Humanities and Social Sciences Colloquium - Maren Wehrle

Mediated Immediateness and Immediate Mediation. How intelligent technology shapes human embodiment and lifeworld.

In the digital age, technology does no longer function as a mere instrument or tool, but is about to become part of our very embodiment. Intelligent technological devices, digital media, and virtuality are not experienced as independent objects or spheres of reality anymore. Instead, intelligent technologies are fully integrated in our everyday activities: they shape and constitute what the philosopher and founder of ‘phenomenology’ Edmund Husserl used to call our lifeworld; that is, the immediate, practical and unquestioned sphere of our daily lives.

In my presentation, I will analyse how such technologies shape human embodiment and lifeworld by means of examples like artificial limbs, implanted chips, google glass, virtual reality glasses and smart environments. I will argue that the more intelligent technologies merge with human bodies and environments, the less they are experienced ‘as technology’. In this respect, I want to discuss why it can be epistemologically and ethically problematic when the ‘mediating’ role of technologies remains hidden, and leaves us with the illusion of an unmediated experience.