Emergent Technologies Between Phenomenology and Poststructuralism: A Methodological Question

This essay aims at understanding the importance of phenomenological method in questions of new technology and changing life-worlds. Emergent intelligent technology fundamentally change the way we live, perceive and act in the world. This fundamental shift includes a blurring of categories such as natural/artificial, biology/technology, real/virtual to name just a few. This calls forth philosophical reflection. Posthumanist theories as well as media theories, which have their roots in poststructuralism, propose a new materialism of the embodied and embedded subject, that evolves through and with its environment. The differences between phenomenology and poststructuralism become obvious when one works on the impact of technology on human self-understanding: There is an appeal to poststructuralist thinking because it encompasses complex and dynamic systems and relations. I will argue that in these accounts the role of experience lacks systematic reflection. The question of how we experience the profound changes in our perception, construction of knowledge and self-understanding is rarely addressed. Phenomenology as method has the clear advantage of having developed a methodological and systematic approach to qualitative experiences, which is central to a philosophical account of human-machine relations. In this essay I will address the methodological question along the lines of Maurice Merleau-Pontys's thinking and contemporary approaches