on hermeneutics, actor-network theory, new media
The typical framing of AI disruption discourse as a technical problem—how to make AI systems safe, controllable, or value-compliant—overlooks the fact that AI is primarily a societal and cultural challenge that requires new forms of social organization, governance, responsibility, and human self-understanding. It is important to emphasize that AI is not a bounded, individual “system” [ ]
The debate about the impact of AI, above all the new generative Large Language Models (LLMs), has been raging in the media, professional circles, politics, and the general public ever since OpenAI released ChatGPT in 2022. Some see AI as a threat to society and even to humanity. In contrast, others praise AI as the [ ]
One of the most important ideas today is the idea that the world is made up of information, not things. Information is a relation and a process and not a substance, a thing, an individual entity, or a bounded individual. A world of information is a world of relations and not of things. This idea [ ]
Memes are cultural DNA, that is, the elements of cultural code that generate the world that characterizes a particular culture, a particular time, a particular civilization. They are the basic ideas informing a world view, articulating the values and norms that people accept as true. Memes are the design elements of a culture. Listed below [ ]
Q: Where does AI begin and where does it end? A: AI will probably have neither beginning nor end, but will be seamlessly integrated into our daily lives, which could mean that in the future we will no longer speak of artificial intelligence at all, but only of “smart” or “dumb”. Either we and everything [ ]
Q: The climate crisis has brought James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis into the center of discussion. Bruno Latour has interpreted Gaia as the “critical zone”, a relatively thin strip of atmosphere and earth that comprises the space in which life exists. According to Latour, it is within this critical zone that Lovelock’s self-regulating life system operates. [ ]
In the Middle Ages there were about fifty different “jobs” or “occupations” that people could have. For example, miller, blacksmith, stonemason, minstrel, carpenter, baker, farmer, butcher, weaver, watchman, cobbler, etc. Many of the family names we have today come from these job titles. Names are identities. No one can exist without some kind of identity. [ ]
When it comes to order as opposed to chaos, that is, of holding things together, physicists speak of four fundamental forces of the universe. There is gravity, electromagnetic force, and the so-called “strong” and “weak” forces that hold particles together and govern their relations. These four forces supposedly explain everything. But what about life? And [ ]
Let’s go back to school. Not because technology is changing society so quickly that many jobs are disappearing, and new jobs must be learned or re-learned. Not because “life-long learning” is trendy. And not because one needs more and more qualifications and certifications to climb the career ladder. This may all be true. But “let’s [ ]
One the most famous love stories of modern Western culture is Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. This is a story not about love, but about what it means to be modern. What does it mean to be modern? Among the many meanings modernity may have, one is that it designates a problem. The problem is how [ ]