I held a presentation last week at the Easterhegg conference in Hamburg, which aim was to give a few insights into this topic and a few notions that could explain aspects of the hacker culture.
My talk was entitled Denkansätze zur Philosophie der Technik, as it dealt with approaches to philosophy of technology.
I started with a historical description of technology as a given fact that no one puts into question, then I spoke from the contempt regarding technicians and the difficulty to consider philosophy of technology as a subfield of philosophy.
The main part of my presentation consisted of a few main themes like the critical perspective on technology and the political dimension of technology assessment. I also suggested a typology of tools and instruments/devices grounding on the work of Gilbert Simondon. Then I briefly described the notion of technoscience.
At last, I presented a broader idea of technology, including for instance government technologies through apparatuses as described by Michel Foucault and more recently Giorgio Agamben, taking the position paper of the German CSU-party as an example.
There is a paper in German regarding this talk that may be found online. Here are the references I used : - G. Ropohl, Allgemeine Technologie. Eine Systemtheorie der Technik, 3 ed., Karlsruhe: Universitätsverlag Karlsruhe, 2009. - D. Ihde, “Philosophy of Technology”, Philosophical Problems Today, vol. 3, pp. 91-108, 2005. - G. Simondon, L’invention dans les techniques: cours et conférences, Paris: Seuil, 2005. - G. Hottois, Philosophies des sciences, philosophies des techniques, Paris: Odile Jacob, 2004. - H. Blumenberg, “Lebenswelt und Technisierung unter Aspekten der Phänomenologie.” Stuttgart: Reclam, 1996. - G. Hottois, Le signe et la technique: la philosophie à l’épreuve de la technique, Paris: Aubier, 1984. - H. Jonas, Das Prinzip Verantwortung, Suhrkamp, 1984. - H. Jonas, “Toward a Philosophy of Technology”, The Hastings Center Report, vol. 9, iss. 1, pp. 34-43, 1979. - G. Simondon, Du mode d’existence des objets techniques, Aubier-Montaigne, 1969. - J. Ortega y Gasset, “Meditación de la técnica”, Revista de Occidente, 1939.