CONCEPT
Care (Stiegler)
Not sentiment but <em>practice</em> — the ongoing, never-finished work of attending to the pharmacological conditions of one's own and others' individuation within a technical milieu.
Care, in Stiegler's usage, is the practical discipline adequate to the pharmacological condition. It is not affection, sympathy, or emotional concern — though these may accompany it. It is the specific form of sustained attention required to manage the dual nature of technical objects across the duration of their use: to notice when remedy becomes poison, when flow becomes compulsion, when output outpaces understanding. Care is what the human organism is for in a world of technical objects whose pharmacology demands permanent management. It is also what contemporary capitalism systematically fails to provide institutional support for.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Stiegler developed the concept across Taking Care of Youth and the Generations (2008), where he argued that the destruction of attention by the cultural industries amounted to a crisis of care at civilizational scale. Without sustained attention, there is no care; without care, there is no knowledge, no skill, no relationship, no political community.
Applied to AI, the framework reveals that the question 'what is a human being for?'
Keep reading with YOU ON AI
Unlock the full book, 10,000+ field-guide entries, and a 1000+ thinker library. If you have a book code, register now — it takes a minute.