And why should we? How can we just see it, to start with?
In terms of “turns,” a term readily used by contemporary trends of phi-
losophy to insist on their own originality, postphenomenology celebrates
the “empirical turn” (Achterhuis, 2001; Kroes & Meijers, 2001). At first
sight this turn implies more mundane description and less critical assess-
ment, an alternative corresponding for philosophers to the famous Humean
gap between the descriptive “is” and the normative “ought.” In reality, the
empirical case studies in recent literature criticize the pseudo-neutrality and
the pseudo-autonomy of technology. Against the previously essentialist and
deterministic approaches to technology, the “empirical turn” sets a new stage
202 Michel Puech

where the “naked” description of technological mediation is paramount

and it becomes immediately instructive for philosophers. Further, there is a
continuity between this empirical turn in the 1990s and an “ethical turn” in
the 2000s (Puech, 2016, sec. 1.1; Verbeek, 2011, p. 160). Richard Rorty is
a reference on the pragmatic transition from ontological critique to ethical
views. In Ihde’s dialogue with Rorty, tellingly, the non-essentialist and non-
paternalistic orientation of postphenomenological methods is at the forefront
(Ihde, 1986, Introduction, Chapter 9). A third turn is then conceivable and is
equally important for the methodology of technoethics: the pragmatic turn.
It has received its share of attention (Keulartz, Korthals Schermer, & Swier-
stra, 2002) and its symbiosis with postphenomenology is influential in recent
technoethics.
All these methodological considerations are not only of historical and
epistemological importance. The objective is to pin down the technosphere
in its ontological, existential, and ethical specificity. There is a “disseminated
frontier” of our global civilization; it is everywhere, ubiquitous and inces-
santly reshaping human existence and communities. This frontier lies in the
mediation with the technosphere. In this mediation process Technosapiens
and the technosphere conjointly emerge. Postphenomenology’s basic frame-
work, human/world/ technology pattern, is exactly situated for apprehending
this process.
Between Husserl and Borgmann, there is a clear continuity in understand-
ing the human/world emergence through the concept of lifeworld (Lebenswelt
in German). Husserl’s focusing on the Lebenswelt was a complex moment in
his reform and refoundation of logic and psychology. One of its most remark-
able progeny is the young Heidegger’s take on phenomenology, centered on
“life” and “lifeworld” in his 1919/1920 lectures on phenomenology (Hei-
degger, 1993). Before he took Being as his central theme, Heidegger medi-
tated on the methods for a radical description of the lifeworld, elaborating
the concepts of a new existential analysis—for instance “Weltcharakter des
Lebens” (world-character of life) (Heidegger, 1993, p. 33) or “Grunderfah-
rung der Selbstwelt” (fundamental experience of the self-world) (Heidegger,
1993, p. 93). Borgmann’s path-breaking work on the technological lifeworld
(Borgmann, 1984) is on this trajectory. This whole method can be recaptured
today as a method of mediation analysis and applied to the new mediation
between human and the contemporary technosphere and infosphere.
Ihde’s isolation of the technological lifeworld as a philosophical subject
of its own right (Ihde, 1979) inaugurated the postphenomenological “main-
stream” descriptive methods with an open-minded and pluralistic understand-
ing that clears the way for bottom-up pragmatic evaluations. This evaluation
remains implicit in most of Ihde’s works. However, in these descriptive
methods there is a nascent technoethics that will evolve into a (falsely) candid
 Describing and Valuing Technological Mediation 203

philosophical “accompaniment” of technology (Puech, 2016, pp. 21–22;

Verbeek, 2011, 2013). Ihde initially issued a warning: “However, both the
ethical and the social-political questions, as urgent and as important as they
are, deal with effects of technology rather than examine the phenomenon
itself” (Ihde, 1979, p. xxiii). “Back to the things themselves” means then
in a first step: receding from evaluation and examining the phenomenon
itself. Ironically, this moment leads not to neutrality but to an idea of non-
neutrality: “any use of technology is non-neutral, it transforms experience”
(Ihde, 1979, p. 53). Therefrom comes a typical hermeneutical non-neutrality,
very M­ erleau-Pontyan and epistemic in its descriptive beginnings, but with
a potential for a renewed evaluation of what it describes: the non-neutral
transformation of human experience. Ihde’s views can thus be rendered in a
characteristically pre-ethical perspective (Verbeek, 2011, p. 14ff.). Avoiding
both essentialist and instrumentalist approaches, postphenomenology came to
determine mediation as the key concept for understanding the technosphere
(Verbeek, 2005, p. 11). There is a specific intentionality in technology media-
tion (Verbeek, 2011, p. 57).
Concerning data immersion, the unapparent reality of hardware, software,
and code behind our superficial experience of the infosphere maintains a typi-
cal opacity in digital mediation—for the simple reason that most people have
absolutely no idea of what code is and does. Therefore, it is not surprising
to find phenomenological axioms and methods in a critical book on data and
code: Berry introduces his “philosophy of code and mediation” as “a phe-
nomenological approach that tries to highlight the pragmata of code” (Berry,
2011, p. 5). He even suggests “a phenomenology of computation” (Berry,
2011, Chapter 5). Code is the unapparent entity that shapes our mediation
with the infosphere and then with the technosphere. What we have to under-
stand in our ordinary interfacing with the infosphere is so close to us and
so pervasive that it requires a specific methodological effort to reach it—“I
want to suggest that what is happening in the ‘digital age’ is that we increas-
ingly find a computational dimension inserted into the ‘given.’ Or better, that
the ontology of the computational is increasingly hegemonic in forming the
background presupposition for our understanding the world” (Berry, 2011, p.
128). There are unapparent intentionalities, human and nonhuman, in digital
mediation. But here the intentionality patterns are far from the straight line
of the perceiving eye and its perceptible object (the classical paradigm).
Intentionalities and hermeneutic correlations in the digital world are even
more intricate, hyper-complex, disseminated, “ambient” (as in “ambient
intelligence”) than in the original instrumental relationships described in
postphenomenology. Data immersion is not the sum of additive instrumental
mediations, it plunges the digital Dasein into a sort of ambient sphere where
mediation is the substance of technology. The new features in this ambient
204 Michel Puech

mediation are data persistence and “searchability,” ubiquitous services, pro-

filing, and of course a boundless surveillance potential.

ORDINARY TECHNOLOGICAL
MEDIATION AS AN ETHICAL ISSUE

STS (science, technology, societies) studies, in their sociological and quasi-

positivist variants, have a tradition of resistance and even open hostility to
questioning values, norms, ethics (Keulartz, Korthals Schermer, & Swierstra,
2002, Introduction, Chapter 1). Postphenomenology has found for itself a way
from the descriptive to the normative, particularly in examining the ordinary
in our mediation with the technosphere. As there is always already meaning
and intentionality in our mediation with the world there is always a potential
value-attitude in all these ordinary intentionalities. Bridging the descriptive/
normative gap has deep motivation in the ancestry of postphenomenology.
In Spiegelberger’s classical survey of the original phenomenological
movement (Spiegelberg, 1965) several places can be discerned where ethi-
cal assessment emerges even though it eventually reintegrates the flow of
mainstream phenomenology most of the time, remaining focused on ontol-
ogy and epistemology. Brentano’s psychological deduction of self-evident
and objective moral principles, for instance (Spiegelberg, 1965, pp. 46–48),
remains in a cognitivist style and far from applied ethics and pragmatics.
Max Scheler unquestionably engages an ambitious phenomenology of ethics
and value, but the really ethical content remains in the form of a cognitivist
analysis (Spiegelberg, 1965, p. 254). The same option commands his influen-
tial phenomenology of sympathy, a moral emotion. However, ethical issues
become more and more important in the history of the movement as it drifts
away from Husserl: Nicolai Hartmann’s Ethik introduces a phenomena of
value “discovery” (Spiegelberg, 1965, p. 384), and French phenomenology,
with the “existentialist” movement, was deeply committed to values—moral,
social, and political values. This is the case for Merleau-Ponty as much as it
is for Sartre.
In this historical evolution a growing consideration for the ordinary in
human experience can be discerned. The transition from description to evalu-
ation, where postphenomenology has something important to contribute,
does not travel the high road of “essences” but rather the winding path of
existences. In Ihde’s original research about vision and audition, the two
dimensions (ontological-epistemic and ordinary lifeworld) are in symbiosis,
sometimes seamlessly incorporated into the progressing analysis, sometimes
investigated in Merleau-Pontyan style. This is not the right place for track-
ing and commenting such passages in Ihde, but they justify this important
 Describing and Valuing Technological Mediation 205

methodological point made by Mitcham and Waelbers: “The theories of

ethical drama that have been associated here with Winner, Latour and their
followers are cumulative products of a trajectory of dialogue on relations
between technology and ethics that remain rich but largely descriptive in
character” (2009, p. 379). Ihde himself tackles the descriptive/normative
issue in his self-commentary (2006, p. 277). There is more in Mitcham’s and
Waelbers’s appreciation: “Descriptive ethics is a necessary prolegomenon to
prescriptive ethics” (2009, p. 379). The notion of “descriptive ethics” offers
in itself a simple conceptual bridge between the descriptive and the norma-
tive. Descriptive ethics scrutinizes the ordinary mediation with technology,
on the existential level, which stands in the intermediary position between
hermeneutic concepts and vocabulary, on the one side, and explicitly ethical
considerations, on the other side. The transition table hermeneutic/existential
in Verbeek (2005, p. 196) can be extended with an ethical column.
Verbeek’s Moralizing technology (2011) substantiates the debate on
the descriptive/normative issue in philosophy of technology. His notion of
“mediated morality” reinvests STS methods and concepts (which are essen-
tially Latourian) by examining a specific intentionality in technology media-
tion (Verbeek, 2011, p. 57). Beyond the classical STS loci on designing and
using artifacts, this approach is fertile for delineating a specific ethics of ordi-
nary mediation with technology. The descriptive/normative gap is uniquely
bridged by considering the ordinary: this is my thesis and I contend that it can
be perceived in the evolution of postphenomenology itself.
The “material turn” that stimulates ethics according to Verbeek (2006,
p. 117) is a move toward the ordinary, not only the ordinary of humans (as
opposed to gods or essences) but the ordinary of things. An ethics of mediat-
ing with things was strangely lacking in Western philosophy. Its emergence
is linked to the theoretical importance of the ordinary in several fields of
science and culture: Quine on language and logic (Quine, 1960), Varela on
the neurological basis for ordinary moral skills (Varela, 1999), Illich on the
ethical and political importance of the “vernacular” (Illich, 1980), Dreyfus
on “the phenomenology of everyday expertise” and the “implications of the
phenomenology of expertise for ethical experience” (Dreyfus, 2014) (see
more about the ordinary in contemporary technoethics in Puech, 2013; Puech,
2016, Chapter 3).
Addressing the ordinary is key for a phenomenological passage between
description and ethical assessment because the very nature of the ordinary is
to be unseen: unseen by philosophers for sure but also unseen by the ordinary
ethical agent himself/herself. Digital modernity means dealing with unseen
mediations which are disseminated and always active everywhere in the exis-
tential sphere of individuals and in social common space. Phenomenology
is primarily concerned with phenomena that remain “hidden in plain sight”
206 Michel Puech

and contemporary technology is full of them, says Ian Thomson (2009, p.

195ff.). Technoethics is often confronted with a situation where nothing can
be assessed simply because nothing is adequately described. This analysis
applies to technological mediation at every stage and it applies particularly
well to data immersion. On a well-known level it illuminates the universal use
of artifacts without any trace of the corporate and marketing “scripts” inten-
tionally designed into them. This point leads to a critique of the technological
society in STS studies. But the descriptive and then normative consideration
of phenomena “hidden in plain sight” can also lead to a constructive ethics
of individual and collective agency. Concerning data immersion, the unseen
and “scripted” pervasive presence of data does not imply their essential mal-
feasance, as it is assumed when no “descriptive ethics” of digital mediation
is seriously attempted.
More than yet another critique of the technosystem, Borgmann’s book on
the “character of contemporary life” assesses technology and particularly
ordinary technology, the latter being of greater existential pregnancy and
importance in his approach, even if this orientation is not explicitly the-
matized. Borgmann crosses the descriptive/normative separation to reach
“ordinary life.” His plea for this transition is outspoken in his defense of
“deictic discourse” (Borgmann, 1984, Chapter 21), resisting “the immunity of
technology to traditional moral analysis” (Borgmann, 1984, p. 169). In Borg-
mann “deictic” means a “discourse of ultimate concern,” “drawing continued
strength from something that is present visibly, forcefully, and in its own
right,” and “addressing others by inviting them to see for themselves” (Borg-
mann, 1984, p. 178). Deictic discourse must be “restored,” for the sake of
democracy in particular (Borgmann, 1984, p. 177). Borgmann’s contribution
to this restoration resides largely in his theory of focal things and practices,
which can be read as a masterful phenomenology of ordinary existence in
technology. “Focal” (from focus, meaning “hearth”) in Borgmann is the oppo-
site of commodities and simple devices, it points to the objects and moments
that can be “centers” of meaning, concern, intrinsic value in a human life. The
symbiosis between descriptive and normative methods in Borgmann’s work
justifies Mitcham and Waelbers’s conclusion, affirming that Borgmann “[pro-
vides] a paradigm of descriptive sensitivity woven together with an enriched
and enriching normative seriousness” (2009, p. 381).
In the evolution from Ihde’s dental probe to Verbeek’s obstetric ultrasound
to Rosenberger’s smartphone using while driving the car (Rosenberger,
2014), more than just the normative/descriptive gap is bridged. A transition
is perceptible, from simply assessing to positively valuing some options in
our technological behaviors. Philosophers must be in a position to address
the confused feeling of a moral value linked to open source software,
for instance. This transition leads to a constructive technoethics. Its most
 Describing and Valuing Technological Mediation 207

innovative feature, the project of “accompanying” technology, is a direct

effect of the emergence of the ordinary as a key dimension in assessing tech-
nological mediation. My recurrent case study helps to make this point.
In data immersion the invisible and pervasive character of ordinary media-
tion reaches its climax. Leaving “traces” everywhere on the Web is not with-
out moral importance, but we need an inquisitive and obstinate descriptive
phenomenology of ordinary digital mediation for gaining the capacity to
morally assess our footprint in the infosphere. Here again, attention is focused
on some all too visible corporations and their technological devices while the
micro-actions and micro-resistance of ordinary users make the difference, or
can make a difference. These micro-actions are specific mediations, blended
and mingled into the ordinary infosphere. Every click on a link has moral sig-
nificance for this is the very moment of mediation with the corporations and
administrations that are out of reach in the contemporary world—out of mate-
rial reach but more importantly out of political reach. Delineating the mul-
tiple intentionalities in the networks of humans and nonhumans that are the
current infosphere means for instance following the existential investment in
Facebook or in Pokémon Go chasing. This existential investment is a mixed
mediation between “real” world and digital data. It is more than multistable
in the accepted postphenomenological sense of the word, it is multi-focal in
a Borgmannian sense, and more than anything it engages a pluralist ethic,
ambiguous as Boyd has shown (2015), multilayered and versatile. Exploring
the values system of this kind of mediation is different from any functional
analysis, be it technological or behavioral, it calls for an exploration of the
existential ordinary that still requires philosophy, in a postphenomenological
style.

