On his book Technosystem: The Social Life of Reason
Cover Interview of December 18, 2017
A close-up
Technosystem begins with a lecture that sums up much
of the argument in non-technical language. I use two illustrations to make my
points. A reader browsing the book would be amused by pages 9-12 where I
develop the argument around an Escher print and a cartoon from The New
Yorker. That would be a good starting point.
Escher’s Drawing Hands shows two hands drawing each
other. The circularity of the image is paradoxical. This illustrates the way in
which social groups in modern societies are formed around technical artifacts
and systems which their members modify as they work within them. We both shape
and are shaped by the technologies, the markets and the bureaucracies that
organize our social life. This is co-production.
But Escher’s print is the product of an artist who stands
outside the paradox he depicts. No one draws Escher as he draws Drawing
Hands. Is there an equivalent external position in the rational society?
Many think there is. The scientist, the engineer, the economist, the management
theorist, all appear to stand outside the system governed by the laws they
discover. This is the illusion of technology, the false belief that there is an
external place to stand from which to know and organize society. But society is
not a technical project. This is illustrated by the cartoon which I leave to
future browsers to discover.
Spontaneous generation is one of those wrong theories that clutter the basements of the biological sciences and that now look so very obviously wrong that it is hard to see how anyone could have taken them seriously in the first place. Why wouldn’t it occur to anyone that flies might be laying eggs that were too small for us to see? How simple would the crucial experiment be? What I have tried to do in much of my work is to turn this ‘obvious wrongness’ on its head—why, exactly, does it seem so obviously wrong?—and see what the new picture that emerges from that inquiry says about science and our belief in its results.Daryn Lehoux, Interview of November 13, 2017
It’s commonplace to say that humor is subjective, since what’s funny to you might not be funny to me. But humor is also a loaded concept. If you – or your people – have no sense of humor, or the wrong one, that means you’re less rational, tolerant, understanding, or civilized. You don’t get it. Or, worse, you lack something human. Modern Chinese debates about humor were very much caught up with these fundamental questions of value.Christopher Rea, Interview of October 26, 2016
A close-up
Technosystem begins with a lecture that sums up much of the argument in non-technical language. I use two illustrations to make my points. A reader browsing the book would be amused by pages 9-12 where I develop the argument around an Escher print and a cartoon from The New Yorker. That would be a good starting point.
Escher’s Drawing Hands shows two hands drawing each other. The circularity of the image is paradoxical. This illustrates the way in which social groups in modern societies are formed around technical artifacts and systems which their members modify as they work within them. We both shape and are shaped by the technologies, the markets and the bureaucracies that organize our social life. This is co-production.
But Escher’s print is the product of an artist who stands outside the paradox he depicts. No one draws Escher as he draws Drawing Hands. Is there an equivalent external position in the rational society? Many think there is. The scientist, the engineer, the economist, the management theorist, all appear to stand outside the system governed by the laws they discover. This is the illusion of technology, the false belief that there is an external place to stand from which to know and organize society. But society is not a technical project. This is illustrated by the cartoon which I leave to future browsers to discover.