Steven Dorrestijn

The design of our own lives : technical mediation and subjectivation after Foucault

The design of our own lives is about how technology guides and changes us. The book brings together converging trends in design theory and philosophy of technology concerning the mutual adaptation of technologies and humans. The aim is to contribute to the understanding of the impact of technology on us, to consider how this knowledge can be applied in design practice, as well as to discuss ethical questions about behavior guiding design. The book begins by discussing the themes of user guiding and changing technology in relation to design for usability. Next, the project is compared to the tradition of socially engaged and utopian design. The central part sets out philosophical and ethical research on the interrelations between humans and technology. The work of the French philosopher Michel Foucault is of key importance to this study and is used for elaborating a framework of `technical mediation and subjectivation?. In this approach, technology is not set in opposition to human freedom and morality; rather coping with the influences of technology is seen as part of becoming a moral subject. The ethics of technology developed after Foucault focuses on care for the quality of our interactions and fusions with technology. Hybridization is central to the approach: it is not to be rejected, neither is it the greatest danger, but it does deserve the greatest care. We are called upon to care for the design of our own lives. The book contains a variety of examples. A case study about the RFID public transport e?paying system in the Netherlands (OV chip card), for instance, serves to illustrate how social and ethical aspects ? from usability to privacy and security issues ? can be assessed from the perspective of product impact on users.

The Care of Our Hybrid Selves: Ethics in Times of Technical Mediation

What can the art of living after Foucault contribute to ethics in relation to the mediation of human existence by technology? To develop the relation between technical mediation and ethics, firstly the theme of technical mediation is elaborated in line with Foucault’s notion of ethical problematization. Every view of what technology does to us at the same time expresses an ethical concern about technology. The contemporary conception of technical mediation tends towards the acknowledgement of ongoing hybridization, not ultimately good or bad but ambivalent, which means for us the challenge of taking care of ourselves as hybrid beings. Secondly, the work of Foucault provides elements for imagining this care for our hybrid selves, notably his notions of freedom as a practice and of the care of the self. A conclusions about technical mediation and ethics is that whereas the approaches of the delegation of morality to technology by Latour and mediated morality by Verbeek see technical mediation of behavior and moral outlook as an answer in ethics, this should rather be considered the problem that ethics is about.

The Uses of Reason in Times of Technical Mediation

The art of living idiom suits well a practice-oriented approach in ethics of technology. But what remains or becomes of the functioning and use of reason in ethics? In reaction to the comments by Huijer this reply elaborates in more detail how Foucault’s art of living can be adapted for a critical contemporary ethics of technology. And the aesthetic-political rationality in Foucault’s ethics is compared with Wellner’s suggestions of holding on to the notion of code but with a new meaning. Foucault’s fourfold scheme of subjectivation and a distinction of “below and above reason” structure the argument.

History, Philosophy, and Actuality of the Utopian View of Technology: On Pierre Musso’s Critique of Network Ideology

Steven Dorrestijn outlines the advantages of Musso’s contribution, putting together an essay on the utopian, dystopian or ambivalent interpretations of technical mediation, while developing a dual critique of Musso’s appropriation of the notions of ‘network’ and ‘utopia’. Dorrestijn sees the breadth of Musso’s historical perspective as its principal merit, in that it gives him an analytical advantage when it comes to discussing the issues surrounding technology today. Dorrestijn goes on to explain the origins and meaning of the notion of utopianism and describes the historical development of ideas which link technology and its social worth.