The logos of techné: A Case for Technology as Interdisciplinary Anthropology

This chapter develops the potential of a literal understanding of technology (as logos of techné), to develop an interdisciplinary anthropology. Technology in this sense draws together the diachronic aspect that is implied in the central hypothesis of French techno-anthropology that every technical object contains a crystallized human gesture and the systematic aim to understand human beings in the digital age. To outline the heuristic of technology as interdisciplinary anthropology I will focus on the ontological and epistemological presuppositions of socio-technical practices, technical objects, and the gestures involved. They produce difference and are transformative. Gestures are thus not conceived as bodily actions in a narrow sense but comprise also mental operations. Accordingly, gestures can be crystallized in stone axes as well as in computers. This diachronic approach to technologies allows to understand multiple modes of being human that the human entanglement with technical objects and networks provides.