Don’t forget to think (whenever you reach for your smartphone)!

Much of what we see and hear in our everyday life, a significant part of our social and even deeply intimate relations, tools and practices with which we learn, work and consume, are digitally generated, i.e. consist of data and metadata. We got used to this environment to such an extent that we hardly differentiate it from our “natural” surrounding. The very boundary between our online and our offline life has become increasingly vague. This entirely new experience of life can no longer be restricted to its instrumental functionality. Our relation to the digital objects that pervade our life goes far beyond a simple use of digital tools. It has an existential character, which only philosophy can grasp – a philosophy of technology. Such a philosophy should not be mistaken for a knowledge on machines, a familiarity with the way they operate. It rather implies an attempt to understand the genesis of technicity, the relation between technological thought and other spheres of thinking and understanding: religious, aesthetic, sociopolitical and philosophical.

The class will read and discuss the writings of Yuk Hui, the philosopher of digital technology.

Readings:

Yuk Hui, On the existence of digital objects, Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press, 2016.

https://memoof.me/read/1090/pdf

Yuk Hui, “What is a Digital Object?” Metaphilosophy, LLC and Blackwell Publishing, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK, and Malden, MA 02148, USA, Vol. 43, No. 4, July 2012, p. 380-395.

https://www.digitalmilieu.net/documents/HUI_what%20is%20a%20digital%20object%20Metaphilosophy.pdf

Yuk Hui, Writing and Cosmotechnics, Derrida Today 13.1 (2020): 17–32 Edinburgh University Press

https://www.academia.edu/44028311/Writing_and_Cosmotechnics

Interview to Yuk Hui by Francesca Sunseri and Riccardo Cangialosi, LA DELEUZIANA – ONLINE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY – ISSN 2124-3098 N. 16 / 2024 – LATIN AMERICAN ANARCHIVISMS

https://ladeleuziana.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/9.-Interview-Hui.pdf

Dulmini Perera and Sam Koh, ‘Placing Technology: An Interview with Yuk  Hui’,  Footprint  Delft  Architecture  Theory  Journal,  vol.  18,  no.  2  (2024): 109-116,

https://pure.eur.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/183271314/FP35_B-09_Interview.pdf

Secondary readings:

Jason Larivière, “Logic of digital worlds. Yuk Hui, On the existence of digital objects (University of Minnesota Press, 2016), parrhesia 27 · 2017 · 129-135

https://parrhesiajournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/parrhesia27_lariviere.pdf

 

Consists in the active participation and contribution (discursive, textual and performative).

The module grading is based on the mentioned contribution, active in-class participation and

• - submission of written assignments (word minimum of 500 total)

• “Students from other departments or universities will be given a place on the course subject to room capacities.”