'Gilbert Simondon' tag archive

The world of the future will … not [be] a comfortable hammock in which we can lie down to be waited upon by our robot slaves. — Norbert Wiener, God and Golem, Inc. The word ‘robot’ entered the English language just over a hundred years ago, on 9 October 1922. It arrived with a Broadway production […]

Cecile Malaspina, An Epistemology of Noise (London: Bloomsbury, 2018). 256pp., £90.00 hb., £28.99 pb., , In recent years noise seems to have become an interdisciplinary concept par excellence, apt to capture important dynamics at work whether in technological, scientific, social or aesthetic domains. But when economists, biologists, psychologists, and musicians speak of noise, are they […]

A metaphysical turn? Bruno Latour’s An Inquiry into Modes of Existence Patrice maniglier A book bearing the title An Inquiry into Modes of Existence, but with the subtitle An Anthropology of the Moderns,* will immediately prompt the question: is this a work of metaphysics, as suggested by the title (which was lifted from the philosopher […]

Interview paolo virno Reading Gilbert Simondon Transindividuality, technical activity and reification Jun fujita hirose At the end of the 1980s, the thought of Gilbert Simondon – a French philosopher (1924–1989) almost entirely ignored until then – was given a new lease of life on the French philosophical scene. The year of his death, 1989, saw […]

Going into the mould Materials and process in the architectural specification Katie lloyd thomas To know the true hylomorphic relation it is not enough to go into the workshop and work with the artisan: one must go into the mould itself to follow the operation of form-taking at different levels and scales of physical reality. […]