VIRTUE ETHICS AND TECHNOLOGIES OF THE SELF

The renewed methods that illuminate ordinary technological mediation

builds technoethical outposts in philosophically uncharted territory. Locating
some of these outposts can help them to mutually support themselves and
to thereby reinforce our intellectual tools for morally assessing the techno-
sphere. A sequence of three stages can be useful for expanding postphenom-
enology toward technoethics: from describing to assessing, from assessing to
valuing—in a positive and constructive meaning of this latter term. Envision-
ing this last stage now requires reconsidering some methods in the human
and social sciences.
When trying to assess electricity consumption, an article by Geerts (2012)
raises a relevant question of “self-practice.” The transparency that prevents
one from assessing energy consumption lies on the side of the subject, the
208 Michel Puech

human person, the self who uses devices in the most ordinary context. In the
end, and very phenomenologically, what is transparent in the ordinary even
more than ordinary life itself is the self, the human person. The eclipse of the
self in philosophy (due to a complex evolution in 20th-century philosophy
that I will naturally neither explain nor document here, but see Puech, 2016,
Chapter 4) deprives the assessment of technology of one ethically significant
option: valuing technologies in their self-building potential. As long as the
self is interpreted as a resulting equilibrium of forces of social determination,
the outcomes of assessing technology fuels social critique without limitation.
A constructive valuing of technology makes sense when the ordinary self is
rehabilitated with a genuine capacity for authenticity, self-determination, and
all the “humanist” values.
Postphenomenology has a role in this reorientation of philosophy. Cer-
tain methodological aspects of postphenomenology can lead to the notion
of an ethically self-constructive mediation with technology, in recovering a
philosophically acceptable notion of the self. The first one is the insistence on
“situated” analysis in phenomenology and postphenomenology. One of these
situations, ordinary life, reveals some aspects of technological mediation
that are not incidental. Another methodological breakthrough is the “non-
foundational” approach, typical of postphenomenology (Ihde, 1993, p. 1).
This is a break with Husserl and the obsession with foundation in Continental
philosophy since Descartes. The situation is not so simple, however, because
the phenomenological “ego” remains under the name “self” in the mediation
scheme human/world/technology. That which in the postphenomenological
framework is described as a web of intentionalities that co-constitute human,
world, and technology is more and more often approached in terms of “tech-
nologies of the self” under the influence of Foucault.
Foucault’s last publications and lectures introduced a philosophy of the
subject which is a philosophy of mediation. Foucault tries to show how the
self constitutes itself in the constant process of being shaped by domina-
tion and of resisting this domination on the very concrete level of micro-
behaviors and micro-experiences. The method reinvented by Foucault in this
attempt explicitly draws from ancient philosophy, Stoicism in particular, but
it also inherits from the phenomenological spirit prevailing in the Parisian
intellectual circles where Foucault was initially trained. For these reasons,
Foucault’s concept of the self in his last lessons is no longer the politically
dominated “subject” of Foucault’s earlier works, and a postphenomenologi-
cal interpretation of this self is not a blunt misinterpretation. Consequently,
an ethics of technological mediation with Foucauldian sources thrives in
postphenomenological philosophy of technology (Dorrestijn, 2012; Ver-
beek, 2011, Chapter 4). Technological mediation is methodologically situ-
ated in the broader context of the subjectivation process in Foucault as in
 Describing and Valuing Technological Mediation 209

postphenomenology. Foucault’s initial “techniques of the self” actually

involved some technology and artifacts, a pen and a notebook for writing a
private journal for instance: in the digital technosphere of today the booming
devices for the “quantified self” and all sorts of sophisticated technological
assistance have transformed this strange idea of “technologies of the self”
into one of the most pervasive and controversial lifestyle. Foucault’s style of
existential analysis in reading the Hellenistic schools of moral philosophy is a
paradigm for reading the ordinary life in the present technosphere. It refers to
original Greek words (technē, epimeleia, parrhesia) that are currently being
added to the list of Latin, German, and improbable neologisms populating
philosophical parlance.
Inspired by Foucault, De Vries examines the ethical consequences of a
phenomenological-pragmatic analysis of ordinary medical practice in terms
of “truth games” and “power relations”: the descriptive method here is key
for a specific approach to normativity and for the critical assessment of non-
visible norms in medical practice (De Vries, 2002). Health mediations hap-
pen in the technosphere and infosphere now. There is a way of describing
visible mediation that reveals its invisible norms. In a first step, this method
is a powerful tool for social critique and the deconstruction of inauthentic
subjectivity. But in a second step a constructive valuation of ordinary tech-
nological mediation could make sense. Philosophers have to face the ambigu-
ous potential of ordinary technologies: the same device that tracks my data
and sells them to corporations gives me free access to virtually the whole of
culture—and incidentally leads me safely back to my hotel in an unknown
place. Doesn’t this ordinary virtuosity deserve some valuation in spite of the
background ambiguity built-in to the device? Descriptive ethics here must
precede normative ethics and postphenomenological restraint helps to contain
prejudiced conclusions.
A slightly embarrassing notion surfaces in some of these researches: vir-
tue. The ethics of virtue is one of the most productive trend in current moral
philosophy and it could be the main opportunity for shifting to constructive
ethics. But in our secular culture the term “virtue” is still suspect of shallow
and preachy moralism. Surmounting this pejorative connotation, virtue eth-
ics has already been able to connect with different sets of useful concepts in
at least two cases: connecting with the postphenomenological/Foucauldian
approaches, on the one hand, and on the other hand connecting with certain
Asian worldviews that offer a global alternative to the Western industrial
worldview.
In a chapter trying to bridge “Phenomenology and Virtue Ethics,” Reyn-
olds “argue[s] that there is both a methodological proximity and, to a lesser
extent, a substantive ethical proximity between phenomenology and virtue
ethics around the centrality of character to moral flourishing” (Reynolds,
210 Michel Puech

2013, n.p.). Indeed, ordinary technologies of the self require exactly the kind
of “reflective view” that defines the specific perspective of virtue ethics and
its practical wisdom (Tiberius, 2008). In this line of thought, the self is not
guided by deduction from higher principles, but on the contrary it is seized
in the mundane details of everyday existence: a situated moral self is exam-
ined as a self-constituting entity, from a situated point of view, from inside a
practice. I need not stress the methodological isomorphism with postphenom-
enology. On this matter mediation with the technosphere counts as one of the
most characteristic practices for the self-constitution of contemporary human
persons. The transparency of the intentionalities involved in this constitution
process is at the same time hermeneutic transparency (what are the implied
meanings?) and ethical transparency (what are the implied values?). This
transparency is in fact a philosophical opacity that postphenomenological
methods intend to dispel, descriptively and then ethically. The alliance with
virtue ethics’ own methods and concepts is key. For instance, Slote’s (2007)
analysis of empathy is a masterpiece in recent virtue ethics, interpreting
care as the universal vector for morality and values. But this care typically
concerns humans only, not objects and artifacts. What we feel for our car or
computer is obviously a morally significant element in our existence but most
of the time it remains invisible to philosophers as long as no other human
is directly involved. What can be accomplished when the scope of ethico-
phenomenological attention is enlarged to the ordinary technosphere can be
glimpsed through the help of Slote’s ideas on virtues like moderation and
satisficing (Slote, 1989, Chapter 1). Promising case studies concerning “mod-
eration” in car driving or a “satisficing” use of Amazon (a quintessentially
digital case study) can take inspiration from Slote’s situated cases—second
cups of tea, so English, or snacking all day long, so American (Slote, 1989,
pp. 12–13).
Technologies of the self and virtue ethics merge within a totally new meth-
odological context when Asian studies enter the debate. The philosopher of
reference on this matter is Peter D. Hershock. His research on applying Bud-
dhist concepts to the moral assessment of the technosphere (Hershock, 1999)
parallels postphenomenology in concentrating on the details of practical life
and investing them with a crucial moral significance. When Ihde stated that
“What is needed is what I shall call a ‘loose’ or maybe even ‘Zen’ relation to
technology” (Ihde, 1983, p. 23), he certainly had in mind Heidegger’s Gelas-
senheit (serenity as a free relationship to technology) but perhaps not the
actual Zen practice of samu (作務) in Japanese culture: meditative domestic
work (Ives, 1992; Puech, 2016, pp. 165–168). Behind these Japanese and
Zen versions which fit particularly well the ordinary technosphere, classical
Chinese philosophy demonstrates the possibility and the value of a meditative
attitude for ordinary life in its material dimension (Fingarette, 1972).
Applying these methods and notions to data immersion shows a lack
of balance in the previous approach: the dangers for the self have been
 Describing and Valuing Technological Mediation 211

abundantly reported but valuing the constructive opportunities for the self
of quasi-universal data access remains to be philosophically defended. This
lack of balance is largely due to the eclipse of the self and of self-care in
philosophical considerations. In a data-rich technosphere, the self needs
opportunities for learning and practicing virtue no less than in any other envi-
ronment, with this unexpected difficulty: this environment offers no points
of reference, no stable value, for making the best out of digital opportuni-
ties. Deploying “digital literacy” remains largely an instrumental approach
and what is called “digital humanities” for now thrives essentially on paper,
in applications for research grants, not in common culture. Turning digital
technology into techniques of a flourishing self is possible by reorienting the
methods of philosophy of technology, particularly the postphenomenological
expertise for describing the ordinary, toward a clearly endorsed technoethical
project. This requires interdisciplinary collaboration in philosophy at a really
large scale. Here postphenomenology is at a crossroads, in my humble opin-
ion (and practice): seizing the opportunity to hybridize itself into a pluralistic
method or else maintaining a strong methodological orthodoxy. This chapter
and this section show well enough where I stand concerning this choice.

TECHNOETHICS OF ORDINARY MEDIATION:

THREE PRINCIPLES TO START WITH

A constructive technoethics is already taking shape inside postphenomenol-

ogy or on its fringes. I will take as evidence for this point the “Constructive
Technology Assessment” method proposed by Verbeek and his conclusion on
“accompanying technology” in the specific perspective of the good life (Ver-
beek, 2011, p. 102, Chapter 8). My intention in this chapter was to outline
and to justify a methodological inflection, namely toward the most ordinary
personal mediation with the technosphere and a strictly ethical evaluation
of it. Possible outcomes can be prospectively summarized by a set of three
principles.

1. Individual pragmatism: In assessing ordinary technological media-

tion, this means sticking to the lower level of human interface with the
technosphere and on this level practicing a strict epochē (suspension of
judgment) on the always already pregnant devaluation of the ordinary.
This descriptive method opens the way to valuing some usually neglected
mediation with technology.
2. Flourishing as the key personal value. In assessing ordinary technologi-
cal mediation, this means conferring on the individual self (and possibly
other living entities or local/global ecosystems) an intrinsic value, mak-
ing it a “focal” entity in a Borgmannian sense. In situated descriptions,
this particular situation centered on a self-constituting entity changes the
212 Michel Puech

reference system. More precisely, the reference system translates from

institutional politics and economics into informal practical wisdom and
micro-practices.
3. Harmony as the paramount collective value. In assessing ordinary techno-
logical mediation, this means reintegrating the global (politics, the econ-
omy, and all that is candidly “suspended” by the micro-phenomenological
effort), but not as a determining system with domination/resistance
relations between humans and technologies. Harmony rather insists on
non-confrontational relations and non-deterministic balance. The bio-
logical image of an ecosystem comes to mind for illustrating this process
through which value is created by the aggregation of multiple micro-
flourishing. The Internet is another telling illustration, stressing the fact
that harmony as a value does not mean perfection, as in “the best possible
world” conceived by classical metaphysics. Neither Darwinian nature not
the actual Internet are ontologically and ethically perfect worlds. But they
are harmonic worlds. Describing harmony and particularly describing how
micro-actions can harmonize and propagate harmony leads to a differenti-
ated evaluation of the technosphere and infosphere—using for instance
robust moral notions in favor of open source software, self-sustaining ethi-
cal notions that are not the consequences of preexisting politico-economic
agendas.

Principles (1) and (2) are linked to recent virtue ethics and wisdom studies
(broadly construed), principles (2) and (3) are linked to revisited Asian tradi-
tions of thought. When examining the methodological needs for descriptive
and evaluative accounts of contemporary technology, Val Dusek affirms:

By forcing the integration of ethics and political philosophy with epistemology

and philosophy of science, as well as inviting the mutual employment and com-
bination of the methods of logical and linguistic analysis with phenomenology,
hermeneutics, social constructionism and process philosophy, philosophy of
technology will move from being a marginal and neophyte specialty to play-
ing a central role in the cross-pollination of both subject fields and methods of
contemporary philosophy leading to a reunited world philosophy community.
(2009, p. 134)

While saluting this utopian vision, technoethics, a branch of philosophy of

technology, is an even smaller actor, but its privileged perspective on the
technosphere makes it a relevant actor for combining philosophical methods
and inspirations. Pragmatically, it appears that the contemporary Technosa-
piens has a deficient perception of the artifacts that operate extremely near
to him/her: one’s mobile phone, the computer screen in front of which one
 Describing and Valuing Technological Mediation 213

spends his/her working and leisure time, and more globally the technosphere
that is nearer to us than anything traditionally considered by philosophers.
Convergent philosophical methods facilitate the delicate transition from
describing (in a phenomenological acceptation) this novelty to valuing it
(aiming at a constructive applied ethics).

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 Chapter 11

Technological Mediation and

Sociocultural Variability
Arun Kumar Tripathi

INTRODUCTION

Philosophy of technology promises the possibility of an understanding of

technology that may be important not only to public policy but also in help-
ing to conceptualize intellectual approaches to the study of technology and,
indeed, to shaping new fields of knowledge and research. Philosophy of
technology may also have a role to play in relation not only to structuring
a largely disparate and inchoate field but also more directly in teaching and
learning about technology (Peters, 2006, p. 96).
Technology is a social and political force. The technological devices and
instruments such as telephones and specs we make and use, transform our
experience in ways that are philosophically relevant. Technologies such as
automobiles, telephones, and specs enlarge and extend our capacities and
effects of changes in the natural and social worlds. Peter-Paul Verbeek (2001)
argues, “Technology cannot be grasped in isolation; neither can culture” (p.
133). Technology always exists in its cultural contexts.
From a Euro-American perspective, technology is viewed through its
connection with the sciences, while in South America the perspective is the
reverse, science is viewed through its technologies understood as cultural
instruments—this places the technification of sciences in the foreground.
Don Ihde is one representative of phenomenology of technology that has
demonstrated a willingness to connect North American and German tradi-
tions, specifically Martin Heidegger (who was clearly one of the forefathers
of 20th-century philosophy of technology). Ihde understands technological
development in terms of a social anthropology of technosystems. This view-
point is in opposition to the technological determinism of applied natural
science (Ihde, 1990, p. 5).

217
218 Arun Kumar Tripathi

In contemporary continental philosophy of technology some questions

are playing a pivotal role. We encounter questions such as: How is human
behavior and embodiment affecting social and cultural factors? How do we
relate to technologies in the lifeworld? What kind of relationships are there
to technologies? And how does the lifeworld shape technologies and how
does technology shape the lifeworld? Human experiences of our lifeworlds
are shaped by physical and symbolic tools and mediating tools (Ihde, 1990,
2009a; Tripathi, 2011, 2016c).
My approach in developing a “philosophy of technological culture” is
inspired by Ihde’s postphenomenology, which not only allows for a new
answer to the classical questions in philosophy of technology, but also for
a new elaboration of the perspective behind these questions. A new inter-
pretation of phenomenology offers possibilities par excellence for formu-
lating a philosophy of technology from the perspective of things (Verbeek,
2005a). Postphenomenology aims to revitalize the phenomenological tradi-
tion in a way that overcomes the problems of classical phenomenology. As
Verbeek (2005a) explains the fact that classical phenomenology failed to
take the locality and context dependence of human knowledge into account
is understandable when the context in which it developed is taken into
account (pp. 106–108). Phenomenology presented itself as a philosophical
method that sought to describe “reality itself,” since it opposed itself to the
absolutization of the positivistic view of the world arising from modern
natural science, which claims to describe reality as it actually is. But the
way in which phenomenology proceeded to develop its alternative to sci-
ence, did not in fact result in a competing way of describing reality, but
rather an analysis of the relations between humans and reality, explains
Verbeek (2007b).

PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY

The first explicit title which employs the term “philosophy of technology”
comes from the 1877 book published by Ernst Kapp (1808–1896), Grundli-
nien einer Philosophie der Technik. Kapp was one of the century “left Hege-
lians,” as was his slightly younger peer, Karl Marx (1818–1883), who stood
at the origin of what was to become philosophy of technology as a thematic,
sub-disciplinary field within philosophy (Ihde, 2004a).
Ihde (2004a) maintains that both Kapp and Marx were “materialist” Hege-
lians and thus technologies become much more thematic in both their devel-
opments. Kapp took “colonization” as a major metaphor and argued that there
is both an “internal” and an “external” colonization which characterized the
human development of technologies (p. 93).
 Technological Mediation and Sociocultural Variability 219

Based on Kapp’s theory of human extension, Ihde (2004a, p. 94) argues,

technologies were analogized as extensions and magnifications of human
organic processes and projected into an external environment. While the
analogies to muscle power for various tools clearly extend specific human
powers, Kapp also analogized technologies into vaster and more complex
systems—for example, communications systems are analogized upon the ner-
vous system, etc. In some sense, then, Ihde claims, technologies are material
extensions of human embodiment (Ihde, 2004a).
But, why did humans make an axe? Because their hands were too weak to
chop the wood. Why did people come up with the idea for a spear? Because
their arms were too short and their legs were too slow to catch a running
animal. Why did people invent lenses? That was because their eyes were
not capable of seeing very small things, or things that were very far away.
Likewise, all technical artifacts such as laptops and pens can be explained
to be extensions of human body. Kapp’s theory of extension of human body
seems quite plausible. However, as technologies get more complex and mul-
tifaceted, it is more difficult to see in what sense they are extensions of our
human bodies. Instruments tell us about the inadequacies of the human body
(Tripathi, 2015, 2016a; Verbeek, 2015).
As technologies get more complex, it is more difficult to see in what sense
they are extensions of our human functions. Let us take the Internet as an
example. In a way, this can be seen as an extension of our human voice,
because it replaces us telling the information to each other. But the system is
very complex and contains several elements that are not directly extensions
of the human voice and its effects are much more than just extending the
amount of shared information over larger distances (can technologies here
be considered as culturally multistable? Or have we multistable hermeneutic
relations with the technologies?). So Ernst Kapp’s analysis is too simplistic
to serve as an adequate description of what the Internet is.

POSTPHENOMENOLOGY, PRAXIS,
AND THE EMPIRICAL TURN

Historically, the term “postphenomenology” is introduced by Ihde (2009a) to

signify a revised but thoroughly phenomenological approach to technologies
and material culture; it is phenomenology applied to the study of concrete
human meaning-making practices, particularly to technologies. “Classical”
phenomenology—first with Husserl, including most post-Husserlians, dealt
with intentionality (human meaning-making) but was little interested in
the technological tools of meaning-making practices. Postphenomenology
focuses on how human-technological devices affect intentionality through
220 Arun Kumar Tripathi

meaning-making practices. But rather than looking broadly at technology

in general—as did 20th-century thinkers, including Heidegger—instead,
postphenomenology scrutinizes particular technologies. Once philosophy of
technology reached its late 20th-century state, it had become obvious that
praxis oriented philosophies such as phenomenology or pragmatism were
better suited than logic- or theory-centered analytical approaches to study the
cultural and socio-historical effects of technological transformation (Ihde,
2009a).
In other words, postphenomenological research is influenced by the late
20th-century emergence of the broad set of new technoscience studies:
anthropological, sociological, and feminist accounts, including actor-network
theories, are especially relevant. Coming out of this set of related social sci-
ence and humanities perspectives, a new gestalt concerning scientific culture
has emerged. In this context, science is now depicted as a cultural field that
establishes its interpretative norms by means of elaborate practices of tech-
nological hermeneutics. Here, too, praxis analysis—particularly with respect
to unpacking the complexities of laboratory instrumentation—dominates
(Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015).
Postphenomenology incorporates strands of pragmatism with its distinc-
tive experience-praxis orientation on one side, and similarly incorporates
the “empirical turn” of the science or technoscience studies disciplines, on
the other. While the development of postphenomenology (Ihde, 2009a) has
largely taken place within the context of contemporary philosophy of tech-
nology, it has also drawn upon pragmatism on the one side and upon recent
technoscience studies (Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015).
Tripathi (2017) elaborates on the idea of postphenomenology. Postphe-
nomenology does not abolish the distinction between humans and nonhu-
mans, but shows their fundamental connectedness and interrelatedness (p.
141). “Artifacts mediate ways of existence (subjectivities) and experienced
realities (objectivities) not because people told them to do so, but because of
the relation between humans and the world that comes about through them,”
explains Verbeek (2005b, p. 140). Mark Coeckelbergh elaborates:

Contemporary philosophy of technology emphasizes this “use” aspect of tech-

nologies: what matters for understanding and evaluating technologies is not
only the material artifact and its immediate and intended function, but also its
unintended effects as it is and becomes part of a social and natural environment.
Use varies according to who uses it, but also more generally it varies according
to the social context. (Coeckelbergh, 2015)

For postphenomenology, Ihde claims that with the replacement of the “sub-
ject” by embodiment, one changes the body/mind problem in early modern
 Technological Mediation and Sociocultural Variability 221

philosophy into a body/body problem. Merleau-Ponty, in his works, drew his

distinction between the “objectively” constituted body, the mechanical and
third-person constituted body of the Cartesian sciences and the corps vecu
or lived body as experiencing body. This is the body-in-action, outside itself
already in a world. Living, my body is simultaneously and yet experientially
being both inside and outside (Ihde, 2003b, 2003c). “Postphenomenology is
the practical study of the relations between humans and technologies from
which human subjectivities emerge, as well as meaningful worlds,” explain
Robert Rosenberger and Peter-Paul Verbeek (2015, p. 12). Postphenom-
enology is an investigation of the relationships between global culture and
technology (Rosenberger, 2017; Tripathi, 2015). Cathrine Hasse extends this
argument, “Postphenomenology preserves the very structure of science and
technology as multistable whereas claims for objective hermeneutics depend
on the physical situatedness of the body” (2008, p. 57).
Postphenomenology takes an empirical focus upon human-technology
relations. But it does so with meticulous scrutiny of particular concrete forms
of technologies, rather than technology in general as was the case earlier in
the 20th century (Tripathi, 2016a, p. 238). By exploring postphenomenology,
Ihde (2009a) addresses the cultural role of technologies in relations to percep-
tion, multiculturalism, and technoscience, and gives special consideration to
the impact of image technologies, such as television and cinema, upon the
contemporary world. However, “postphenomenological mediation should
also consider the issues of ‘cultural variability.’ Postphenomenologists must
address the meaning of ‘socio-cultural activity.’ In addition, postphenom-
enologists should mull over whether embodiment itself has cultural & histori-
cal variations” (Tripathi, 2017, p. 140).
Ihde (2012b) rejects the entire Cartesian tradition, and instead opts for
situated knowledge, but with an interrelational ontology (p. 370). As can be
seen, in each set of human-technology relations, the model is that of an inter-
relational ontology (Ihde, 2009a). Ihde claims:

This style of ontology carries with it a number of implications, including ones

which imply that there is a co-constitution of, for example, humans and their
technologies. Technologies transform our experience of the world and our per-
ceptions and interpretations of our world, and we, in turn, become transformed
in this process. Transformations are non-neutral. And it is here that histories
and any empirical turn become effectively ontologically important. This, in
turn, returns us to the pragmatist insight that histories are also important in any
philosophical analysis as such. (2009a, p. 44)

By elaborating Ihde’s stand on postphenomenology, Tripathi (2016a) tells us

about “the importance of phenomenology in postmodern era, which diverges
222 Arun Kumar Tripathi

from classical phenomenology, such as in its focus on technological media-

tion, its reliance on ‘case studies’ more familiar to the field of science stud-
ies and its kinship with many of the ontological commitments of American
pragmatism” (p. 238).
Postphenomenology, in a complementary role with other science studies
disciplines, remains within the trajectory of those theories which reject early
modern epistemology and metaphysics, including rejection of the subject-
object distinction, and holds, instead, to an inter-relational, co-constitutive
ontology (Ihde, 2012b, p. 369). The ontology of postphenomenology is
interrelational (Ihde, 2012b). Further Ihde (2012b) shows that postphenom-
enology attempts to move farther from early modern epistemology by, as it
were, substituting embodiment for subjectivity. What postphenomenology in
relation to technoscience focuses upon is the way the human in science praxis
embodies instruments (p. 370).
However on the other hand, Zwier, Blok & Lemmens (2016) provides a
phenomenological analysis of postphenomenological philosophy of technol-
ogy. While acknowledging that the results of its analyses are to be recognized
as original, insightful, and valuable, we will argue that in its execution of
the empirical turn, postphenomenology forfeits a phenomenological dimen-
sion of questioning. Furthermore, by contrasting the postphenomenological
method with Heidegger’s understanding of phenomenology, as developed in
his early Freiburg lectures and in Being and Time, it is demonstrated how
the postphenomenological method must be understood as mediation theory,
which adheres to what Heidegger calls the theoretical attitude. “This leaves
undiscussed how mediation theory about ontic beings (i.e., technologies)
involves a specific ontological mode of relating to beings, whereas consider-
ation of this mode is precisely the concern of phenomenology” (Zwier, Blok,
& Lemmens, 2016, p. 313). Further, Zwier, Blok & Lemmens explain:

Postphenomenology unmistakably belongs to the philosophies of technology

that embrace what Hans Achterhuis (2001) has dubbed the empirical turn. This
implies a critical distance towards accounts in which technology appears as a
singular overarching process and instead investigates technological dynamics
on a micro-scale. Postphenomenology aims to empirically analyze how particu-
lar technologies as the things themselves mediate the relation between humans
and their world. This has given rise to numerous analyses and detailed descrip-
tions of how human existence is deeply and polymorphously interwoven with
artifacts. (2016, p. 314)

VARIATION AND MULTISTABILITY

Postphenomenology can be characterized as a form of analysis that retains

core tactical methods and emphases that were first elaborated by Husserl and
 Technological Mediation and Sociocultural Variability 223

Merleau-Ponty. For example, variational analysis, particularly taken in a radi-

cally concrete or empirical form, remains central to the descriptive practice
of postphenomenology. However, the result of such analyses has also led to
a transformation of the earlier notions of “essences”—which, in their Hus-
serlian guise, retained vestiges of ideality and reductionism and which proved
incapable of accounting for multistable phenomena. Ihde retains the notion
of “intentionality” from classical phenomenology, as he takes it to be much
more like the Deweyan concept of a contextual, interrelational process akin
to an ecological organism-environment notion, or, alternatively, a relativistic
situation in physics whereby the relativity between positions must be taken
into account (see Technology and the Lifeworld; Ihde, 1990).
Variational analyses provide the methodological style of this approach.
With technologies, there are multiple ways in which any single technol-
ogy may be related to users and multiple ways in which each technology is
culturally embedded. Variations must also be considered with respect to the
complex dimensions which are included in all such phenomena. Variational
analysis—more precisely, the study of group-theoretic invariants—provides
a rigorous method not found in early pragmatism. Thus postphenomenology
can be seen as an adaptation to the late 20th- to early 21st-century philosophic
needs and issues, particularly in the context of technoscience and material
culture (Ihde, 2009a). Ihde (2016) places the phenomenological practice of
using variations as the primary “tool” for analysis and claims “such a varia-
tional practice works well to establish both the richness of variety provided
in lifeworld experience, and to locate whatever structural features may be
found” (p. 111).
The very structure of technologies is multistable, with respect to uses and
to cultural embeddedness in the activities producing artifacts. When learned
experiences differ, so do material hermeneutics. In these processes boundar-
ies expand and close as imaging equipment translates invisible things into
visible. All knowledge possible for us implies our own situated embodiment
of knowledge. The postphenomenological approach explores how bodies,
including their limits and contingencies, are reflexively implied in this pro-
cess (Hasse, 2008, pp. 58–59).
Ihde (2003a) uses the term “multistability” to refer to perceptual variations
which exceed the usually noted bivariational ambiguities, such as Wittgen-
steinian “duck-rabbits,” “face-vase” alternations and the like. The diverse
technologies of communication and information have stimulated much
speculation concerning “virtuality,” the spatiality of “cyberspace,” and the
role of phenomena such as “avatars.” By drawing from a phenomenology
of multistability and some earlier examples in technological history, Ihde
(2003a) showed how the mulstability structures impact upon some of the
present fantasies surrounding “virtuality” and “cyberspace.” Internet, video
games, and other popular technologies affect the transformations of experi-
ence through the mediation of the technologies.
224 Arun Kumar Tripathi

Ihde introduced the idea of multistability into the philosophy of technology

in technology and the lifeworld. The idea is that, like a Nekker cube illusion,
which can be interpretatively seen with either the top right or bottom left
corner as the frontmost surface, the path that a technology will take, both
in its development and in the way that it suggests interpretive possibilities
for economic and political application, is neither wholly flexible nor wholly
determined (Ihde, 2012a). However, Andrew Feenberg stresses the need to
grasp the multistability of possible trajectories for technology as the prereq-
uisite for democratic steering of technological development. It is only when
one has grasped both the way in which a technology does indeed commit
humanity to a given future and also the way in which that future is open to
a limited number of possible manifestations that one can truly grapple with
technologically significant decisions in a democratic manner (Thompson,
2008). Robert Rosenberger (2015) illustrates:

Technologies such as pacemakers and neuro-stimulators have the potential to

disrupt the typical postphenomenological conception of human-technology rela-
tions because this perspective so far has focused mainly on how users engage
with devices through bodily interaction and perception . . . . Multistability refers
to the capacity of any technology to support a variety of uses and meanings.
This idea is often wielded by postphenomenologists against totalizing accounts
of technology that fail to recognize the variability and context-dependency of
human-technology relations . . . . In all of these cases, the technology plays a
“mediating” role in human experience, coming between the user and the world,
and transforming them both in the process elaborates. (pp. 130–133)

Further Rosenberger illustrates that, a central feature of the postphenom-

enological framework is the notion of “multistability” (2015, p. 137). The
notion of multistability is first developed in Ihde’s early work on human per-
ceptual experience; there, Ihde uses Husserlian variational theory to analyze
the experience of a series of visual illusions, that is, drawings that can be per-
ceived in more than one way (1986, p. 138). When technology is introduced,
both the human experiencer and the thing experienced are transformed. “At
this interrelational level, once technologically mediated, technologies may be
more than just another object in the world of which the human experiencer is
conscious—a point with which Husserl perhaps would have agreed,” argues
Michael Kelly (2015, p. 508).
The development of postphenomenology has largely taken place within the
context of contemporary philosophy of technology, it has also drawn upon
pragmatism on the one side and upon recent technoscience studies on the
other (Ihde, 2009a). A multistable technology is a structure that follows dif-
ferent stable trajectories that lead to variations in the artifact as it is embedded
in what is termed “life worlds” in postphenomenology “collective activities”
in cultural-historical theory. As Cathrine Hasse explains:
 Technological Mediation and Sociocultural Variability 225

The “same” technology takes quite different shapes in different contexts’ (Ihde,
2007, p. 13). . . . This multistability becomes apparent when artefacts move
between cultural spaces or when human imagination finds new uses for already
established meanings of artefacts. This is apparent in, for example, Robert
Rosenberger’s (2012) study of how an urban subculture finds new uses for
handrails by sliding on them. Even though structures limit the sets of variations,
“all technologies display ambiguous, multistable possibilities” (Ihde, 2002, p.
106). As noted by Robert Rosenberger (2011, 2012), the post-phenomenological
concept of multistability has two interrelated meanings: technologies are stabi-
lised and also have multiple existences when they cross time, space and bodily
positions. (Hasse, 2013, p. 88)

MACRO-PERCEPTION AND CULTURE

Technologies are culturally multistable and perception is a hermeneutical act

that can be combined to form a hypothesis of multistability of human percep-
tion. My notion of multistability of human perception is based on the fact
that I can interpret the perception which is a hermeneutical act, in different
ways, to cope with realities in a culture. There must be more than one way
of interpreting this perception, and the same can be said of the multistable
hermeneutics relation with technologies. There must be different ways to
interpret the technologies where technologies are culturally embedded. My
notion of multistable hermeneutics relations with technologies is that we are
open to interpret the technologies in different ways.
In fact, it is important to explore multistability of human perception in phi-
losophy of technology and multistable hermeneutic relations with technolo-
gies. A multistable hermeneutic relation to technology would be one in which
a user can maintain multiple stable perceptual relationships with a “readable”
device. It is also to understand the irony of cultural variants of technologies
(Rosenberger, 2012, 2013a).
Rosenberger (2013b) brilliantly describes Ihde’s (1999) multistability
approach to the character of technology to enhance the potential to mediate
experience in multiple ways, its potential to possess multiple meanings for
different people in different cultures (italics are mine).
Ihde (2004b) argues, perceptions are bodily activities, not the actions of
some homunculus inside a camera obscura box looking at mental images
which represent something “out there.” In phenomenology, variations are
the means by which possibility structures are discovered. “Phenomena may
undergo variations, reversibilities and multiple possibilities” (Ihde, 2004b).
In fact, to understand the relationship between technology and culture,
it is important to explore the human-technology relations. However, the
multistability of cultural relations to the world implies not only that artifacts
can have different meanings in different cultural contexts, but also that the
226 Arun Kumar Tripathi

same goals can be technologically realized in different ways. Ihde’s favorite

example, as summarized by Verbeek, “is: the difference between western
navigational techniques and the traditional navigational techniques of the
South Sea islanders. Western navigation is strongly instrumentally medi-
ated and mathematical in nature—whereas South Sea islanders navigate by
carefully observing stationary clouds, birds, and wave patterns” (Verbeek,
2001, p. 135). Different cultural contexts, means different “ways of seeing”
can lead to the development of difficult technologies. Interwovenness makes
technology multistable. Is the cultural relation to technologies multistable, or
do technologies have a culture-changing power? Perceptions are mediated by
technologies.

