Sympoietic machines

This chapter explores the political and philosophical implications of three different conceptions of technology and their connections to various theories of evolution. It aims to highlight the distinctive onto-epistemo-political lines of demarcation and relationships they establish between humans and technology. First, it introduces the “classic schema” of technology as organ projection, based on the ideas of linear and teleological evolutionary development and the survival of the fittest. It then contrasts this with Deleuze and Guattari’s very different conception of the machine. The second part discusses Karl Marx’s idea of social machinery, grounded in Darwin’s notions of mutual adaptation, to argue for an understanding of how technology and society co-evolve. The third part examines Lynn Margulis’s idea of symbiogenesis and Haraway’s concept of sympoiesis in relation to the Deleuzo-Guattarian concept of machinic assemblages, questioning the supposed ontological boundaries between humans and technology to propose a critical philosophy of technology based on an ethological analysis of relational compositions of affects.