Machine, Information, and Culture: The Structural Transformations of the Technosphere

Abstract

This article proposes to examine the rise of intensive digitization and technification processes in daily life and the concomitant loss of former historically dominant premachine modes of existence and communication. We shed fresh light on the subject by conducting a historico-philosophical analysis of the evolution of the concept of the machine. The relation between technology and society is investigated in depth through the prism of culture in the latter and the concept of the machine in the former. The evolution of the technosphere is viewed as a series of mutations in the ontological structure of the machine, moving from the equipmental mode of the mechanical tool and ending up with the intelligent machine then the rhizomatic mode of machinic production. Our approach is multidisciplinary, drawing from several traditions, including science, sociology, the philosophy of technology, ontology, and history.