MICRO-PERCEPTION AND EMBODIMENT

Likewise, the primacy of bodily action, including embodied perception, and

other forms of praxis, remains central to postphenomenological inquiry.
Indeed, for the postphenomenologist, embodied considerations can often
account for the variations and multistabilities of gender and cultural differ-
ence, including a cultural hermeneutics.
Embodiment, being a body, is also a constant within postphenomenology.
But since bodies are actively perceptual and culturally-historically consti-
tuted, postphenomenology must take account of the variations and possi-
bilities of diverse embodiments. Thus, issues of different cultures, gender,
politics, and ethics are included in postphenomenological analyses; this is
illustrated by Rosenberger & Verbeek (2015), who claim that postphenom-
enology has specialized in how forms of knowing and perceiving the world
are mediated through technologies and how technologies are changing human
perceptions of the world.
Verbeek (2005a) extends the work of Ihde to present an empirically rich
and nuanced image of how material artifacts and technological devices shape
our existence and experiences. A new interpretation of phenomenology offers
possibilities par excellence for formulating a philosophy of technology from
the perspective of things (Verbeek, 2005a). The technologies of our everyday
world have one thing in common: we use them almost exclusively via the
interaction with interfaces, or better referred to as “human-machine inter-
faces.” Technologies, with their interfaces, are so deeply intergrated into our
fabric of everyday life, our “coping in the world,” that human beings hardly
or never draw their attention to them. Human beings use the technologies in
an unconscious way.
 Technological Mediation and Sociocultural Variability 227

RELATIONAL ONTOLOGY

In fact, postphenomenology continues the phenomenological tradition of

a “world” (inter-relationistic) ontology of objects related to one another
and culturally to human subjects. In the case of technologies, for example,
humans “invent” technologies; while reciprocally, technologies also “re-
invent” humans. Co-constitution is recognized in a relational ontology. But,
such relational ontologies are not unique to phenomenology—they are part
of the family of pragmatic (e.g., organism/environment) and actor-network
(e.g., humans and their nonhuman “props”) ontologies as well (Ihde, 2009a).
As can also be seen, in each set of human-technology relations, the model
is that of an interrelational ontology. This style of ontology carries with it a
number of implications, including ones which imply that there is a co-con-
stitution of, for example, humans and their technologies. Technologies trans-
form our experience of the world and our perceptions and interpretations of
our world, and we, in turn, become transformed in this process (Ihde, 2009a).
The central idea in the interpretation of phenomenology developed by
Verbeek (2005a), demonstrates the mutual constitution of subject and object,
or of humans and their world. Humans and their world are always inter-
related. People cannot but be directed at the world around them: they are
always experiencing it and it is the only place where they can realize their
existence. Conversely, the world can only be what it is when humans deal
with it and interpret it. In their interrelation, both the subjectivity of humans
and the objectivity of their world take shape. What people are and what their
world is codetermined by the relations and interactions they have with each
other (Verbeek, 2003, 2005a). Technologies help to shape relations between
humans and world; Ihde says “technologies can create a “technologically
mediated” intentionality” a relationship between humans and world (Ver-
beek, 2005a, p. 116).
Rosenberger (2017) suggests that the postphenomenological conception of
“multistability” (i.e., the understanding that a technology is always open to
multiple uses and meanings) is especially important for the task. Rosenberger
(2017) further maintains that postphenomenology and variational cross-
examination can contribute helpful insights to our understanding of the social,
political, and experiential situation of technology. Rosenberger is suggesting
that insights from two contemporary perspectives, postphenomenology and
actor-network theory are useful for drawing out the experiential, social, and
political dynamics of everyday things. Rosenberger reviews and resituates
several key lines a method for using them together for the evaluation of
technology. As a guiding example, Rosenberger explores a paradigmatic
228 Arun Kumar Tripathi

everyday device: fire hydrants. Despite their everyday character, hydrants

fulfill multiple social roles, some of them loaded with difficult and important
political implications (Rosenberger, 2017).

MEDIATION

Verbeek (2005a, 2008) has built a vocabulary for understanding this

mediating role of technologies. A hermeneutic and existential phenom-
enological direction approaches the human-world relationship from a
different side. Existential phenomenology starts from “the human side.”
Its central question is how people realize their existence and are present
in their world. Hermeneutic phenomenology starts at “the side of world,”
and directs itself at the ways reality can be interpreted and be present
for people. Jaspers represents the existential direction in classical phe-
nomenology, Heidegger the hermeneutic. In the postphenomenological
perspective on technology, the main question is what role technological
artifacts play in the interrelation between humans and their world, and in
the constitution of subjectivity and objectivity that comes about in this
process (Verbeek, 2005a).
Technologies mediate between people and reality and experience. Verbeek
(2008) argues, “Technologies are not neutral instruments or intermediaries,
but active mediators that help shape the relation between people and reality.
This mediation has two directions: one pragmatic, concerning action, and
the other hermeneutic, concerning interpretation” (p. 94). This phenomenon
of technological mediation has two dimensions, each of them pertaining to
one aspect of the relations between humans and reality (Verbeek, 2006).
First, technologies help to shape how reality and experience can be pres-
ent for people, by mediating human perception and interpretation. Second,
technologies help to shape how humans are present in reality, by mediating
human action and practices. The first dimension can be called hermeneutic,
since it concerns meaning and interpretation; the second is pragmatic, since
it concern human activities (Verbeek, 2005a, 2006). Technological media-
tion is precisely this capacity of technology, where technologies can medi-
ate between humans and reality, by establishing specific relations between
both. Ihde (2009b, p. 465) claims that “what makes technologies valuable
for human practices are the non-neutral transformational capacities of these
technologies. It is the subtle and profound transformation of experience.”
Technological mediation organizes human-world relations; in this, material
hermeneutics is also playing an important role. The concept of technological
mediation is significant in bringing forth the relations between humans and
the world.
 Technological Mediation and Sociocultural Variability 229

On the question of how to analyze the phenomenon of technological medi-

ation, Verbeek radicalizes Ihde’s phenomenological approach of technology
and offers a valuable framework in his work. In their analyses, Ihde and
Verbeek understand technological mediation as the role technology plays in
the relation between human beings and their world. Verbeek writes that “Ihde
discerns several relationships human beings can have with technological arti-
facts.” I agree with Ihde and Verbeek that technologies can be “embodied”
by their users, making it possible that a relationship comes about between
humans and their world, and also technological artifacts are “incorporated”
here, as it were: they become extensions of the human body (Verbeek, 2005a,
2007a, 2008).
Technologies transform our experience of the world and our perceptions
and interpretations of our world, and we, in turn, become transformed in
this process. Transformations are non-neutral. And it is here that histories
and any empirical turn become effectively ontologically important. This, in
turn, returns us to the pragmatist insight that histories are also important in
any philosophical analysis as such (Ihde, 2009a). Verbeek (2006) addresses
the ethical aspects of persuasive technologies. By integrating the concept of
“persuasive technology” with the concept of “technological mediation,” as
developed in theoretical frameworks from the field of persuasive technology
and from the philosophy of technology, it will be possible to identify three
such points of application: human-technology-world (in relation to percep-
tion and action) (Verbeek, 2006).
A hermeneutic and existential phenomenological direction approaches the
human-world relationship from a different side. Existential phenomenology
starts from “the human side.” Its central question is how people realize their
existence and are present in their world. Hermeneutic phenomenology starts
at “the side of world,” and directs itself at the ways reality can be interpreted
and be present for people. In the postphenomenological perspective on tech-
nology, the main question is what role technological artifacts play in the
interrelation between humans and their world, and in the constitution of sub-
jectivity and objectivity that comes about in this process (Verbeek, 2005a).
A phenomenology of human-technology relations shows that the structural
dimensions of technological mediation produce a range of possible experi-
ences (Ihde, 1990, 2006).

MATERIAL HERMENEUTICS

Hermeneutics in the traditional sense has to do with understanding and the

conditions for understanding a text or a person or a situation. In philosophical
hermeneutics, the historical character of understanding is posited such that
230 Arun Kumar Tripathi

one always already understands in a certain way, and this shapes the ques-
tioning that one does. Understanding is dialogical, a dialogue of question and
answer, and one moves toward reaching an understanding with the person
or the text in a process of question and answer and eventually a fusion of
horizon. Newer approaches to hermeneutics, as outlined by Ihde (1998) who
claims that hermeneutics applies to the very praxis of science and technology
use as well as to the constitution of scientific objects (Tripathi, 2015a; Friis,
2015).
Material hermeneutics is the art of deploying new variation to interpret and
understand technologies. Traditionally, the hermeneutics is used to deal with
the bible texts. But when we want to interpret and understand our techno-
logically mediated lifeworld, then traditional hermeneutics have limitations.
Ihde examines hermeneutics practice within the domains of technoscience
and he calls as material hermeneutics. Ihde (1998) examines what he calls a
new interpretation based on material practices relating to imaging technolo-
gies which have given rise to the visual hermeneutics in technoscience stud-
ies. Historically, Ihde has sought to explicate a hermeneutic convalescence
of technology (Tripathi, 2016a, p. 236). Material hermeneutics retains the
critical, interpretive work which all hermeneutics requires, but it is more a
perceptual than a linguistic interpretation (Ihde, 2009a). In fact Ihde’s aim in
Expanding Hermeneutics is to show that science is a profoundly hermeneutic
activity, and that hermeneutics, therefore, is not limited to the humanities
(Verbeek, 2003).
By explicating Ihde’s material hermeneutics, Verbeek demonstrates that
“hermeneutics should not only direct itself at the linguistic, but also at the
perceptual aspects of interpretation. Hermeneutics is the art of interpreta-
tions: it concerns the ways in which reality can be present for people” (2003,
p. 92). Perception has a hermeneutic dimension and constitutes a relationship
between humans and reality. Expanding Hermeneutics makes possible a
“connection between phenomenologically oriented philosophy of technol-
ogy and empirical science and technology studies. It opens many new and
interesting lines of thinking about technology and its relation to science,” as
Verbeek further explains (2003, p. 96).
By analyzing how technologies help to shape people’s experience, an
“expanded hermeneutics” arises. The traditional focus of hermeneutics on
texts is broadened to things. Not only ideas and meaning, but architectures,
bridges, MRI scanners, and GPS as well play a role in human interpretations.
This “material turn” in hermeneutics creates a new route for understanding
the role technology plays in people’s interpretive relation with the world
(Verbeek, 2005a).
 Technological Mediation and Sociocultural Variability 231

Material hermeneutics retains the critical, interpretive work which all

hermeneutics requires, but it is more a perceptual than a linguistic interpreta-
tion (Ihde, 2009a). A material hermeneutics is a hermeneutics which “gives
things voices where there had been silence, and brings to sight that which
was invisible”; such a hermeneutics in natural science can best be illustrated
by its imaging practices, as Ihde (2009a, pp. 63–80) explains. The objects
of this visual hermeneutics were not texts nor linguistic phenomena, but
things which came into vision through instrumental magnifications, allow-
ing perception to go where it had not gone before. Visual hermeneutics is a
perceptual hermeneutics with a perception which goes beyond texts (Ihde,
2009a; Friis, 2015). Ihde tried to outline a small glimpse of this direction
in Expanding Hermeneutics (Ihde, 1998). Such material hermeneutics are
doubly material—first, in the sense that the objects being investigated are
material entities—paramecia, extra-geocentric satellites, and eventually even
the chemical make-up of the stars-but also it is material in the sense that the
instruments being used to “bring close” such phenomena are also material
entities, technologies, by which and through which the natural sciences are
embodied. Our instruments and technologies operate in hermeneutic ways
(Ihde, 1998; Verbeek, 2003; Friis, 2017).
Hasse (2008) argues “materiality changes with perception. Perception
changes with embodied learning of artifacts” (p. 58). Technological arti-
facts stand in relationships with human beings and these relationships can
be explored through a method of variation in which almost any artifact may
become what Ihde (2012a) has called multistable (Hasse, 2013, p. 87). Our
embodied subjectivities as co-constituted in interaction with material arti-
facts. Human engagement with technology is always meaningful to humans,
even when we do not explicitly reflect on the conditions of these engage-
ments, Hasse explains (2013, p. 81).
The perception1 is a hermeneutical act. Friis (2015) illustrates how herme-
neutics can be applied to sciences and scientific interpretation: what role does
hermeneutics play in the investigations of scientific discovery, and what does
hermeneutics mean for scientists, who may find themselves in hermeneutic
situations. As above, I mention, that perception is a hermeneutical act, simi-
larly Crease (1997) informs us that in Heelan’s observation also the percep-
tion is not an automatic act by an independent subject (i.e., free of cultural
and determination), but is hermeneutical insofar as it is an interpretive act
guided by human involvement with the perceived (i.e., by the world).
Technologies are products of human ingenuity and designed to give us
images of a reality hidden from us, either in the form of being too small or
too far away and/or being inside something else, these are the technological
outputs (images) (see Friis, 2017).
232 Arun Kumar Tripathi

DIGITAL HERMENEUTICS AS
MATERIAL HERMENEUTICS

Technology is a form of culture or a particular kind of culture. Culture of

human performance has become sedimented in habits and traditions. Tech-
nology is shaping the theoretical outline of our social reality. The techno-
logical form of life is part and parcel of culture, just as culture in the human
sense unavoidably implies technologies. There are unfathomable effects of
technology on human culture and society. As Terry Winograd and Fernando
Flores explain in Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design:

All new technologies develop within the background of a tacit understanding

of human nature and human work. The use of technology in turn leads to fun-
damental changes in what we do, and ultimately in turn what it is to be human.
We encounter the deep questions of design when we recognize that in designing
tools we are designing ways of being. (1986, p. xi)

