Carried out in cooperation with the Centre for Critical Technology Studies

One of the projects left behind by the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler (1952–2020) was meant to revisit the theoretical foundations of computer science in order to open a different digital future: a future in which information technology is no longer subject to the imperatives of ‘computational capitalism’ but, instead, fosters noodiversity (the diversity of the forms of practical, theoretical technical, and every-day life knowledge). This workshop aims to better explain some concepts related to this project (exosomatization, entropy, anti-entropy, neganthropology, neganthropocene) and, more generally, to Stiegler’s specific approach to technics as the object of thinking.

But first of all we will try to flag up the political and theoretical (epistemological) stakes of Stiegler’s take on computer science. More specifically, we will reflect on 1) why the question of a new foundation of computer science should be addressed today as the central issue of a new political economy; 2) why it is necessary to restore a dialogue between scientific thinking and philosophy in order to make this foundation possible; 3) why such a dialogue entails challenging cognitivism considered a general paradigm for contemporary AI-based systems; 4) how cognitivism and neoliberal apparatus, which has now become libertarian, are ideologically related to each other; 5) what artificial intelligence would look like if we changed theoretical models on which it is based.

The starting point for the workshop will be Bernard Stiegler’s paper “Noodiversity, Technodiversity. Elements of a New Economic Foundation Based on a New Foundation for Theoretical Computer Science,” trans. Dan Ross, Angelaki, vol. 25 no 4, August 2020, pp. 67–80. Reprinted by Biennale Warszawa.

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Anne Alombert teaches philosophy at Université Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis. She wrote a PhD thesis on Gilbert Simondon and Jacques Derrida. Her research focuses on the relation between knowledge and technics in the work of Gilbert Simondon, Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler, and on the anthropological, political, psychic and social challenges implied by digital technologies. She participated in the conception of the contributive research program ‘Plaine Commune Territoire Apprenant Contributif’ and she wrote the book Bifurcate, with Bernard Stiegler and the Internation collective.

Michał Krzykawski, Associate Professor in philosophy/literature and head of the Centre for Critical Technology Studies at the University of Silesia. His research revolves around continental philosophy, philosophy of technology, philosophy of science and political economy. He is particularly interested in a dialogue between philosophical thinking, technology and science in the context of epistemological, psychosocial and ecological issues related to the current digital transformation. He has extensively published on contemporary philosophy. Co-founder of the Collective Organoesis.

Daniel Ross obtained his doctorate from Monash University in 2002. He is the author of Violent Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and Psychopolitical Anaphylaxis: Steps Towards a Metacosmics (Open Humanities Press, 2021). He is also the co-director with David Barison of the feature documentary The Ister which premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in 2004, and which won awards in Montreal and Marseille. Through that film, he met the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler, and has subsequently published eleven volumes of translation of Stiegler’s work, most recently The Age of Disruption: Technology and Madness in Computational Capitalism (Polity Press, 2019) and Nanjing Lectures 2016–2019 (Open Humanities Press, 2020), along with the collective volume by Stiegler and the Internation Collective entitled Bifurcate: ‘There Is No Alternative’ (Open Humanities Press, 2021).