Focal Things and Digital Enframing. Archaeology's Webwork as Archaeolog Reaches 100 Posts
'A book in a room' - Three Landscapes
Philosophers of Technology are not a well established bunch. While they form even less of a ‘tradition’ of study in Europe, they do take their earliest progenitor to be the Continental thinker Martin Heidegger (Achterhuis 2001; Ihde 1983, 2005). It seems strange that thinking carefully about what stake technologies have in society should not have found earlier impetus. After all, tool-making has up until recently been synonymous with being human (classic summary in Mumford 1967). And as early as Plato, technological devices figured prominently in lessons on the ‘good life’, involving the role of techne (esp. in the Republic VII). The major reason appears to be that philosophy, no less than science, has on the whole been swept up with the instrumentalist rendering of technology; as the application side of scientific R and D (Scharff and Dusek 2003:3-6). The predominance of an analytic tradition in the UK and North America meant that technology fell through the cracks between epistemology and ethics, between how knowledge is obtained and how it should be used. Even the Continental tradition remained cast in Comte’s persuasive model of technology as applied science; though many had turned sour on Comte’s optimistic technoutopianism (Comte 1988).
This is why, in his characteristic irreverence, Heidegger bypasses well worn metaphysical trails and goes straight for the essence of technology (Harman 2007). (Well, ‘straight’ is definitely a matter of opinion given Heidegger’s abstruse writing.) He prompted us with the question of what is it to be in the midst of all of our technological doings (Heidegger 1977). Similar to Marx putting technology at center stage, yet developing neither a strong technological determinism nor a societal determination of technology, Heidegger’s character of technology is ambivalent. There is a mix of optimism and pessimism. There is the contrast between craftwork and modern, technologically assisted labour. In this romantic view, ‘traditional’ crafts gather together humans and nonhumans into meaningful activities. Borgman (1984:196) aptly terms these ‘events’ of craftwork focal things. Heidegger’s early discussion in Being and Time doesn’t, however, give us much to extrapolate from to our own modern, technologically immersed environments; who even has a jug laying about? When he expands his consideration of technological things in his later, famous essay, he does provide more contemporary examples of how modern technology turns everything to stone, so to speak (1977). Technology serves a cultural way of being that wills humans and things to be ‘standing reserves’, or causes, for manipulable ends (Feenberg 1999:183-4). This is technology as enframing, and contrary to craftwork this type of being with technology closes-down our insight into, or awareness of, the world around us. We will degenerate through this relation with technology into narcissistic controllers, hung up on the power of our subjectivity. I think there are interesting implications in Heidegger’s pessimistic depiction of technology which could usefully be expanded to the reign of ‘social' constructivism in the academy (Webmoor and Witmore 2008), as well as to pressing environmental and economic problems (these latter courses have, in fact, been suggestively pursued by ‘Deep Ecologists’ and ‘Buddhist Economists’; Naess 1973, Schumacher 1989).
I want to keep with thinking about technology, though, in view of our own dealings with new technology, and, specifically, the emergent role of new media for archaeologists. In fact, in view of what’s before your ‘window’ right now. Archaeolog has reached the milestone post of 100 contributions. This seems to be a most opportune time to reflect a bit on what sort of technology archaeolog is as a form of e-publication. Like Heidegger’s successors in the Philosophy of Technology, emergent digital media in archaeology is a relatively new phenomenon; its practitioners and ideas concerning its roles unconsolidated. It is an exciting time. Yet it is important to anticipate where mediǟrchaeology will go. We certainly have valuable signposts from both Heideggerian and reflexive archaeologists to encourage trailblazing these questions. So, do the mantras of ‘user generated’ and ‘user customization’ associated with new media really limn the narcissistic degeneration and auto-absorption that Heidegger pessimistically ascribed to modern technologies? Does it enframe in ‘Microsoft windows’ our relations with each other?; will we be left with virtual ‘de-worlds’? Or should we look to Heidegger’s later thought (1966) where he suggests that through a passive revolution we can attain a more positive, ‘free relation’ to technology? A relationship of distance which “will become wonderfully simple and relaxed” (1966:54). Later work in the Philosophy of Technology, especially that focused upon computing and internet technologies (Dreyfus 1979, 1999; Heim 1997; McCluhan 1966), seems to have incorporated Heidegger’s mixed message and oriented for a destination off-the-map combining ancient skepticism, Enlightenment optimism, and Romantic uneasiness (Mitcham 1990:32-33). E-publication in archaeology, and blogging more generally, has received just such a sort of mixed assessments.
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