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In this contribution I reply to Heather Wiltse and Roisin Lally’s commentaries. Both stress the importance of not only looking at gaps, but also accounting for relation and connection—an endeavor which was less visible in my original piece but which I wholly support, and on which I elaborate more here, making use of the example of ‘algorithmic mediation.’ In the process, I attempt to clear up some possible misunderstandings with regard to my initial formulations, as concerns object-oriented ontology’s stance on relation, the question of whether postphenomenology already has a ‘transcendental’ account, the variety of possible connotations associated with the term ‘transcendental,’ and my proposals for looking specifically at what happens in between ‘small’ (‘technology with a small “t”’) and ‘big’ (‘Technology with a capital “T”’) perspectives. It turns out that my commentators and I are pretty much on a similar track—though we may differ in the first instance as to the conceptual instruments we would choose to deploy in that, nonetheless shared, project.

This paper zooms in on a recent development in the discussion between postphenomenology and critical constructivism: the attempt at working out a political philosophy in the framework of postphenomenology, specifically Peter-Paul Verbeek’s. Verbeek contrasts mediation theory to critical theory, arguing that critical theorists only “talk”; they don’t “do.” While the latter reproach postphenomenology/mediation theory for its lack of politics, Verbeek actually poses that “real” politics cannot be done by critical theorists—indeed exactly because of their not doing, that is, doing in the sense of helping to design and develop good real-world technological solutions. But this brings up pertinent questions, about whether a theory should “do” something, what that means, and whether calls for “doing” do not carry their own presuppositions with them that, if not made explicit, will bias the theory and its “use” toward certain directions. These issues are explored by way of among others an excursion into Rortyan pragmatism. Eventually, I conclude, it is perfectly acceptable that critical constructivism should “talk” and postphenomenology “do”—as long as we keep the meanings of those terms sufficiently clear.

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Expecting that media and/or digital technologies “do” things (Verbeek), we are called upon to take a stance on them, theoretically as well as practically. Media literacy represents one such stance—we are prodded to be literate about media—but there are others. To this extent media literacy is a lens through which we look at issues and that shapes what we see. This becomes particularly clear when we consider another lens, namely, that of media health. While media literacy suggests a rather pragmatic way of doing, making do with what is on offer, the image of media health dramatically alters the starting point: media are seen here as affecting us, even to the extent that we become sick and need to be cured. This image or model of media as somehow related to disease and health is developed in varying degrees of explicitness in the work of Bernard Stiegler and Marshall McLuhan among others. In this paper, we investigate the differences between the media literacy and media health models from a meta vantage point and ask how the lens determines how we view and understand certain problems in relation to media/technologies. We do this by deploying a metaphor ourselves, namely that of mold. Our models are molds. They are understood as a “frame or model around or on which something is formed or shaped,” but the connotations of fungal growth helping organic decay and of soil and earth are also at stake. Depending on which meaning we prefer, it might turn out that we do not need to choose between our molds/models: they are interconnected, like mold. On a more theoretical level, we link up the media literacy and media health approaches to two major strands in philosophy of technology, namely to the pragmatist/postphenomenological and transcendentalist/critical streams respectively.

In a world that is becoming more ‘networked’ than ever, especially on the personal-everyday level—with for example digital media pervading our lives and the Internet of Things now being on the rise—we need to increasingly account for ‘networked realities’. But are we as human beings actually well-equipped enough, epistemologically speaking, to do so? Multiple approaches within the philosophy of technology suggest our usage of technologies to be in the first instance oriented towards efficiency and the achievement of goals. We thereby neglect the actual systemic, networked nature of technology, or its wider impacts. With regard to the pressing issue of how to cross the ‘gap’ between these two ‘modes,’ the paper at hand engages with the work of Gregory Bateson, reading him as a philosopher of technology. Bateson’s notions of “conscious purpose” and “learning” offer excellent tools to understand our predicament of living in a networked world but being partly unable to sufficiently grasp and come to terms with this situation. Moreover, as the article endeavors to demonstrate, Bateson’s thought is to be cast as a crucial addition to the body of theory being developed in the philosophy of technology.