According to Rafael Capurro (2010), the story of digital hermeneutics

begins with the discussions dealing with artificial intelligence (AI) in the
1970s, and particularly with Hubert Dreyfus’s book What Computers Can’t
Do: A Critique of Artificial Reason, where he pointed to the importance of
the context of everyday practices in which we are embedded, before we start
with any kind of knowledge objectivations and their symbolic manipulations
in AI systems (Dreyfus, 1972, 1992). Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus discuss Hus-
serl’s problem of objectivizing the shared background of a belief system that
should correlate the everyday context of the lifeworld and could be used to
make computers intelligent (Capurro, 2008).
The role of computer in the world has evolved from specialized com-
puting machines to information devices that pervade our daily lives. As
research in artificial intelligence attempts to make computers more human,
some approaches to human-computer interaction are becoming analogous
to human-human interaction. By attempting to emulate human conversation,
natural language technologies are poised to replace traditional graphical
interfaces as a more natural means of interaction. This approach, however,
overlooks the embodied nature of communication, leading to serious difficul-
ties in usability and implementation. Computers that monitor and measure
the affect of students in the classroom can give helpful feedback to teachers.
Recognizing other peoples’ emotions and feeling or being affected by them
are two different things, however. How affective computer may induce the
emotional context of a certain environment is an important problem to solve:
“the emotions of the game change how a player sees the field, and those aren’t
things that one can get a feel from the film” (Coyne, 1995). The computer’s
 Technological Mediation and Sociocultural Variability 233

intentional arc, with the addition of multimodal and affective computing, is

still incomplete (Tripathi, 2014, p. 202).
It is difficult to imagine humans as reasoning beings free of all technologi-
cal augmentation since, for me, reason proceeds by the use of tools (rules are
tools). I am yet to be convinced that unmediated contact is possible between
the human and the world. The computer and the user form a system. And in
this system, the human gives mind to the machine. The question for our time
is whether machines “give mind” to the human or whether machines that
appear to “give mind” to humans are but mediating instances and instruments
through which other humans mind humans. It is a question if our time is the
time and place of Western-inspired ideological systems that place the human
in a particular situation vis-à-vis the natural in an exploiter-exploited rela-
tion. The question of the autonomy of the artifact is familiar to text encoders
and ethnobotanists. It is a moral and aesthetic question that is older than the
fancy talk of technological ecologies and textual economies (Tripathi, 2014,
p. 203).
Paul Edwards describes the cultural-ideological background based on the
introduction of the computer technology. The cyborg figure defined not only
a practical problem and psychological theory, but also a whole set of subjec-
tive positions. Cyborg-brains can be understood as the machine subjects,
which could be reconstructed, produced, and organized. The whole series
of perspectives, self-interpretation pattern brought out the social roles in the
society. It concerns a mechanical robot of the Star Wars. The discourses
around the cyborg functioned as a psychological and subjective response to
the policy of the closed world (Edwards, 1996).
The term cyberspace describes an environment, which is caused by a com-
puterized communications networks, interactive mass media and multimedia.
Cyberspace is the connection of digital information and human perception.
Cyberspace promises us bright and outstanding technological future, with
uncontrolled communication and a reinvention of the liberals and democratic
society (Dreyfus, 2001). We may produce a certain kind of humans in the
cyberspace, which can be authentically justified. The materiality is equipped
to exist their life in an artificially safe world of the computer and in the form
of computer simulations, which want to escape the world of an electronically
supported environment with other individuals. In the cyberspace, distance
does not play a role. Cyberspace implies the concepts of space and places. At
the same time, the cyberspace concerns the metaphors of communication. In
addition, a new Phenomenology of the World of this Area and the Place is
necessary to be examined (Tripathi, 2014, p. 203).
Hermeneutics is, as Capurro (1990, 2001, 2006, 2010) tries to show in
his work, intimately related since the 1970s with digital technology. After
having passed through critical theory (Jürgen Habermas), critical rationalism
234 Arun Kumar Tripathi

(Karl Popper), analytic philosophy (Ludwig Wittgenstein), deconstructivism

(Jacques Derrida), the phenomenology of the symbol (Paul Ricoeur), psy-
choanalysis (Jacques Lacan), dialectic materialism (Alain Badiou), mediol-
ogy (Régis Debray), the hermeneutics of the subject (Michel Foucault), and
particularly through Gianni Vattimo’s “weak thought” (pensiero debole)—to
mention just some prominent contemporary philosophic schools—hermeneu-
tics is facing today the challenge arising from digital technology becoming
what Capurro calls digital hermeneutics (2010). In his postdoctoral dis-
sertation Hermeneutics of Scientific Information, published in 1986, Rafael
Capurro explores the question of information retrieval as an interpretation
process of bibliographic data stored in a computer.The question of relevance
and pertinence in information retrieval that plays a key role in information
science can thus be hermeneutically re-considered with regard to different
horizons of expectations based on the Gadamerian concept of “fusion of
horizons” (Capurro, 2008).
Tripathi (2016c) demonstrates that a newer approach of hermeneutics,
digital hermeneutics, applies to the concrete praxis of technologies such
as Internet technology and cyberspace. Digital hermeneutics as defined by
Capurro (2010) is understood as the encounter between hermeneutics and
digital technologies that is deeply rooted in material culture, argues Tripathi
(2016c). The hermeneutics of technology is understood as a hermeneutics of
practice in the understanding of technologies, which is culturally and socially
embedded. This cannot be done with semantics; rather this digital hermeneu-
tics as a material hermeneutics can be explored with human embodiment.
Hermeneutics which is developed for the digital world contains multistable
hermeneutic relations (Tripathi, 2016c).
The multistable of artifacts implies not only that artifacts can have different
meaning in different contexts, but also that specific goals can be technologi-
cally realized in different ways by a range of artifacts (Verbeek, 2005a, p.
136). In fact, it is important to explore multistability of human perception in
philosophy of technology and multistable hermeneutic relations with tech-
nologies. A multistable hermeneutic relation to technology would be one
in which a user can maintain multiple stable perceptual relationships with
a “readable” device. It is also to understand the irony of cultural variants of
technologies (Rosenberger, 2012, 2013a).
Material hermeneutics is dealing with the art of embodied interpretation of
material culture and technologies (Tripathi, 2016a, 2016b). When we want to
interpret and understand our technologically mediated culture and lifeworld,
then traditional hermeneutics show its limitations. In this perspective, Ihde
has illustrated the need to expand the notion of hermeneutics, as shown by
Ihde (1998) and (Verbeek, 2003). Expanding Hermeneutics emphasizes the
cultural situatedness of human perception (Friis et al., 2012, p. 250). The
 Technological Mediation and Sociocultural Variability 235

main point of an expanded hermeneutics is that what the natural sciences

teach us is that there are ways, through instruments and technologies by
which things can show themselves. Hermeneutics in natural sciences can
best be demonstrated by the imaging practices, called as visual hermeneutics,
claims (Ihde, 1998, 2009a). Indeed, the most important value of Expanding
Hermeneutics, however, lies in its contribution to the connection between
the philosophy of science and the philosophy of technology (Verbeek, 2003).
In the contemporary philosophy of technology, it is imperative to explore
the primacy of practice in hermeneutical pragmatism and at large it tells
us that practice-immanent theorizing is one of the factors of hermeneutical
pragmatism (Fairfield, 2000, p. 4; Tripathi, 2016c). New hermeneutics of
technology, which is profoundly sedimented in materiality, gives us a new
meaning of technology in their usage and at the same time new hermeneutics
also illustrates the sense and non-sense. The reinterpretation of phenomenol-
ogy is vital, since it creates the prospect for a new phenomenological philoso-
phy of technology, which goes beyond the classical diagnosis of alienation
(Verbeek, 2005; Tripathi, 2016c, 2017). Visual hermeneutics are from this
perspective not a subjective reading of an external representation, but a lived
embodied experience forming perceptions of the material worlds (Hasse,
2008, p. 57).
Bielby & Kelly (2016) inform us that Tripathi (2016c) uses Ihde’s insights to

inform his own pragmatic approach to cultural and technological hermeneutics

and reinvigorates these themes with a call to philosophers and information sci-
entists to engage with the embodied realm of technology, and information, and
to delve deep within their traditions and their own practice to help reveal the
“basic cultural and ethical conditions of technological and economic develop-
ment.” (Bielby & Kelly, 2016, p. 17)

Ihde (2009a) and Friis (2017) have shown how instrumental changes
affect the sciences using technologies devices. For the contemporary world,
that which had not been visible can now become visible; and that which was
unheard can now begin to be heard. Things, too, have or may be given voices
(Ihde, 2009a; Friis, 2015). In Ihde’s work, we find that hermeneutics derives
from our innate ability to interpret, that is to say, to act, and to reflect upon
pre-consciously sensuous information, as well as this innate interpretative
ability he calls “perceptual thinking” (Friis et al., 2012, p. 250). One could
also say that a visual hermeneutics is a perceptual hermeneutics with a per-
ception since it does not deal with texts (Ihde, 2009a, pp. 63–80; Friis, 2015).
The instruments being used to “bring close” such phenomena are also mate-
rial entities, technologies, by which and through which the natural sciences
are embodied (Friis, 2017).
236 Arun Kumar Tripathi

NOTE

1. I thank Jan Kyrre Berg Olsen Friis for the e-mail exchange on this in July 2015:
Thinking is not something that happens in consciousness, it takes place before con-
scious awareness, and this form of thinking is very much an attuning to sensuously
givens, thus thinking is a “seeing” of that which eventually will become a perception
that has been informed by past experiences and habits.

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 Chapter 12

Studying the Telescopes of Others

Toward a Postphenomenological
Methodology of Participant Observation
Cathrine Hasse

INTRODUCTION

In his (2016) book on Husserl, Don Ihde firmly places postphenomenology as

the successor to classical phenomenology by probing into the very foundation
of the philosophy of phenomenology and shaking it up. When the “father” of
phenomenological methodology, Edmund Husserl, is exposed through Ihde’s
postphenomenological work, Husserl’s missing technologies (Ihde, 2016)
emerge. From the glasses on Husserl’s own nose and his writing tools to his
lack of attention to Galilei as a lens grinder and user of telescopes, Ihde shows
that Husserl got it wrong because the technologies used in science, including
Husserl’s own, remained invisible to him (Ihde, 2016, p. 46). In this chapter, I
will expand this argument from an anthropological and methodological point
of view. The technologies we use in research are indeed often invisible to
us, just as our own positioned bodies are (Leder, 1990). Doing postphenom-
enology involves awareness of the glasses on our own noses as well as how
we ourselves engage with the technologies we study. This awareness firmly
places postphenomenology within the range of the new materialist movement
with a focus on nonhumans (Bruno Latour and Donna Haraway have differ-
ent but compatible things to say spanning road bumps and dogs), the material
turn (Karen Barad and Tim Ingold differ in their analysis; yet, both explore
how the universe meets us half way and Jane Bennett adds vibrant materi-
als) and object-oriented ontology (with proponents like Graham Harman and
Timothy Morton).
In most of these studies, as well as in classical phenomenology and parts
of postphenomenology, the philosophers take their own positioned bodily

241
242 Cathrine Hasse

technology-mediated engagement with the world as an invisible point of

departure. This is sometimes done with keen awareness of how this body is
placed in time and space (in Ihde’s own work his positioned body is always
visible in the text, just as Tim Ingold also gives salience to his own bodily
position in his texts). From a methodological point of view we can, however,
ask how these bodies and their use of technologies produce the appearance
of the phenomena they write about. Or, as Ihde (2016) puts it: Where was
Husserl?
Today, the philosophers’ bodies are often surrounded by computers, tab-
lets, news media—as compared to the quill pens and typewriters that were
formerly used (Ihde, 2016, p. 65). To make their arguments, philosophers, as
well as STS scholars, draw on what they read, hear, and learn from public
media (about climate changes or new technologies, for example), but they
also often draw on their own experiences in their everyday lives. Donna
Haraway writes about her dogs Cayenne and Roland (2003), Ihde about his
digital hearings aids (e.g., Ihde, 2015), Peter-Paul Verbeek about seeing a
child in an ultra sound scanner (2011). Doing postphenomenological work
can involve using your own experiences as an illustration of a point you have
already decided to make, which is then filtered through an analysis connect-
ing personal experiences with the analytical discussion points found in the
texts of other scholars.
One small exercise in postphenomenology, following the footsteps of Ihde,
can be to read the texts of other scholars and try to detect how technologies
mediate the life experiences written about by these writers and from which
bodily positions they compose their illustrations. We use empirical material
as illustrations to drive home certain philosophical points about humans and
their relationships with their material environments. It is not always easy to
detect where the empirical examples used to illuminate an argument connect
to the scholars’ bodily technology-mediated position, but often the writers
stay safely within the range of their own lifeworld. They use texts from jour-
nals, magazines, and historical documents, and supplement with experiences
from their own well-known lifeworld. Many excellent arguments build on
the writers first-person experiences with these sources. Participant observa-
tion makes it possible to include how your own first-person experiences are
challenged when you engage with the mediated experiences that mediates
matter that matter to other people (see for instance Aagaard, this volume).
This method gives rise to a particular awareness of the workings of collective
processes of learning in human-machine relations. When we learn, we gradu-
ally align our own perception of material surroundings with our co-learners.
Perceptions become collectively learned (Hasse, 2015). This is the difference
from taking a point of departure in our own individual experiences, and those
we can convincingly argue are collectively learned through participation and
 Studying the Telescopes of Others 243

observation, while engaging in the practices of other people. During this

process, we not only learn to perceive dogs, ultrasound scans, images, and
sounds in new ways, but we also become aware of how others may perceive
dogs, ultrasound scans, images, and sounds in ways that differ from our own
initial perceptions.
Postphenomenology has recently seen an interest in expanding the concept
of awareness, or as it is put by Robert Rosenberger “fields of awareness”
(e.g., Rosenberger, 2012). This concept may be discussed in connection with
what cultural-historical psychology has named field of attention, tied to learn-
ing as a process of transformation. The Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky
developed the idea of learning as a cultural and collective field of attention.
Most notably, he develops the idea in his discussions on how children learn
to free themselves from their immediate surroundings, when they learn to
think about cultural tool use instead of just grasping and letting themselves
be ruled by what is before the eye (Vygotsky, 1998). It is a basic process of
learning to become cultural beings. We learn to handle and think with our
cultural surroundings. Thus our field of perception is enhanced from what
we perceive to what we perceive culturally. This is a process where normal
being-in-the-world attentionality is transformed into a cultural voluntary
attention. The theory of how voluntary attention develops in humans is
closely connected to discussions of how their use of technology is inevitably
tied to concept formation and collective meaning-making. Because humans
can use thinking tools, like concepts, they are not entirely dependent on clues
from the physical environment. Their field of attention can include abstract
social phenomena and past and future elements in the present, and thus pass
beyond what is in sight (Hasse, 2015, p. 143).
The two kinds of fields differ in their relation to time and space. Fields
of awareness differs from fields of attention in so far as the former does
not focus on the process of sign mediations as part and parcel of instrument
mediation—and the latter does not focus on how technologies transform our
perception of space.
Combining the two includes an awareness of sign mediation tied to “tech-
nological mediation” (Verbeek, 2016). This enhances the human-technology
relations to become human-human-technology relations, thus emphasizing
that humans are not isolated in their uses and perceptions of technology.
Technologies are learned in processes that are basically driven by frictions in
cultural ecologies where meaning and materials shift in taking center stage;
and participant observation is the best way to capture these processes (Hasse,
2015).
The more philosophy, anthropology, psychology, and pragmatist traditions
merge in postphenomenology, the better we can begin to move into unfamil-
iar places and explore the complex lifeworlds of others. This entails learning
244 Cathrine Hasse

how technologies matter to others. As we learn, our first-person perception

aligns with the perception of others. Examples can be found in Robert Rosen-
berger’s (2014) study of subway benches which includes interviews with
homeless people, and Anette Forss’s study of how pap smear readers learn
to detect cancer cells (2012), or my own studies of how physicist students
learn to perceive the world as physicists (Hasse, 2008). These studies mark a
shift from classical phenomenology. However, some methodological issues
remain unquestioned in these new engaged postphenomenological studies,
so let me begin with a brief exploration of classical phenomenology and its
methods.

