Organised by the cluster of excellence Pasts in the present and the MSH Mondes from 25th to 27th September 2024 (Nanterre and Paris)
Wherever digital solutions and artificial intelligence (AI) have spread, whatever the creative domain or human activity, the impression of having a total, even universal, all-terrain technology has never been so strong. We cannot ignore that the digital revolution, while apparently offering simplicity and ease-of-use is accompanied by a rather remarkable invisibilization of technology’s infrastructure, leaving its users ignorant to the processes and material elements that encompass even the simplest tools. Homo comfort, as the Italian anthropologist Stefano Boni calls it, lives in a hypertechnological world, in which he is ignorant of most of its systems. How can one understand the least-effort infrastructure in which we live when recontextualized within nearly 3.3 million years of technological externalization ? Were 3.3 million years of experimentation necessary to arrive at this point, or rather, did we need to collectively forget our entire history in order to accept our current situation? Has exteriorization always been synonymous with emancipation, optimization (of effort), and inversely, with reduction (of ability)? [...]
