MECM90041 Chap.5 Technics, Modernity and Cosmotechnics

Technics, Modernity and Cosmotechnics

Technics begins with exteriorisation: capacities become embodied in tools, signs and writing media. Modernity turns progress and growth into orientations that can make technical choice appear inevitable.

Enframing reveals beings as standing-reserve, while cosmotechnics and technodiversity challenge one universal trajectory.

Plasticity explains how a technical object is received through existing cultural practices and reorganises them.

Chapter guide expansion. · C5 · EXTERIORISATION CHAPTER 5 · PAGE 1 WEEK 3 · TECHNICS Technics begins with exteriorisation Natural and mental capacities take material form The week-three lecture presents technology through exteriorisation: faculties become embodied in tools, symbols and durable media.

Bipedal tool use, symbolic continuity and writing systems are not a simple ladder from primitive to advanced. They open different relations among memory, gesture, community and material support. The question “does technology make us human?” therefore concerns co-formation rather than the later addition of neutral devices to an already complete human subject.

gesture / memory INSCRIPTION durable sign circulating system Figure 5.1. Exteriorisation moves from embodied capacity through durable inscription into systems of circulation and memory. Three analytical consequences Consequence Question Avoid Memory is organised What must be remembered internally once signs persist externally?

Treating storage as simple addition Action is reorganised Which gestures, skills and institutions become possible? Attributing change to the tool alone Continuity is selective What can be transmitted, standardised or forgotten? Assuming every experience can be encoded A tool embodies a relation Its materials, skill demands and social placement reveal who can make, use, repair and control it.

Exteriorisation changes the interior Once memory or calculation is delegated, people learn new practices and may lose or transform older ones. Human and technical capacities develop together. Technics is not outside culture; it is one way culture becomes durable and actionable. EXTERIORISATION C5.1 EXTERIORISATION AskSia practice Prompt. A navigation app stores routes. What is exteriorised? Worked answer.

Spatial memory and wayfinding are partly delegated to a mapped system, changing attention, skill, authority and dependence rather than merely adding convenience. · · C5 · WRITING SYSTEMS CHAPTER 5 · PAGE 2 SYMBOLISATION Writing systems reorganise symbolic continuity Script, surface and institution develop together The lecture moves through cuneiform, the Chinese family of scripts and the evolution of the alphabet.

The point is not to rank civilisations by proximity to a modern alphabet. Different scripts stabilise sound, meaning, administration and memory in different ways. A political-economic account also asks who can read, who controls the surface, which records become authoritative and how inscription supports taxation, trade, law or cultural continuity.

Script is more than code Dimension Question Institutional stake Sign relation Does the mark organise sound, concept or mixed reference? Learning and translation Material support Clay, paper, skin, print or screen? Cost, durability and mobility Authority Who authenticates and archives the record? Law, administration and ownership Access Who learns and circulates the system?

Class, profession, state and community Avoid a progress story A later medium may increase speed or scale while reducing durability, local control or interpretive richness. An alphabet is not inherently more advanced than a different writing system, and a digital record is not inherently more reliable than paper. The criterion must be named: speed, reach, repairability, authority, continuity or plurality.

Symbolisation selects What a system can record becomes easier to administer and transmit. What it cannot represent may remain marginal to institutional memory. Standards distribute power Character encoding and input systems can make scripts more or less visible and usable in digital infrastructure. C5.2 MEDIA COMPARISON AskSia practice Prompt. Compare paper and cloud notes without declaring a winner. Worked answer.

Compare durability, search, access, ownership, repair, authentication and dependence; the judgement changes with the selected criterion.

WRITING-SYSTEM TEST SIGN + surface + institution + access NO MEDIUM IS JUST A CONTAINER · · C5 · MEDIA OF WRITING CHAPTER 5 · PAGE 3 WRITING MEDIA Media of writing change scale and authority Pottery, tattoo, parchment, print and personal computing The lecture's sequence of pottery, tattooing, parchment, printing press and personal computer shows writing moving across surfaces, bodies and institutions.

Each medium combines storage, display, reproduction and access differently. Tattooing binds inscription to a living body; parchment supports portable durable text but historically demands labour and material; print scales copies; personal computing makes text editable, searchable and

What this chapter covers

• 01

  Exteriorisation

• 02

  Writing systems and media

• 03

  Modernity and progress

• 04

  Enframing and standing-reserve

• 05

  Cosmotechnics and plasticity

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Key terms

Exteriorisation

Material organisation of embodied or mental capacity.

Enframing

A mode that orders beings as available resource.

Cosmotechnics

Technical order related to cosmology and morality.

Technics, Modernity and Cosmotechnics FAQ

Assessment move

Audit capacity, medium, authority, progress criterion, reduction, cosmological order and cultural translation.

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