The Robotic Moment Explored : Intimations of an Anthropo-Technological Predicament

This paper examines the ‘robotic moment’, as defined by Sherry Turkle (2011), in the light of general theories of human-technology relations, notably the theoretical framework founded by Jacques Ellul (1954). Potential psychological, cultural, and technical consequences of human-technology interaction, especially human interaction with so-called ‘social-robots’, are explored. It is demonstrated that the ‘robotic moment’ may reasonably be understood as a result of the formation of pseudo-social anthropo-technological circuits, and as a result of cultural disintegration and an increasingly prevalent societal impulse to incorporate everything that is commonly not understood to be technological (i.e. even the biological, the social, and the spiritual) into the technological order. It is demonstrated that the category ‘social robot’ may reasonably be understood, depending on how the robot is used, as a technique humaine, as a magical practice, or as a complex hybrid practice. Assumptions concerning the nature of technologies, the extent to which technologies are useful, and the impact of technologies on society are questioned. The extent to which a society’s worldview may determine or influence how its inhabitants relate to technologies is explored. It is suggested that, as societies demystify the universe and develop mature techno-secular worldviews, means-to-ends (i.e. technologies) are being mystified; the ensuing quasi-religious techno-secular worldviews, which fail to recognise the limitations of technologies, may in turn be responsible for much of the irrational use of technologies in technological societies. The essay suggests that the ‘robotic moment’ can be explained not only in terms of vulnerabilities inherent in human nature and in terms of properties inherent in technological society, but also in terms of the notions of the sacred that prevail in technically advanced societies and a society’s practice of science, engineering, magic, and faith.