CLASSICAL PHENOMENOLOGY

I do not intend a thorough walkthrough of phenomenological methodologies,

but will point to a few points of importance when studying how technolo-
gies mediate for others. Early phenomenological methodologies were overtly
formed on introspection of our own experiences. Since Franz Brentano, a
transitional predecessor, phenomenology has had an on-off relationship with
psychology—especially with regard to first-person perception. What appears
to us, Brentano claimed, comes from ourselves (1981). He had no explicit
focus on materials. Brentano aimed a rigorous philosophy building on knowl-
edge based on direct experience. Yet, like Ihde in his discussion of Husserl,
it is clear that Brentano rarely included his own use of technologies in his
introspections. Furthermore, he was criticized because empirical data came
through an introspection of his own first-person perspective, not through
the psychological experiments from a third-person point of view that later
came to define psychology. For Brentano what mattered was the precision of
the descriptions following introspection. A descriptive psychology differed
from a genetic psychology in so far as it did not ask about how phenomena
appeared, but rather what appeared. Through this methodology, Brentano
explored the difference between physical and mental phenomena, and intro-
duced the concept of intentionality. Mental phenomena, he argued, spring
from “inner consciousness” and are intentionally directed at physical objects.
Mental phenomena are “only perceived in inner consciousness, while in the
case of physical phenomena only external perception is possible” (Brentano,
1981, p. 91).
Brentano was a singular person scrutinizing his own perception of (basi-
cally any) objects in his own lifeworld. With a non-materialist psychological
approach, the ontological problem for Brentano and his followers remained
how humans experience mental phenomena that correspond to physical
objects in their surroundings—some of which are graspable while others are
abstract, such as an emotion, a nation-state, or a fantasy figure.
 Studying the Telescopes of Others 245

Brentano and his notion of intentionality, splitting the world into an

introspecting subject and an objective physical world, inspired the phenom-
enological work of his student Edmund Husserl. The awareness of our own
experience followed by methodological principles for investigating first-
person experiences remained the pivotal point in phenomenology.
Husserl contributed with variational analysis which is still used by post-
phenomenologists, albeit in new ways (e.g., Don Ihde, Galit Wellner, Marie-
Christine Nizzi). Through a rigorous exploration of material objects in his
lifeworld (like apple trees), Husserl wanted to find the objects’ essential fea-
tures. In postphenomenology, the method of variational analysis is built on a
pragmatic, anti-essentialist “nonfoundational and nontranscendental phenom-
enology which makes variational theory its most important methodological
strategy” (Ihde, 1993, p. 7). The empirical material for variational analysis
appears in many forms. It can be drawings like in Ihde’s Experimental
Phenomenology (1977/1986), cultural media representations like in Nizzi’s
study of bodies in science fiction movies (2015), or historical documents and
experiences like in Wellner’s study of mobile phones (2015). Postphenom-
enological variational analysis also includes an interest in the multistability
of physical objects: how variational patterns can be found in “the idea that
any technology can be taken up in different meaningful ways for different
purposes in different contexts” (Rosenberger, FOS), and that humans develop
different solutions to the same problems (Ihde, 2016, p. 112).
The Husserlian methodological notion of epoché has received less atten-
tion in postphenomenological explorations of technology. Nevertheless,
both this classical approach and variational analysis are important for
postphenomenological studies of other people’s relations to technologies.
Epoch, in Greek, means to “hold back,” or “a cessation.” In phenomenology,
it means a suspension of judgment where the philosopher tries to “bracket
off” all cultural, social judgment of a given object to let its pure being and
essence appear (Husserl, 1931). This is—as also noted by Husserl—not an
easy task. Following his former teacher Brentano, he develops the notion of
intentionality tied to epoch—that is, exploring how we are directed at inten-
tional objects. In epoch, these objects are explored through an act of pure
consciousness suspending all cultural and social normative assumptions of
why we are directed at this particular object—all in order to find its pure
essence.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2002) grounds the immaterial body of the Hus-
serlian subject, giving it not just a body in a lifeworld, but a world-horizon
where things emerge on a background of an ambiguous and indeterminate
horizon, which is constantly moving in an intersubjective space. Therefore,
I see Merleau-Ponty as an intermediary figure in bringing phenomenology
to postphenomenology by including the intersubjectivity of mediational
processes.
246 Cathrine Hasse

Phenomenology has, since Husserl, acknowledged that our everyday expe-

riences of the lifeworld may differ with normative and cultural perceptions.
Phenomenology has, as yet, not been fully exploited methodologically. How
does our engagement with technologies, even the same technologies, become
so varied? What is the process? It seems, as Ihde is also hinting at in his dis-
cussion on Husserl (Ihde, 2016), that learning plays an important part.
There is more to say about phenomenological methodologies—for instance,
about Heidegger’s contributions—but for my discussion, here, these few
examples of phenomenological methodologies will do. From Brentano and
Husserl to Verbeek and Ihde, phenomenology has come a long way and there
have been several important methodological developments. The discussion
remains of what can be gained by studying the experiences of other people
and their relations to technologies in practice, and how these postphenom-
enological methods of study differ from classical phenomenological work.

PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION

My own answer to this question is that through participant observation we

engage in learning what matters to others. I have elsewhere argued that
though participant observation is informed by theories, the relevance of the
theoretical field may change when we engage as learners in the empirical field
(Hasse, 2015, p. 33).
The moment we begin to study people’s actual practices, our understand-
ing of their relationship with technology changes, when we learn how prac-
tices and technologies entangle each other. Postphenomenology has opened
for such empirical studies (Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015, p. 31), making it
possible to explore why participant observation is so important for a philoso-
phy of technology.
Philosophy of technology has often focused on the very general impact of
technology, which has sometimes amounted to a very technophobic analysis
(see, for instance, discussions on Heidegger’s dystopic technology analysis).
Postphenomenology makes another argument: we should follow pragmatism
and look to practices (Ihde, 2016, p. 111). I add another dimension: look at
other people’s practices. Here participant observation (possibly combined
with interviews) is the most apt method.
Participant observation has many advantages and some disadvantages. It is
a method often tied to anthropology, where it was developed as a reaction to
the information-gathering taking place in the colonies held by Western Euro-
pean countries. Here, the Western European regimes needed as much infor-
mation as possible about the local populations they’d imposed their regimes
upon; and to that end, they made use of missionaries. These missionaries were
 Studying the Telescopes of Others 247

“armchair” anthropologists. They were challenged by who was later known

as the father of participant observation, the Polish-British social anthropolo-
gist Bronislaw Kaspar Malinowski. During the First World War, he was more
or less kept away from his institute at London School of Economics. He spent
the years from 1915 to 1918 on the Trobriand Islands, where he developed
field methods based on intensive participant observation—a method which he
himself described like this:

The anthropologist must relinquish his comfortable position in the long chair
on the veranda of the missionary compound, Government station, or planter’s
bungalow, where, armed with pencil and notebook and at times with a whisky
and soda, he has been accustomed to collect statements from informants, writes
down stories, and fills out sheets of paper with savage texts. He must go out into
the villages, and see the natives at work in gardens, on the beach, in the jungle;
he must sail with them to distant sandbanks and to foreign tribes, and observe
them in fishing, trading, and ceremonial overseas expeditions. Information must
come to him full-flavored from his own observations of native life, and not be
squeezed out of reluctant informants as a trickle of talk. . . . Open-air anthro-
pology, as opposed to hearsay notetaking, is hard work, but it is also great fun.
(Malinowski, 1954/1926, pp. 146–147)

Anthropological methodology booms with literature about what it means

to do participant observation, also in new media settings, for instance. What
is important for my discussion here is that participant observation entails
close attention to technologies and the consequences they have when people
engage with them. Anthropologists are in a constant state of cultural epoch, in
that what they took for granted is constantly challenged, and assumed norma-
tivity is decomposed. Cultural epoch does not detect “essence,” but cultural
variation and surprises. Even a skilled anthropologist, like Colin M.Turnbull
who kept coming back to study the Mbuti Pygmies in Central Africa (1983),
always learns new things. Turnbull learned by participant observation, which
means to follow people and sometimes engage in doing what they do, to
learn what matters. That is why a good anthropologist like Turnbull does not
take anything for granted. When he walked in the woods after many years
among the Mbuti he noticed leaves “lying oddly on the trail” (Turnbull, 1983,
p. 119). For a first time visitor, there would be noting strange about leaves
on a trail in the jungle. For Turnbull, the now familiar sight of leaves that
he had learned to share with the Mbuti made him aware that something was
wrong. Some leaves had a hole near the end, some were pierced horizontally
and some a hole in the middle. Because Turnbull became aware, he began to
notice other oddities like the interval of leaf heaps. Only then he began to ask
questions. It turned out that a war was coming and the leaves were a means
of telling who were friends or foes. Participant observation provides us with
248 Cathrine Hasse

questions we did not know we would ask. It strips us of cultural self-evidence

to provide us with new normativities of others.
From a postphenomenological point of view, participant observation
opens for new questions when we study actual human-technology relation-
ships—also in our own familiar cultures. The Danish project Technucation
challenged many of our assumptions about technology use and its conse-
quences in practice (see www.technucation.dk). By following teachers and
nurses around in hospitals and schools, we gained many insights that go
beyond what people say they do when they engage with technologies; partly
because it is really hard to put into words how your daily engagements with
technologies are constantly changing, when they turn out to have unex-
pected consequences (Hasse & Wallace, 2014). The material artifacts—like
thermometers, black boards with chalk, or tablets—that may seem familiar
to the Western participant observer in Western settings gradually gain a
new meaning for the researcher when s/he follows people in their practices
(Hasse, 2015).
This was also the case when, in 1996, I enrolled as a physics student to
follow the students around in classes and excursions to find out how and
where the transformation from “student of physics” to “a physicist” took
place. There is much to be said of this strenuous journey, eventually taking
me from the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen to CERN in Switzerland and
La Sapienza in Italy. My learning experiences among physics students began
with lectures on, among others, Galilei at an old observatory in the island
of Zealand. Here, we were to learn about astronomy and were introduced to
the red and white Brorfelde Schmidt Telescope. I went there with a group of
other students: Leonardo, Jacob Z., Viggo, Jon, Ingolf, Line, Allan, and many
others from my class. In all, 23 students and 2 teachers. We are told that the
Schmidt telescope is now obsolete, just like the small refraction telescopes
used by Galilei in professional astronomy. Once, the Schmidt telescope was
the pride of the astronomy department, but now observations can be made
much better at La Silla Observatory in Chile, with their many advanced digi-
tal telescopes like the ESO New Technology Telescope (NTT). This is more
than just relegating the relics to the dust heap of history. It also marked an
identity shift from the hands-on work, which many physicists took pride in,
to the new age of computer data. For the teachers, and some of the students,
the shift from the “modern” technology of refracting telescopes to the “post-
modern” imaging technologies (Ihde, 2016, p. 114) had removed a romantic
aura from astronomy.
Once, it was a mark of nobility to be a skillful observer managing tele-
scopes “the hard way,” one of the teachers told us. She explained how stu-
dents in her time had to sit for several nights in thermal-suits belonging to
the then unheated observatory, and how they felt like the Danish astronomer
 Studying the Telescopes of Others 249

Tyco Brahe, whom they were told made his observations night after night,
rubbed in seal fat. Later, a small computer room was built where we sat now.
It had heating and showed pictures of the CCD photographs now part of the
Schmidt telescope. Some showed the rings of Saturn, which we would later
analyze through the method of spectrometry. Our teacher did not conceal his
opinion that, for them, a real astronomer is one who knows how to handle a
proper telescope like Galilei’s, which will refract the light through a series of
finely ground glass lenses. They also let us try some of these, and like Ihde’s
guests in Vermont, we had to learn to adjust our bodies and the technology
to be able to see anything at all (Ihde, 2016, p. 30). Some students were dis-
appointed that we could not see the fantastic colorful images of nebulas and
galaxies from the pictures displayed in books. Viggo complained about hav-
ing to learn about these old fashioned instruments, when we know they are
of no value to astronomy any longer. Jacob, on the other hand, was keenly
interested. He argued that we need to know the basics before we move to
more refined instruments. He added that the colorful nebulas are second order
reproductions anyway (just in line with Ihde’s postphenomenological work
on imaging technologies).
We all had difficulty “seeing” through the refraction telescopes at first, but
we learned how to adjust the flickering lights and not to let our vision through
the telescope focus on objects too close to the horizon to avoid the distur-
bances of the Earth’s atmosphere. After a while, we had all learned Galilei’s
obsolete technique on how to be moon gazing. The telescopes at Brorfelde
mediate more than the sight of the mountains of the Moon, however. They
mediate an initiation rite into the tribe of astronomers imbued with mystique
and awe of the skills of what may become our founding fathers. The mes-
sage from our teachers was clear: the work of a scientist is hardship and the
telescopes are a reminder of the hardship you have to endure. This is part and
parcel of becoming an astronomer even if most of the work today takes place
in front of a computer analyzing images.
The telescope lessons in astronomy did mediate a new world for me
as well as for my fellow students. My understanding of the meaning of
a “star” changed as I saw the many galaxies I had taken to be stars. In
astronomy class, I not only learned about the different size classes of stars
and to decode their spectrum lines, I also learned that all stars are potential
solar systems surrounded by exoplanets and some of these might be just
like our earth, and it would be a major new contribution to physics to find
such exoplanets (this was in 1996—since then many have been found). The
telescope thus enhanced my perception of the starry sky even when I was
not looking into the instrument. I also learned that the meaning of “know-
ing the instruments by heart” was part of what was recognized as a “real
physicist.”
250 Cathrine Hasse

LEARNING TO ALIGN

Husserl’s Galilei did not have a telescope, and that led Husserl to overlook
important aspects in his critique of Galilei as a mainly mathematically ori-
ented scientist, Ihde argues (2016). Ihde shows that the telescope of Galilei
was pivotal for the development of his theories and should be part of a
phenomenological analysis. Participant observation of the telescopes of oth-
ers teaches us something more. Galilei and Husserl lived in their respective
cultural lifeworlds (ecologies), where technologies and meaning-making
entangled what was kept and what was discarded.
Because I learned with the physics students, I was not the isolated sub-
ject of Brentano, studying myself introspectively. Participant observation
placed me in a constant position of epoch; not in relation to finding essence,
but new possible variations from a cultural point of view. Nothing can be
taken for granted, as the following example will show. When we got back
from the Brorfelde excursions we had to make a spectroscopy analysis of
the rings of Saturn. I came to my fieldwork with the clear understanding
that physics was about being exact and precise in measurements. Much
like Husserl, I believed that scientists learned a rigorous and mathematical
approach to the forces of nature; whereas, in fact, this learning is embedded
in a wider lifeworld.
In the process of learning, positioned as a student among students, I learned
many new words belonging to a student world of slang (such as GT, which
turned out to refer to the Danish beer Gold Tuborg). I also learned new mean-
ings of already known words connected to the world of students. One exam-
ple of this is the word “exact” which was used by the teacher and textbooks
just as I expected it to be. They told us to be “exact” in our measurements.
What participant observation does is to challenge and sometimes strip you of
normative assumptions to let you see things as they really are when people
engage with technologies and each other.
This was the case when, sometime after our excursion to Brorfelde, we
were asked to analyze the rings of Saturn using Doppler spectroscopy. This
is a method for detecting variation in the color of the light emanating from
space objects in movement. As the rings move closer towards Earth, the
spectrum of the rings are turning bluish; and as they move away, the specter
turns reddish following their respective wavelengths. Using a ruler, we were
to measure by millimetres the variations found in the Saturn spectrogram, an
image constituted from a diameter cut through Saturn and its rings—where
the rings appeared as thin bands on either side of the wider middle band of the
planet itself. As I ventured into actually making exercises, I found that from
this position among the students, “exact” and “measurement” carried a new
meaning. If I had just looked at a movie of our measurement class exercise I
 Studying the Telescopes of Others 251

would have noticed a group of students occupied with measuring, occasion-

ally speaking a little or moving their bodies in the seats. Here I actually par-
ticipated, which gave a new meaning to the spectroscopy exercise. We were
sitting in the classroom side by side, each with a piece of paper measuring and
calculating individually. In an individual exercise, each student was asked
to measure as precisely as possible with our primitive rulers the distance
between dark lines symbolizing the variations of the rings.
What I gained from this participant observation was not a spectator’s
knowledge, but a pragmatic knowledge fraught with understanding of how
measuring matters for a physics student. We—including researchers studying
other people’s lifeworlds—do not learn just by activating a physiological sys-
tem, but by a continuous engagement with a world where each of our actions
has consequences for the next (Dewey, 1997, p. 208). Participant observa-
tion entails learning the consequences of actions in situated practices. As
an active engaged participant, we learn to pay attention as we learn to think
with the new meanings of material artifacts (Hasse, 2015), and the attention
we obtain becomes “a mode of participation, valuable in the degree in which
it is effective. It cannot be the idle view of a spectator” (Dewey, 1997, p.
210). Thus, attention is voluntary in so far it is connected to what we want
to obtain or avoid. It follows that if people have problems controlling their
voluntary attention when handling technologies and human-human relations
(e.g., concentrating on smartphone engagement or human-human conversa-
tion [Aagaard, 2015; Aagaard, this volume]), this problem is tied to a cultural
lifeworld.
What counts as effectiveness in this particular cultural setting, using ruler-
technology, is not to be taken for granted either. Rulers afford exact measure-
ment. The attention included, however, a social relation to the technology.
My position as a participant observer doing what the students did, placing
my body in the same position as theirs, taught me unexpected consequences
of the teacher’s demand for exact measurements. As an anthropologist among
physics students, I was, of course, nervous that I would not do the measure-
ments the right way. From time to time, I let my eyes wander to the guy next
to me to check my measuring up against his. I tried not to be too obvious
about how much I looked at his results, as I did not want to make too much
of a fool of myself. Then I noticed that the student next to me was also cast-
ing glances toward the person next to him—and from time to time adjusted
his own results according to what he saw. To my surprise, I then noticed that
not only this guy, but also other students cast sidelong glances towards each
other’s work, and tried to adjust the measures to what they saw or heard—
either by measuring again or simply by adding some numbers if they were too
far ahead. “Exact measuring” in this particular setting was not an individual
but a collective task. And I, by my active engagements with the task and
252 Cathrine Hasse

instruments at our disposal, became part of an evolving collective conscious-

ness of what being a physicist entails. Later interviews confirmed, together
with other episodes, that many students had a fear of appearing “stupid” in
the eyes of their fellow students, and thus made an effort to adjust whatever
measurements they were getting to not stand out. In other words, they aligned
their exactness using the ruler, with the normative culture of physics. The
demand for individual exact measuring was overruled by the demand for
presenting yourself as not too far from the others’ results. Later participant
observations among the academic staff at physics departments showed that
tendencies to social alignment could also be found among the educated physi-
cists. Their fields of attention did not only include the technologies and what
they mediated. Mediation took place in a lifeworld which, as claimed by Hus-
serl (1970), was very much a part of their scientific activity. Their attention
was aimed at a future as physicists, which should not be hampered because
their measurements were out of line.

