CONCEPT
Technical Culture
Simondon's proposal for a mode of understanding that grasps technical objects in their own terms while understanding their relationship to human individuation — neither purely technical nor purely humanistic, but genuinely integrative.
Something strange happened to the relationship between humans and machines in the eighteenth century. Not the invention of new machines — that had continued for millennia — but the invention of a new attitude: a cultural split that placed true meaning on the humanist side (art, literature, philosophy) and real progress on the technician side (engineering, industry, practical mastery), leaving the machine stranded between them as a cultural orphan. Simondon diagnosed this split as the central cultural pathology of modernity and proposed its remedy: the construction of a technical culture that would integrate knowledge of technical objects with understanding of human individuation. This is not more engineering education (which would simply create more technicians) or more humanistic critique (which would reinforce the split). It is a mode of relating to technology that understands technical objects as participants in the process of human becoming.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The split operates through a specific mechanism. The humanist treats the