Un-Thinking and Re-thinking Technology Today

今日のテクノロジーを「考えない」こと、「再考する」こと

the significance of zero：

for a considerable period, the author has been reflecting on the notion of zero, the Sanskrit term shunya, which means both ‘zero’ and ‘empty’, and the associated concepts of ‘emptiness’ (shunyata), found in Buddhism primarily. One of the reasons is that a reflection on zero as well as unthinking and rethinking technology may have significance and importance in our contemporary lives. This may be in part because, these days, one tends to use the word ‘technology’ in a very different way from how it was originally conceived. From numerous discussions with students, colleagues, friends, ‘technology’ appears to be synonymous largely with computers and products generated by computers. Yet technology’s original meaning seems to be forgotten. For the Ancient Greeks, according to the philosopher Martin Heidegger, the word ‘techne’, which is the root of our current word technology, meant a kind of practice and thinking, but had no distinction between what today we call art, craft, technique, and philosophy. It was all one practice. In fact, the Ancient Greeks had no word, specifically, for ‘Art.’ The aspiration of this author is to think of technology as not just computers, but the way one uses them and, in a sense, the way we live our contemporary lives in this Digital Age.

conception and direction: ajaykumar

image: ajaykumar, akiko ban, takashi nishida daniel somerville

sound: ajaykumar, gareth jenkinson, rob palmer