Tyler
Reigeluth

As technological systems become increasingly distributed, embedded, and multiscalar, an ever-larger part of how they function seems to escape human perception and understanding – at least at an individual level. This growing lack of ‘technical culture’ (Gilbert Simondon) reinforces forms of alienation towards technical objects wherein the latter would function automatically and independently. A prevalent critical response to this post-cybernetic situation is to open the black boxes that surround us and mediate people’s lives, in order to reveal how they work, and to reclaim control over them. However, this talk will offer an alternative perspective, inspired by anthropology (André Leroi-Gourhan), geography (Nigel Thrift), and philosophy (Gilbert Simondon, Langdon Winner). This approach can help to understand and to work through the ‘socio-technical unconscious’ that underpins and innerves ‘smart’ systems, and reveals itself through lags, lapses, and breakdowns. Reigeluth will argue that the answer does not lie in the unreasonable and impossible technological expertise and mastery at an individual level, but rather in articulating the ‘geographies of intelligence’ (Simon Schaffer) that these complex technological systems involve yet obfuscate. Drawing on work from infrastructure and maintenance studies, the talk will highlight the collective dimensions that the socio-technical unconscious takes. 

Tyler Reigeluth is assistant professor in Philosophy at the Université Catholique de Lille, and a member of the ETHICS lab. He received his PhD in Philosophy from the Université Libre de Bruxelles in 2018 where he worked with the Algorithmic Governmentality FNRS-funded research project, and he subsequently carried out postdoctoral research at the Université du Québec à Montréal, the University of Chicago, and the Université de Grenoble-Alpes’ Institute of Philosophy, within the framework of the Ethics & AI Chair. His research combines political theory, philosophy of technology, and STS, and has focused most recently on the relationships between human and machine learning, as well as smart city discourse. He co-edited the book De la ville intelligente à la ville intelligible (2019), co-authored with Thomas Berns Ethique de la communication et de l’information (2021) and published L’Intelligence des villes. Critique d’une transparence sans fin (2023).

Magdalena Krysztoforska

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