In his new book, Husserl’s Missing Technologies, Don Ihde provides yet another, and highly enriching, iteration of postphenomenology. My comments here concern a couple of observations that he makes along the way with regard to the “scientific” status of philosophy and the question of whether philosophies, like technologies, have “use-lifes.” These remarks actually pierce through to the core of the postphenomenological theoretical corpus. In particular, there are consequences for the concept of multistability that need to be discussed: Are some stabilities better than others? In asking that question, which deserves the most emphasis: actuality or potentiality? And to what extent is there a continuity between “ideas” (i.e., theories) and technologies?

In this article we seek to lay bare a couple of potential conceptual and methodological issues that, we believe, are implicitly present in contemporary philosophy of technology (PhilTech). At stake are (1) the sustained pertinence of and need for coping strategies as to ‘how to live with technology (in everyday life)’ notwithstanding PhilTech’s advancement in its non-essentialist analysis of ‘technology’ as such; (2) the issue of whether ‘living with technology’ is a technological affair or not (or both); and (3) the tightly related question concerning the status of the methodological bedrock of contemporary PhilTech, the ‘empirical turn.’ These matters are approached from the perspective of the philosophical notion of the ‘art of living,’ and our argumentation is developed both as a context for and on the basis of the contributions to the special issue ‘The Art of Living with Technology.’.

Responding to the commentaries by Corey Anton and Ian Angus, I outline anew, and so seek to further clarify, the starting points of and motivations behind my reflection about the concrete-abstract distinction and the ways in which this plays out in technology use, seen from an epistemological standpoint. My eventual purpose is to begin to develop, on the basis of the conceptual exercise, guidelines for an emancipatory ‘art of living with technology,’ that circles around the attempt to think beyond the immediate concrete, into the direction of the ‘abstract conditions’ shaping that ‘concrete.’.

This essay takes an epistemological perspective on the question of the ‘art of living with technology.’ Such an approach is needed as our everyday notion and understanding of technology keep being framed in the old categories of instrumentalism and essentialism—notwithstanding philosophy of technology’s substantial attempts, in recent times, to bridge the stark dichotomy between those two viewpoints. Here, the persistent dichotomous thinking still characterizing our everyday involvement with technology is traced back to the epistemological distinction between ‘concrete’ and ‘abstract.’ Those terms are often contrasted, and a tendency can be found, in the literature as well as in popular discourse, to either conceptually favor one of both or let them collapse into each other. The current essay makes a plea, in an exploratory manner, and on the basis of insights hailing from among others Gregory Bateson and Alfred Korzybski, to not choose either one of those options, but to practice ourselves in navigating ladders of abstraction.

Diverging definitions of what the human being is or should be polarize the ongoing debate about human enhancement between so-called bioconservatives and transhumanists. This essay seeks to review some of the central issues at stake in this discussion and in a wider sense within current, mostly philosophically oriented approaches that endeavor to understand “human being” or “human nature” in relation to technology. It does so specifically on the basis of a discussion of two recent works that thoroughly grapple with these topics.

This article sets the stage for a meeting between the fields of Media Ecology and the contemporary Philosophy of Technology, hence introducing the special issue ‘Philosophy of Technology & Media Ecology.’ First, both fields are briefly introduced. Second, contemporary Philosophy of Technology is elaborated upon more substantially. Third, a framework is set in place, circling around the notions of “ambivalence” and “blindness” – strongly represented in Philosophy of Technology and Media Ecology, respectively – to guide the discussion to follow. Fourth and finally, a short overview of the contributions in this volume is offered.

In response to Peter–Paul Verbeek’s and Paul Levinson’s reviews of my article ‘In Between Us,’ I comment on four criticisms. Firstly, my approach of ‘mediation as such’ does not endorse the view of mediation as secondary to mediata (i.e., entities), but does not exclude it either. Secondly, my concepts of “transparency of use” and of “context” are to be seen as philosophical ‘tools’ and not as mutually exclusive states. Thirdly, I agree with Levinson that technologies do indeed remediate, and mostly not for the worse. However, fourthly, at the same time we should always be on guard for their nefarious effects.

