Month: June 2014

Technology is both poisoning and curing. At its first appearance, however, it is poisoning. It becomes curative when you have what I call the second moment of epochality of technics—the process of appropriation of a new technical system by society and the development of new modes of psychic and collective individuation based on this technical system. So, the problem of disadjustment is what was called by Shakespeare “the time is out of joint.” What is creating this being out of joint? That is the question. And my answer is: the process of technical exteriorization.

For instance: at this very moment I am exteriorizing myself. Speaking with you, I am exteriorizing myself. And that means: I am technicizing myself. If I talk with you, I create new words. I very much like to create new words. A word is also a new technical object. The opposition between technics and speech for me is completely artificial.

Now, for a human being, to live is to individuate oneself. How am I individuating myself? By exteriorizing myself. And in the same way, I am interiorizing myself, because when I speak to you, I am listening to what I say, so I interiorize myself. Now this process of exteriorization-interiorization is the originary process of psychic and social individuation. So you can see very clearly that at the beginning of psychic activity you always already have technics, i.e., technical individuation.

Now, you might not be a professional speaker, like me, but you might for instance produce flint stones. Suppose you are a prehistoric man and you are producing stone tools. It is exactly the same thing. That is what I try to describe in my first book Technics and Time: The Fault of Epimetheus. When pre-historic man is producing flint stones, thereby exteriorizing his experience, he is in fact transforming his brain, his psyche.