Digital Habitus: A Critique of the Imaginaries of Artificial Intelligence (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy) - Hardcover

Romele, Alberto

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1032509643 ISBN 13: 9781032509648

Publisher: Routledge, 2023

Synopsis

This book proposes a new theoretical framework for approaching the causes and effects that digital technologies and the imaginaries related to them have on the processes of self-interpretation and subjectivation.

It formulates three main theses. First, it argues that today’s digital technologies, which are primarily based on artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms and big data are formidable habitus machines: they offer increasingly personalized services, but these machines are actually indifferent to individuals and their personalities. Second, this book contends that the effectiveness of these machines does not depend solely on their concrete capacity to classify the social world. It also depends on the expectations, hopes, fears, and imaginaries that we have concerning these technologies and their capacities. This cultural habitus―a worldview, or world picture―leads us to believe in the concrete effectiveness of AI and its potential for our societies. Third, the author takes this Bourdieusian notion of habitus and connects it to current “empirical turn” in philosophy of technology. He contends that, by looking too closely at the things themselves, many philosophers of technology have deprived themselves of the possibility to study the symbolic conditions of possibility in which single technological artifacts are always embedded.

Digital Habitus will appeal to scholars and students working in philosophy of technology, the ethics of artificial intelligence, media studies, and science and technology studies.

About this title

About the Author

Alberto Romele teaches digital communication at the Institute of Communication and Media at Sorbonne Nouvelle University. He is also research associate of philosophy and ethics of technology at the Department of Philosophy and Education Sciences of the University of Turin. He edited Towards a Philosophy of Digital Media (with E. Terrone, 2018) and Interpreting Technology (with W. Reijers and M. Coeckelbergh, 2021). He is the author of Digital Hermeneutics (Routledge 2020).

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1032509643
• ISBN 13: 9781032509648
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 184