STUDYING VARIATION IN MEDIATION

Why is participant observation such an important postphenomenological

approach? Postphenomenological work always works from an empirical
basis. After all, most postphenomenological analysis is based on analysis of
very mundane technologies and investigations of how humans relate to such
technologies on a more or less generalized scale. Participant observation,
however, will enhance philosophical reflection by opening for new questions
pertaining to human-human-technology relationships. This focus on more
than a human experience or this human experience brings new dimensions to
the classical notion of epoch. Through participant observation, our assump-
tions about the self-evident ways humans and technologies amalgamate
and mediate subject-objects relations (Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015) are
challenged, and through learning, a transformed amalgamation take place. It
does not bring us to the essence, but brackets off our own normativity and
opens us for learning. This is not the same naïve belief that we can willfully
bracket off any cultural assumptions we have, like is sometimes claimed (see
Aagaard, this volume, for a discussion on van Manen). Cultural epoch does
not strip us of normativity, but transforms how we are normative. Learning
in other people’s lifeworlds moves us from the first-person perspective of
the investigator to a first-person-within-a-new-cultural-third-person perspec-
tive. Participation entails embedding and using your own bodily presence in
the lifeworld of others. This investment is not without consequences. I have
elsewhere written about the terrible feeling of loneliness, and the exclusion
and bullying that anthropologists have to endure while they try to find their
place in other people’s cultural ecologies (Hasse, 2015). What we gain is an
 Studying the Telescopes of Others 253

engaged learning process, where we, to some extent, come to share other peo-
ple’s fields of attention as well as their fields of awareness. This may include
an enhanced understanding of how technologies mediate new visions—like
when a telescope opens a near-far world of moon landscapes (Ihde, 2016),
or our world is reduced to the small square of a mobile phone (Rosenberger,
2012). It also includes how human-human engagements with technologies
entail learning new identities, passing through initiation rites, and including
past and future expectations.
The important insight of participant observation for postphenomenology
is that it is of equal importance how we see with technology as what we
see with technology. The relation we have with telescopes, with mobile
phones and tablets, the brands we prefer, reveal something about us to
other people. Participant observation is a good way to obtain insights into
the non-functional aspects of technologies. The way people choose and
handle technologies can have a quality of what the science historian Mario
Biagioi once named sprezzatura, after an Italian handbook in courtship.
This courtly nonchalance aims at showing, through exterior signs, that
you are one of the “chosen” (Biagioli, 1993, p. 51). According to Biagioli,
it was this sprezzatura that earned Galilei the heart of his protectors, the
Medici family. Galilei, as also noted by Ihde, never convinced the local
Jesuits of the importance of his discoveries because they refused to see
moon mountains or Jupiter’s moons as anything other than specks in the
lenses. The Medici, however, fell for his witty and eloquent presentations
of the telescopic way of perception; both because it made visible what was
far away in their mundane world of entertainment, and because it displayed
the mountains of the Moon. As a “marvellous trick,” the telescope, and with
it Galilei, gained an identity as a real courtier having sprezzatura. Many
new technologies today seem imbued with an ability to mediate just that
kind of right identity that is going beyond functionality to tell stories about
who we are, should be, and want to be. Jacob places himself as one of the
future-physicists-to-be through his acknowledgment of the hardship tied to
using refraction telescopes (and knowledge of imaging technologies). He
possesses this quality of sprezzatura, whereas Viggo does not. Participant
observation can pick up such fine-grained insights. This, again, enhances
our capability to do the variational analysis that Ihde has deemed the pivotal
landmark of postphenomenological analysis (Ihde, 2016, p. 111).
Placing my own body among physics students was not a static relation
with technologies. As Rosenberger notes “the deeply situated character of
any given postphenomenological analysis” (2014, p. 385), participant obser-
vation makes a difference in so far as it, for all its problems, opens for a
situatedness of what matters in other people’s lifeworlds. Telescopes never
had a “thing-ness,” like Ihde notes they had for Husserl (Ihde, 2016, p. 25),
but were always tied to local and specific practices that transformed what and
254 Cathrine Hasse

how technologies mediate. The telescopes at Brorfelde mediated not just a

“near-far” world of the Moon, but in a very basic way, mediated the identity
of being a scientist. These telescopes connected us with the past, and thereby
the future, of physics. The ruler used in the Doppler-experiment mediated not
just measurements of the rings of Saturn, but together with the social con-
sciousness of “not being a fool,” it also mediated ways of being an “exact”
physicist. I learned and kept learning to become part of a forming collective
consciousness of physics students. Though interviews revealed that teachers
expected students to be exact, participant observation showed me that there
is a social adjustment to how you relate to instruments.

STUDYING MULTISTABILITIES

Not everyone adjusted and aligned to the demands of the cultural ecology.
Like Viggo, some students did not find astronomy as colorful as expected
and left within the first year of study. Jacob Z. stayed on, not just because
of his relation to the instruments as functional tools, but because he grasped
their significance to the identity of a physicist. This process of inclusion and
ejection from the physics institute was not just about telescopes. It was about
diversity in how technology-human-human relations were stabilized for
some students in ways that were not shared by others. Thus, the mediation
of technologies was not a homogeneous collective process but revealed the
complexity of the processes of stabilization.
This insight from participant observation can open for new questions into
the processes behind stabilization processes, and thus expand the concept of
multistability in postphenomenology. Multistability in postphenomenology
covers several types of stabilizations. Rosenberger notes that multistability
highlights two points:

(1) multiple relations to a technology are always possible, and (2) this potential
is at the same time limited by the technology’s materiality, i.e., the particulari-
ties in its physical composition. In this terminology, an individual stable relation
to a technology is known as a stability and also as a variation (these two terms
are deployed interchangeably in this literature). (Rosenberger, 2014, p. 377)

Multistability is both the historical variation of the formation of tech-

nologies serving the same purpose (as when we can observe hundreds of
solutions to making a “fishhook” in the Oxford-based museum Pitt Rivers).
Camera obscura variations, and bow-under-tension that becomes a musical
instrument, are only some of the examples taken up by postphenomenolo-
gists (Ihde, 2016, p. 129). These kind of sweeping time-space studies of a
variety of stabilizations over time are not necessarily helped by participant
 Studying the Telescopes of Others 255

observations. The method of participant observation is, however, excellent

in exploring how human-human-technology relations vary with local prac-
tices—even when the technology could be seen as “the same.” This is not
just about using the telescope as a paperweight. We find variation in how
human meaning-making is co-constitutive of technologies. The variational
analysis of multistabilities is tied to the exploration of how the “same” arti-
fact may be perceived differently. Again Ihde leads the way in experimental
phenomenology, exploring, for example, how the duck-rabbit can be seen
as a Martian (Ihde, 2016, p. 112). This is a single human exploring doodles
experimentally. The work by Rosenberger on subway benches moves
closer to a study of variation in human-human-technology relations. Here,
we find the argument that “a technology can be used for multiple purposes
through different contexts” (Rosenberger, 2014, p. 369), and that subway
benches can be used by passengers for sitting, and by homeless people for
sleeping. Anthropological studies have shown through participant observa-
tion, that for homeless people, finding sleeping places has salience, and
that they and police officers have very different views of the surrounding
artifacts—including subway benches (Spradley, 1970). Participant observa-
tion can make us aware that when we move from first-person perspective to
third-person perspective, we find diversity in how humans and technologies
entangle themselves in meaning-making processes in practice. This is the
case in Rosenberger’s study of subway benches. The passengers perceive
the benches’ potential for sitting, while the homeless perceive the benches’
potential for sleeping. By taking the position of the homeless, visiting and
learning from them, Rosenberger came to see benches with separate seats
as “non-sleeping” benches, like a homeless person might do (Rosenberger,
2014).

CONCLUSION

In science and technology studies, the new materialist turn has increasingly
made researchers focus on nonhumans—spanning animals, rocks, plants, and
man-made materials—in a new vibrant vitalism, exploring a universe of relat-
ing bodies. Postphenomenology holds a special position on this new theoreti-
cal Parnassus in insisting that the first-person perspective of the researchers
is taken into account. No matter how fruitful it may be to speculate about a
world as it unfolds without any humans to perceive it, we need to take our
relational processes of becoming, perceiving, and theorizing about things into
account.
As noted by Verbeek: “In order to develop a full understanding of pro-
cesses of mediation, we should not only study ‘what things do’ (cf. Ver-
beek, 2005) but also how humans give meaning to these mediations—both
256 Cathrine Hasse

empirically and conceptually” (Verbeek, 2016, p. 190). These humans, I have

argued, are first of all learners involved in a process ontology, changing their
material-social world as they engage with it. The category of humans must,
by necessity, include the theorizing researchers and their changing percep-
tions of their world. When researchers learn as they engage in the worlds of
collective others (like physicists and other telescope users), the researchers’
ontological world perceptions may change as well. Participant observation
opens for studies of how technologies become multistable when perceived
as meaningful by humans, whom they impact in ways that have different
consequences for human practices and material stabilities. Postphenomeno-
logical studies “typically investigate how, in the relations that arise around a
technology, a specific ‘world’ is constituted, as well as a specific ‘subject’”
(Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015, p. 31). Physics students are formed by the
technologies they learn to engage with, and they are formed by each other.
They become a collective subject, and we, as participant observers, can fol-
low them part of the way.
I am not proposing that postphenomenological philosophers should now
share the benches of homeless people at night, nor that they should try to pose
as “real” physicists. Yet, I do propose that studying how technologies mediate
in varied ways also means that some kind of normative relation with tech-
nologies is formed; this occurring as a learning process takes place through
engagement with technologies, which transforms the phenomena and aligns
them with the lifeworld where they matter.
This learning process should entail more than just the human-technology
relations, so thoroughly explored by Ihde and Verbeek. It should also include
the human-human cultural diversity that can be further explored through
participant observation.

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 Index

actor-network theory (ANT), xxii, 4–5, case studies. See empirical studies
7, 9–11, 15, 18, 19, 67–68, 153, classical phenomenology, vii–ix,
177–79, 183–87, 188, 194, 220, xii–xvi, 5, 12, 174–77, 200,
227 204–7, 217–18, 219–23, 228,
alterity relations, xviii, xxi, 6, 33, 37, 241–46
41, 65, 73, 75, 87, 125–27, conversational analysis, 7
130–34, 137–42, 175 cultural variability, xxiii, 217, 221
amplification/reduction, xv–xvi, xviii, data immersion, xxii, xxiii, 200, 203,
xix, 6, 17, 27, 35, 38, 74, 87, 90, 206–7, 210
99, 132
anthropology, x, xii, xvii, xxi, 104, 113, Descartes, René, xx–xxi, 104, 110–115,
125–144, 151, 161–63, 176, 177, 208;
217, 220, 241, 243, 246 camera obscura, xxi, 103–118;
architecture, xxii, 172, 173, 190, 192, Cartesian dualism, viii, 53, 68, 104,
195n2 112–113, 116, 160, 220–22, 227,
astronomy, viii, ix, 248, 249, 254 252;
attention, xviii, xix, 6, 13–14, 20, 29– on the self and freedom, xxi, 104,
31, 33, 35–36, 40, 45–59, 90, 95, 110, 112, 115, 208
207, 210, 243, 251–53
ecologies. See lifeworlds
background relations, xix, 6, 29–30, embodiment relations, xiv–v, xviii–xxiii,
39–41, 56, 65, 73, 75, 87, 91, 5–7, 35, 40, 45, 65–66, 73–75,
115, 126, 174–75, 203 79, 87–88, 98, 126, 130, 137–38,
body one/body two, xv, 11, 66, 70, 140, 174–75, 184, 195n1, 218–23,
75–76 226, 231
breakdown, xiv, xviii, 4, 10, 18–19, 37, empirical, xvi–xxiii, 21, 37–38, 45–48,
53, 164 51, 54–58, 83, 93, 97, 125–26,
Brentano, Franz, xiii, 204, 244–46, 152, 147, 163, 223, 226, 242,
250 244–45;