What do Social Networking Sites (SNS) 'do to us': are they a damning threat or an emancipating force? Recent publications on the impact of "Web 2.0" proclaim very opposite evaluative positions. With the aim of finding a middle ground, this paper develops a pragmatist approach to SNS based on the work of Richard Rorty. The argument proceeds in three steps. First, we analyze SNS as conversational practices. Second, we outline, in the form of an imaginary conversation between Rorty and Heidegger, a positive and negative 'conversational' view on SNS. Third, we deploy a reflection, again using Rortian notions, on that evaluation, starting from the concept of 'self-reflectivity.' Finally, the relations between these three steps are more detailedly investigated. By way of the sketched technique, we can interrelate the two opposing sides of the recent debates - hope and threat - and judge SNS in all their ambiguity.

Members of a growing movement called 'The Quantified Self' strive to track and monitor a broad array of parameters within their own body and their life over time, such as sleeping patterns, blood pressure, calorie intake, happiness, et cetera. This is made possible by the emergence of diverse affordable and personal 'self-tracking' technologies, that enable the easy collection and storage of all this data. In this paper we study these technologies as media, and the attending activity of self-tracking as a potentially game-changing way of making sense of the world, phenomenologically speaking.

In this paper I comment on the arguments put forth by Robert Rosenberger and Galit Wellner on the issue of using a mobile phone while driving a car, and I do this by way of a detour through the work of Kevin Kelly and Marshall McLuhan. While Rosenberger and Wellner focus first and foremost on the possibilities and impossibilities within the human organism, I seek to add to the debate the however experimental standpoint of the technologies “themselves.”

The reign of unilateral - i.e., either instrumentalist or substantivist - philosophies of technology is slowly coming to an end, now that more nuanced approaches have begun to seep into common sense. The two most significant streams in contemporary PhilTech, Critical Theory of Technology (CTC) and Postphenomenology (PostPhen), complement each other finely. Yet whereas CTC runs the risk of negating the interwovenness of humans and technology, a problem partly resolved by PostPhen, PostPhen itself threatens to neglect its very own base, i.e., the condition of technology and society being first and foremost human endeavors. This paper suggests not to decry these two approaches - in all their particularity - but to add a third component in order to compensate for their deficiencies. This third "partner" consists of a new-fledged version of philosophical anthropology elaborated on the basis of, surprisingly perhaps, the media theory of Marshall McLuhan. Such an approach can complement PostPhen by proffering a deliberately anthropogenetic concept of technology. However, here we will be mainly concerned with how it supplements CTC, which it does by offering an account of technological mediation that harbors not only a relational-ontological but also - in contrast with PostPhen - a substantive-ontological aspect, and in addition a proper theory of technological blindness, much needed to make sense of perceptive biases and meaning-constituting activities in everyday life. We will illustrate these issues by way of what we dub the Mailman Problem: a sketch of a very mundane instance of 'deworlding' that is, however, not perceived as such.

Sociologist and anthropologist Bruno Latour's work is almost never mentioned in media-ecological contexts, but considering the aim, style, and scope of his work, he can definitely be seen as a media ecologist pur sang. Moreover, he shares some essential premises with McLuhan. His notions of 'actant' or 'hybrid,' 'mediator,' 'black box,' and 'translation,' for instance, all find counterparts in "common" media-ecological vocabulary. His advice to 'follow the actors,' detective style, can be likened to McLuhan's sleuth-like probing "method." And they both make a similar cultural critique. Yet above and beyond these correspondences, some crucial divergences remain, among others with regard to the concepts of time and change. In this paper we endeavor to outline the similarities and differences; which will eventually lead us to a reflection on the "uniqueness" of the discipline of media ecology.

