Overview

This book proposes a new theoretical framework for approaching the causes and effects that digital technologies and the imaginaries related to them have on the processes of self-interpretation and subjectivation. It formulates three main theses. First, it argues that today’s digital technologies, which are primarily based on artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms and big data are formidable habitus machines: they offer increasingly personalized services, but these machines are actually indifferent to individuals and their personalities. Second, this book contends that the effectiveness of these machines does not depend solely on their concrete capacity to classify the social world. It also depends on the expectations, hopes, fears, and imaginaries that we have concerning these technologies and their capacities. This cultural habitus—a worldview, or world picture—leads us to believe in the concrete effectiveness of AI and its potential for our societies. Third, the author takes this Bourdieusian notion of habitus and connects it to current “empirical turn” in philosophy of technology. He contends that, by looking too closely at the things themselves, many philosophers of technology have deprived themselves of the possibility to study the symbolic conditions of possibility in which single technological artifacts are always embedded. Digital Habitus will appeal to scholars and students working in philosophy of technology, the ethics of artificial intelligence, media studies, and science and technology studies.

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9781032509648

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Reviews

This book not only represents an impressive contribution to the philosophy of technology, but also helps serve to further define this field of inquiry. It clearly shows that technology cannot be reduced to the sum of its parts and its purely material dimension, but that it is based on a work of the imagination. This book will be an excellent resource both for inspiring classroom discussion and for future scholarly research. Luca M. Possati, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands With its original analysis of the technological dimension of habitus, Digital Habitus does not only offer an interesting reading of Bourdieu, but also fills an important gap in the philosophy of technology and helps to link thinking about contemporary technology to influential theory of social reality. Finally a theory that does justice to the ways digital technologies produce habitus and a timely warning about what Alberto Romele calls a the 'flattened hermeneutics of the self' presented to us by AI and related technologies. Obligatory reading. Mark Coeckelbergh, University of Vienna. Austria Alberto Romele deftly weaves a critique of technology by encouraging us to consider digital technologies through the familiar habits that they are designed to reproduce. Through the concept of digital habitus, this book is both a response to different intellectual traditions and a new trajectory for philosophical and critical inquiries. Darryl Cressman, Maastricht University, The Netherlands In a theoretical scene in which the dogma of innovation at any cost, which is often a sham innovation, has imposed itself, Alberto Romele has the merit of originally reconnecting contemporary reflection on technology with the philosophical and sociological tradition. For this reason, there is no philosopher of technology who cannot benefit from reading this book. Maurizio Ferraris, University of Turin, Italy

Author Information

Alberto Romele teaches digital communication at the Institute of Communication and Media at Sorbonne Nouvelle University. He is also research associate of philosophy and ethics of technology at the Department of Philosophy and Education Sciences of the University of Turin. He edited Towards a Philosophy of Digital Media (with E. Terrone, 2018) and Interpreting Technology (with W. Reijers and M. Coeckelbergh, 2021). He is the author of Digital Hermeneutics (Routledge 2020).

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