Multistability (Ihde)

Multistability is Ihde's rejection of both technological determinism and pure social constructivism. A technology does not have one correct use dictated by its design, nor is it infinitely pliable in the face of cultural interpretation. It has a relational landscape — a range of configurations that its material properties make possible and that specific contexts of use actualize. The hammer can be a tool, a weapon, a sculpture, a doorstop; it cannot be a telescope. Multistability is the framework for thinking about this bounded variability. Applied to AI, the concept undergoes a transformation so extreme it tests its own coherence: a technology whose primary medium is language inherits language's effectively unbounded multistability, and the designer's intention becomes a diminishing fraction of the technology's actual relational life.