In this paper I attempt to thoroughly rework the concept of 'home' in the light of everyday technology and media use, by way of recombining central ideas from phenomenology, media ecology, and neuroscience. I proceed in three steps. First, I reinterpret fundamental concepts in the works of Martin Heidegger and Marshall McLuhan. Second, I update these ideas by coupling them to recent research in neuroscience. Third, in a synthesizing movement, I reformulate the notion of 'home' starting from the aforementioned reinterpretations. From this new perspective, it appears no longer to be a concept merely bound to place or space. It is a fundamental way of interacting through and with (technological) environments, that resonates throughout the breadth of our existence: a dynamic or dialectic between stasis and change, fixity and adaptation.

What role can Good Old Philosophy still play in our media-saturated society? It seems that "philosophy" - disregarding the elusiveness of the term for now - is either deemed to be irrelevant in an efficiency-obsessed world, or packaged as a cultural product to be consumed along with all the other movies, plays, shows, books, and festive events. Some philosophers, however - among them philosophers of technology such as Andrew Feenberg, Larry Hickman, and Luciano Floridi - refuse to grow cynical, and see as philosophy's only salvation an intense involvement of philosophers with technological issues. But still, the question remains: how to involve oneself without simply blending into the scenery, i.e., to no avail? In this paper we propose the following: treat "philosophy" as a medium among media. This appears like a paradoxical, "if you can't beat them, join them"-like statement. But in fact the paradoxical twist turns out to be crucial, since this approach is grounded on two broad principles. First, a "pan-medial" ontology, that provocatively claims all things to be media or at least media-like, building on the works of the later Marshall McLuhan and Graham Harman. Second, a theory of (technological) mediation that centers around the dichotomy between opacity and transparency, and that investigates the everyday, contextual use of media, starting from several approaches in, amongst others, (post)phenomenology and Critical Theory. From this point of view, our cultural universe appears as a realm in which - literally metaphorically - all things collide constantly, but where none of those crashes ever comes wholly in view. Out of these foundations, philosophy emerges as one conversational partner among many possible others - a view not unlike, but also not completely similar to Richard Rorty's conversational-pragmatist stance - its task simply to be perceived as: playing along, without however being fully determined by the rules of the game. Philosophy, then, seen as a medium among all the other media, may find its greatest strength to be the widening of perceptual fields, broadly understood. A function to be performed with the utmost meticulousness.

In recent years several approaches - philosophical, sociological, psychological - have been developed to come to grips with our profoundly technologically mediated world. However, notwithstanding the vast merit of each, they illuminate only certain aspects of technological mediation. This paper is a preliminary attempt at a philosophical reflection on technological mediation as such - deploying the concepts of 'transparency' and 'opacity' as heuristic instruments. Hence, we locate a 'theory of transparency' within several theoretical frameworks - respectively classic phenomenology, media theory, Actor Network Theory, postphenomenology, several ethnographical, psychological, and sociological perspectives, and finally, the "Critical Theory of Technology." Subsequently, we render a general, systematic overview of these theories, thereby conjecturing what a broad analysis of technological mediation in and of itself might look like - finding, at last, an essential contradiction between transparency of 'use' and transparency of social origins and effects.

Phenomenologically, we're not used to thinking of "the body" as a medium. Embodiment grounds our being-in-the-world, and from that base we interact with the world through media; why bother further? Yet hypothetically displacing our viewpoint from Dasein to the world impinging itself on us, we quickly realize how our bodies are channels and screens through and on which various entities project themselves. Air blows through us; heat and moist commute through our pores; microwaves penetrate our skin... In the emerging research on Intrabody Communication (IBC), the human body is even intentionally treated as a transmission medium for electronic signals. As these encroachments not only disrupt our most anthropocentric self-understanding, but also entail ethical questions revolving around, for instance, health issues, the body as literal medium deserves some philosophical elaboration. A preliminary and experimental attempt is endeavored in this presentation by way of insights from Marshall McLuhan, Martin Heidegger, and interpreter of both Graham Harman. The combination turns out less outlandish than it seems. The later McLuhan furnishes a controversial theory of media dynamics epitomized in the concept of the "tetrad," in which every human artifact is considered a medium, analyzable as such. Harman, however, suggests to expand the definition to every entity - fabricated and natural, organic and inorganic alike. The link is constituted by Heidegger, on whose tool analysis Harman founds his own "object-oriented philosophy." Blending these components, what happens when we analyze the body as a medium along the lines of a tetradic McLuhan-Harman-Heidegger ontology?