259
260 Index

empirical turn, viii, x, xvi–xvii, lifeworld, 202;

xx, xxiii, 4, 83, 126, 200–202, Technology, xvi–xvii;
219–22, 229 things, xiv, 5, 13;
studies, xi, xvii, xvii–xxiii, 4, 5, 7, ready-to-hand (Zuhandenheit)/
8–15, 18, 21, 38, 45–48, 54–58, present-at-hand (Vorhandenheit),
65–67, 76, 83–89, 91, 115, xiv, 6, 8, 19, 29, 164
157–59, 176, 178, 200–201, hermeneutic relations, xxii–xxiii, 6, 18,
207, 210, 222, 246, 252; 29, 55, 65, 73–75, 87, 91, 126,
epoché, xiii, xviii, xxiii, 17, 55, 200– 137, 174, 184, 186, 219, 225,
201, 211, 245, 247, 250, 252; 228–29
epoché-reduction, xviii, 4, 6, 12, hermeneutics:
17–21. cultural, 151, 153, 156, 159, 160,
See also Husserl, Edmund 164–65, 226;
essences, xiii, xv, xvi, 6, 17, 37, 46, 87, digital, 201–3, 210, 220, 232–35;
127, 162, 176, 187, 204, 223, 245, material, xv, xxi, 126–31, 223,
247, 250, 252. 229–35
See also Husserl, Edmund human extension, xv, 6, 8, 73, 88, 138,
ethics, x, xii, xxii, 53, 58–59, 103, 139, 217, 219, 229.
194–95, 226; See also amplification/reduction
of attention, 46, 57–58; human-technology-world relations,
ethical turn, 202; vii, xi–xxiii, 3–7, 33, 40, 57–58,
technoethics, xxii–xxiii, 153–54, 65–68, 70, 73–75, 79, 83, 85,
199–213, 229, 233, 235 87, 89–92, 125–26, 151–57, 160,
ethnography, ix–x, xii, xvii–xx, 10, 162–63, 165, 174–75, 183, 195n1,
15–16, 21, 27–28, 38, 40–41, 48, 200, 221, 224, 228–29, 242–43,
84, 89, 94, 98 246, 248, 252, 255–56
Husserl, Edmund, viii, xiii–xiv, 5–6,
free will, xx–xxi, 103–18, 184 54–55, 163, 176, 201–202, 204,
fusion relation, 75, 175 208, 219–225, 232, 241–42,
245–46, 250, 252;
gestalt. See stability epoché, xiii, 55, 223, 245;
essences, xiii, xv, xvi, 6, 176, 204;
habit, xv, 6, 49, 51, 107, 117–18, 180, intentionality, xiii, 5, 219;
184, 232, 236n1 lifeworld (Lebenswelt), 163, 202, 246;
Heidegger, Martin, viii, xii, xiv, on things, xiii;
xvi–xvii, 5–6, 13, 18–19, 29, variational method, 5, 6, 99, 224
38, 41n2, 48, 52–53, 55, 142n1,
144n17, 161, 163–64, 195n1, Ihde, Don, xiii, xviii, 3, 65–68, 93,
201–2, 210, 217, 220, 222, 228, 99n2, 126, 128, 151–55, 159–65,
246; 174–76, 195n1, 202–6, 210,
Being, 5, 52, 202; 217–19, 230–31, 241–42, 249,
body, 144n17, 195n1; 250, 253, 255, 256;
breakdown, xiv; cultural instruments, 151, 154, 217;
equipment (Zeug), 29, 41; as distinct from classical
Heidegger’s hammer, 6, 10, 18, 19, phenomenology, xvi, 5–6, 37,
21, 161, 163–64, 174–75, 195n1; 176, 219–22, 241, 244–46;
 Index 261

embodiment, xv, 11, 66, 70, 73, 75, 223–24, 230, 232–34, 242–46,
79, 88, 144n17, 222, 226; 250–54
epoché and reductions, 17–18;
hermeneutics, 230–35; materiality, viii, x, xiii–xvi, xix, xxii,
I-technology-world, xviii, xx, xxi, 5, 7, 9–13, 19, 20, 27, 29, 33,
3–9, 65, 67, 73–74, 87, 126, 160, 37, 38, 412n, 55, 76, 140, 175,
174; 182–83, 187, 226, 230, 231, 235,
mediation, xvi, 68, 90, 111, 174, 245, 253–55
227, 229; mediation, viii–ix, xv–xvi, xviii, xix,
multistability, xv–xvi, 28, 37, 57, 76, xxii, xxiii, 8, 27, 29, 40, 45,
223; 53–54, 68, 87, 90, 92, 103, 110,
on the self, 13–14, 98, 111; 111, 116, 126–27, 130, 132,
transparency, xiv, 20, 29. 141–42, 153, 160, 171, 174, 199,
See also body one/body two; 200–13, 222–23, 228–29, 243,
perception; program one; 252–56
variational analysis Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, vii–viii,
immersion relations, 175 xiv–xv, 5, 13–14, 17, 19–20, 48,
inscription, viii, xxii, 33, 128, 179, 182, 75, 140, 144n17, 161, 195n1, 201,
188–89, 194 203, 204, 221, 223, 245–46;
instrumental realism, 126 lived body (corps vécu), vii, xiv–xv,
intentionality, vii–x, xiii, xvi, xxiii, 5, 5, 19–20, 75, 144n17, 195n1, 221,
51, 73–74, 98, 112, 203–5, 245.
219–20, 223, 227, 244–45 See also habits
interface, xxii–xxiii, 83–98, 126, methodology, vii–x, xi–xxiii, 4, 5–7,
182–87, 200, 211, 226, 232 9–11, 21, 37–41, 54–57, 65–66,
interrelationality. See relationality 76, 79–80, 83–85, 92–94, 103,
intersubjectivity, ix, xix, xx, 38, 56, 104, 110, 127, 130, 141–42,
83–85, 89–92, 94–98, 157, 176, 194, 201–2, 209–11,
245–46. 241–56;
See also objectivity; subjectivity; from anthropology, xii, 247;
transsubjectivity reflexivity, xix , 55–56;
validity, xix, xx, 56–57, 66, 76.
Latour, Bruno, 4, 5, 67–68, 143n5, See also ethnography
178–79, 183–85, 205, 241; methods, xii, xx, 4, 6–7, 9, 11–20, 21,
in dialogue with Verbeek, 153, 38–41, 67, 68, 130, 156, 176,
183–84; 199–200, 202, 207, 209, 211,
on phenomenology, 5; 222–23, 231.
relational ontology, 184; See also participant observation
scripts, 39–40. mirror effect, 133, 144
See also actor-network theory multistability, xi–xxiii, 6, 28, 40, 41n3,
learning, 3, 11, 47, 78, 136, 138, 158, 57–58, 75–76, 80, 153–54, 156,
211, 217, 231, 242–44, 246, 162, 165, 175–76, 180–82,
250–56 187–88, 194, 221, 222–24, 225,
lifeworlds, xii, xxi, 3, 4, 6, 7, 12, 13, 227, 231, 234, 245, 254–55
16–19, 37, 45, 58, 139, 142n1,
160, 162, 176, 199, 202, 204, 218, non-relation, xx, 75–78, 79
262 Index

objectivity, xiv, 227–29 the self, xvii, xix–xxi, xxiii, 4, 13–16,

observer’s self-alterity, xxi, 130–32, 21, 67–68, 103–5, 110–18,
134, 142 207–11, 241–42
situatedness, xvii, xxi, xxiii, 5, 11–13,
participant observation, xii, xxii, xxiii, 28, 38, 40–41, 41n3, 49, 56, 91,
9, 48, 157, 251–56 112–13, 134, 208, 210–11, 221,
perception, viii, ix, xvi, 5–7, 27, 38, 54, 234, 251, 253
73, 91–92, 95, 98, 125–36, 130, social construction of technology
132–33, 137–38, 139, 151–53, (SCOT), xxii, 10, 76, 177–78,
159, 160, 174–75, 184, 186–87, 180–82, 212
201–3, 206, 212–13, 221, 223, stability, xiii, xv–xvi, xix, xx, xxi, 6,
225–26, 227, 228–31, 234–36, 41n3, 46, 57, 65, 76, 80, 125,
242–44, 246, 249, 253, 256. 151, 160, 175–76, 179–80, 186,
See also body one/body two; 189–90, 194, 195nn2–3, 220, 224,
Cartesian dualism 254, 256;
philosophy of technology, xi, xvi–xvii, human instability, xxi, 152, 161–63,
xxiii, 7, 83, 91, 97, 126, 152, 157, 165;
161–62, 173, 177, 201, 205, 208, stabilization, 11, 41n3, 77, 175,
211–13, 217–19, 220–22, 235, 181–82, 254–55;
246 stable worlds, xxi, 151–52, 154, 156,
physics, xxii, xxiii, 127, 130, 132, 134, 162–65.
142, 248–56 See also multistability; variation
pragmatism, x, xvi, xxiii, 5, 11–13, 27, subjectivity, 93, 98, 111, 113–14, 200,
37, 40, 54, 55, 126–27, 174, 176, 208–9, 220–22, 227–29, 231–33,
182, 187, 202–4, 209, 211–13, 235
220–24, 227, 228, 229, 235, 243, subject-object dualism. See Cartesian
245, 246, 251 dualism; Descartes, René
praxis, viii, xxi, 135, 153–59, 164,
219–22, 226, 230, 234 technoethics. See ethics
program one, 152, 160–61, 163, 164–65. technological determinism, xvi, 6, 57,
See also human-technology-world 182, 200–1, 212, 217
relations technological style, xxi, 151, 154–56,
159–60, 164–65
quasi-other, 75, 125, 133, 140, 142, 175 technologies, vii, viii, xi, xiv, xvi, xix,
13–14, 19, 20–21, 27, 28, 40, 68,
ready-to-hand. See Heidegger 72, 74, 110, 125–26, 129, 132–42,
relationality, vii–x, xiii, xv, xviii, 5, 12, 151, 153, 164, 172, 174, 184, 189,
27, 68, 85, 98, 182–84, 221–24, 218, 219, 230, 241–43;
227, 255 blackboards, viii, ix, xviii, xix,
relational ontology. See relationality 13–14, 16, 28–33, 37, 39, 40,
41nn1–2, 248;
science and technology studies (STS), blind man’s cane, vii, 13–14, 161;
ix–x, xxii, 5, 89, 94, 156, 157, camera obscura, xxi, 103–18, 225,
171, 173, 177–89, 194–95, 204–6, 254;
221, 230, 242, 255 dental probe, 206;
 Index 263

digital technologies, ix, xviii, xix, technosphere, xxiii, 199, 200, 202–4,
3–4, 9, 28, 45–59, 65, 70–72, 77, 207, 209–13
92, 181, 203–13, 232–34, 242, things. See materiality
248; tools. See technologies
educational technologies, vii, viii, transfer of technology (TOT), xxi,
xviii–xix, 8, 37, 39; 152–64
feather, xv, 161; transparency, viii, xiv, xviii, xix, 28–29,
glasses, 73–74, 160, 174–75, 241; 33, 34, 39, 74, 116, 174–75, 184,
gun, xi, 184–85; 186, 195n1, 207, 210;
hearing aids, 242; quasi-transparency, viii, xviii, 29, 30,
imaging technologies, ix, xviii, 33, 38;
xix–xxi, 91, 103–18, 174, 223, revealing/concealing, xiii, xvi, 6,
230, 248, 249, 253; 19–20, 57, 88, 98, 131, 253
laptops, vii, ix, xviii, 3, 9, 14, 181, transsubjectivity, 139–42
219;
park benches, xxii, 179, 190–93, variational analysis, xiii, xviii, 6, 93,
195n2, 244, 255–56; 176, 223, 245, 253;
robotic technologies, xviii, xxi–xxii, variation, xii, xiii, xviii, 6, 11, 15,
41, 88, 125–44, 152–65, 233; 27, 38, 40, 57, 130, 176, 222–25,
self-tracking technologies, xix–xx, 226, 230, 231, 247, 250–55
69, 83–89, 98, 99n2; variational cross-examination, 6–7;
skatestoppers, xviii, xxii, 171–73, Verbeek, Peter-Paul, x, xi, xvi, 5–7, 9,
179–180, 183, 186, 187–88, 189, 11, 12, 21, 57, 67–68, 91, 110,
194; 126, 128, 151, 152–54, 157,
speed bumps, 39, 178–79, 185–86; 160–62, 174, 175, 180, 182–84,
telescopes, viii, ix, xxiii, 8, 91, 126– 205, 206, 211, 217–18, 220,
27, 132, 241–56; 226–30, 242, 246, 255–56;
ultrasound technologies, 206, methodology (with Robert
242–43; Rosenberger), 6, 12, 21, 93, 221,
writing instruments, vii–viii, 19–20, 226, 246, 252
86, 241
technoscience, viii, 126, 128, 129, 131, wall-window metaphor, xix, 45–47,
135, 141, 183, 220–24, 230 53–54
 List of Contributors

Jesper Aagaard is a research assistant and an assistant professor in the

Department of Psychology and Behavioural Sciences at Aarhus University,
Denmark. His research interests include philosophy of technology, media
technologies, technohabitual agency, attention, and presence. His recent
research includes a project on digital distraction, a qualitative analysis of
empirical studies of media multitasking, drawing on postphenomenology and
psychology.

Catherine Adams is an associate professor and associate chair of second-

ary education at University of Alberta, Canada. Drawing on links between
phenomenology, pedagogy, and philosophy of technology and media scholar-
ship, her research includes digital technology integration across in education;
ethical and pedagogical issues involving digital media in schools; socio-
material approaches to qualitative inquiry; computing science curriculum and
pedagogy.

Ciano Aydin is a professor of philosophy, head of the Department of Philos-

ophy, and vice dean of Education of the Faculty of Behavioural, Management
and Social Sciences at University of Twente and professor of philosophy at
Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. He writes on the phi-
losophy of technology with an interactionist perspective. His main research
focuses on issues related to identity and (information) technology.

Lasse Blond is a PhD fellow at School of Communication and Culture

at Aarhus University, Denmark, where he is affiliated with the Centre for
Science and Technology Studies (STS) and the interdisciplinary research
program Future Technology, Culture and Learning at the Danish School of

265
266 List of Contributors

Education (DPU). He is currently working on his dissertation about the trans-

fer of Korean social robots to Finland and Denmark.

Jan Kyrre Berg Friis is a course manager of theory of science at Copenha-

gen University. His main research areas are science and technology studies,
philosophy of science, perception studies, hermeneutics, and cognition. His
current research deals with the problem of perception in medicine, communi-
cation and diagnostization, and radiology and interpretation.

Michael Funk is a university assistant for philosophy of media and technol-

ogy at University of Vienna, Austria. His main research areas include ethics,
methodology, and epistemology of transdisciplinary research, like robotics
and biology. He is currently working on his PhD thesis which addresses the
methodology and epistemology of transdisciplinary research in social robot-
ics and paleoanthropology.

Cathrine Hasse is a professor of cultural anthropology and learning at Aar-

hus University, Denmark. She heads the research program Future Technol-
ogy, Culture and Learning at the Danish School of Education. She has written
on posthuman learning, postphenomenology, technological literacy, cultural
learning, roboethics, and organizational culture. Her recent research interests
include educational technology, physics sciences, and robotics.

Moa Petersén is an associate professor in the Division of Digital Cultures

and the Division of Art History and Visual Studies in the Department of Arts
and Cultural Sciences at Lund University in Sweden. Her research interests
include photography technology and human bodily self-understanding in
relation to technology.

Michel Puech is an associate professor of philosophy at Paris-Sorbonne

University, France. He has published numerous books and articles on the
philosophy of technology, the concept of the “sustainable,” and more broadly
on new value systems. His current work focuses on the notion of modern wis-
dom, combining philosophy of technology, applied ethics, and Asian schools
of thought.

Tobias Röhl is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Social Sci-

ences, University of Siegen, Germany. He is currently working on a research
project on breakdowns and disruptions in transport infrastructures. His
research interests include the sociology of knowledge and education, socio-
material practice, infrastructures, and science and technology studies.
 List of Contributors 267

Robert Rosenberger is an assistant professor in the School of Public Policy

at the Georgia Institute of Technology, teaching the philosophy of technol-
ogy and philosophy of science. In an ongoing series of papers, Rosenberger
investigates the experience of the use of imaging technologies in scientific
practice, with case studies in neurobiology and space science.

Kasper Schiølin is a senior research fellow with the Program of Science,

Technology & Society (STS) at Harvard University, where he works on a
project, funded by the Carlsberg Foundation, about new technologies and
the accompanying socio-technical imaginaries of human perfection, at both a
societal and an existential level.

Fernando Secomandi is an adjunct professor, coordinator of research, and

vice-coordinator of the Post-Graduate Program in Design at ESDI-UERJ
(Industrial Design College, Rio de Janeiro State University). His recent
research interests include interface design, service design, and the role of the
body in technological mediation.

Jessica Sorenson is a research assistant at the research program Future, Tech-

nology, Culture and Learning at Aarhus University, where she is involved in
a project that involves ethnographic studies of robot development in Europe.
She is currently researching ethical decision-making in a collaborative indus-
trial robotics project.

Oliver Tafdrup is a PhD fellow at the research program Future, Technology,

Culture and Learning at Aarhus University. His research interests include
studies of science and technology, IT and media, philosophy of technology,
educational technologies, and phenomenology. He is currently researching
the use of social robots in education.

Arun Tripathi is an independent research scholar at Central University

of Tibetan Studies in Sarnath, Varanasi, India. His main research areas are
philosophy of technology, intercultural perception, postphenomenology of
technological mediation, technology transfer, interface of human cognition
and technology, and pragmatism and hermeneutics.

Joni Turville is a PhD candidate at University of Alberta and works in

teacher professional development across Alberta. Her research interests are
diverse, ranging from educational technology to inclusive education. Her
current research examines the impact of digital technologies on pedagogical
relationships and communication in K-12 schools.