Technical Object

Western culture is profoundly alienated from its technical creations. This alienation takes two forms, and both are errors. The first reduces the technical object to a mere tool — a slave, an instrument, a thing with no significance beyond its utility. The second, seemingly opposite but structurally identical, elevates the technical object to a threat — a monster, a rival to human sovereignty. The technophobe and the technophile share the same mistake: both treat the machine as something fundamentally other than the human, something that must either be subordinated or feared. Simondon argued that technical objects have their own mode of existence — their own way of being in the world that cannot be reduced to human intentions or social functions. Understanding this mode of existence is the precondition for any adequate relationship with machines.