CONCEPT
The Fishbowl as Apparatus
The Baradian transformation of Segal's fishbowl metaphor from an epistemological filter into an ontological apparatus that produces the phenomena it appears to merely disclose.
Edo Segal's fishbowl metaphor in You On AI describes the set of professional and cultural assumptions so familiar they become invisible — the water you breathe, the glass that shapes what you see. The standard reading treats the fishbowl as an epistemological filter: a pre-existing reality lies beyond the glass, the glass distorts it, and the task is to press your face against the glass to see what lies outside. Barad's framework transforms this metaphor. The fishbowl is not a filter on a pre-existing reality. It is an apparatus that produces the phenomena it discloses. Different fishbowls are not different views of the same world; they are different apparatuses producing different worlds.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Segal's metaphor works within a broadly empiricist epistemology: there is a reality out there, our assumptions distort our access to it, and intellectual courage consists in straining against our own limitations to glimpse what lies beyond. The scientist's fishbowl filters through empiricism, the filmmaker's through narrative, the