As we become more and more involved with digital technologies on a daily basis, we are in need of a model to make sense of what we do with and “in” them. Here we analyze the use of digital media by way of a collecting paradigm, since our online activities – centered on selecting, accumulating, organizing, and showing – strongly resemble the practice of collectors. In the first part of the paper, we outline the main traits of collecting practices, and discuss relevant online practices in the light of these traits, thereby tracing the contours of an online “collecting culture.” In the second part, we list the possible underlying causes and motivations for collecting, and investigate how far these explanations also apply to online activity, so offering a preliminary framework for the further study of online practices.

Ever since computers have been developed, people have dreamt of technological memories. The hope of putting our memory "out there" - transferable, searchable, unbound - seems to exert an irresistible pull. From Vannevar Bush's 'Memex' (1945) over David Gelernter's 'Mirror Worlds' (1991) to Gordon Bell's 'MyLifeBits' (2007), several authors have outlined an ideal of technological remembering. Some representatives of the transhumanist movement even go so far as to foresee a definite blurring between human and technological remembering. In any case, technological memory means an enforcement of human memory, that obviously exhibits crucial limitations with respect to storage capacity, retrievability, and transferability - limits that should be overcome by digital technology. Yet today we are starting to experience the limitations of overcoming these limitations. Human memory is good at remembering and forgetting. Yet for some reason we have always favored the first over the latter. Now we would in some cases prefer our technological memory to forget more. Painful or harmful pictures, messages, or videos on the Web mostly stay there until someone deliberately takes them off - with sometimes consequences of grave psychological, social, or even philosophical significance (humiliation, cyberbullying, job loss, et cetera). Pleas are now made to build a certain mode of forgetting into our digital technologies - as for example Viktor Mayer-Schönberger does in a recent book. And companies such as Yahoo have already taken measures to anonymize their stored data after some period of time. So, as it stands, we are intensely struggling with the tension between technological remembering and forgetting. In this paper we make an attempt at a deeper philosophical reflection on this tension, in turning to the works of media theorists Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman, who analyze technologies as extensions of human capacities. Especially the latter develops a rather pessimistic stance on technology. But his sketching out of technology as a Faustian Bargain - 'it giveth and taketh away' - can still assist us in making sense of the topic at hand. If technological memory extends human memory, should the first simply imitate the latter? That, however, is nearly impossible since every technology causes effects we can't control. But if the "extending of remembering" - i.e., the heightening of our "remembering powers" - makes us eventually regret our greater capabilities and revert to technological forgetting, will not this "extending of forgetting" have its unforeseen consequences as well? Somehow, in this doubled Faustian Bargain, we will need to ask ourselves towards which of the two sides we have been biased, and how we can reach a balance that combines enforcement with - consciously sought-after - limitations. This paper reflects on that "tension of extensions," not without losing sight of the practical initiatives that are nowadays deployed on either side of the spectrum.

Aristoteles maakte een cruciale analyse van de vriendschap. Vandaag zijn we misschien toe aan een herwaardering van dat concept, aangezien online netwerken en digitale gemeenschappen onze vriendschappen intens bemiddelen. Daarom onderzoeken we vier uiterlijke kenmerken van online 'vriendennetwerken' - berekening, visualiteit, gemeenschap en accumulatie - en vergelijken de 'klassieke' aristotelische benadering met de online variant. We ontdekken dat het maken van digitale vrienden weliswaar niet paradigmatisch verschilt van 'klassieke' vriendschappelijke betrekkingen, maar alleszins overeenkomsten vertoont met 'verzamelen'.