CONCEPT
Monotechnologism
The assumption that technology is singular—one correct developmental trajectory, all civilizations at different points along the same path.
Monotechnologism is Yuk Hui's diagnostic term for the condition in which one civilization's understanding of technology has been universalized so completely that it appears to be technology itself. It is not the dominance of one technology over others but the assumption that there is one and only one correct way to develop technology. Rooted in the European Enlightenment's positing of universal reason progressing through identifiable stages, reinforced by colonial encounters that took European technological superiority as proof of civilizational superiority, monotechnologism operates today through infrastructure rather than force. When the student in Lagos opens a laptop and launches an AI coding assistant, every available tool has been shaped by Western cosmotechnical assumptions. The student is not choosing to adopt those assumptions—the student is operating within a global infrastructure that has already made the choice.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Hui traces monotechnologism through three historical phases. The first was the colonial encounter—the sixteenth-to-nineteenth-century moment when European military-industrial power forced a choice: modernize according to the Western model or be conquered. China's ti-yong formula (体用)—Chinese