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Society for the History of the Philosophy of Technology (HPT) @hptsociety.bsky.social · 4d

"After television, the United States was not America plus television; television gave a new coloration to every political campaign, to every school, to every church, to every industry."
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Society for the History of the Philosophy of Technology (HPT) @hptsociety.bsky.social · 4d

Postman was also a dedicated educator who wrote many books on the topic. Going further, he argued that television has created a new media environment that was distinct from the ecology of print culture.
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Society for the History of the Philosophy of Technology (HPT) @hptsociety.bsky.social · 4d

Postman is well known for his book Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985) in which he argued that television reduces complex ideas to easily digestible visual content, diminishing important topics like politics to nothing more than simplistic entertainment.
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Society for the History of the Philosophy of Technology (HPT) @hptsociety.bsky.social · 4d

For Postman, like all media theorists/ecologists, the content of any medium is always secondary to the form of the medium.
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Society for the History of the Philosophy of Technology (HPT) @hptsociety.bsky.social · 4d

On this day (5 October) in 2003, Neil Postman died. Postman was strongly influenced by the media theory of Marshall McLuhan and his work is associated with the field of research called "media ecology."
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Society for the History of the Philosophy of Technology (HPT) @hptsociety.bsky.social · 6d

This perspective was deeply influential for later thinkers such as Bruno Latour, who built on Dagognet’s insights in developing actor-network theory and his analysis of laboratories as sites where inscriptions circulate, gain authority, and transform the world.
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Society for the History of the Philosophy of Technology (HPT) @hptsociety.bsky.social · 6d

His work revealed the ways in which science is inseparable from its technical supports, from microscopes to imaging devices.
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Society for the History of the Philosophy of Technology (HPT) @hptsociety.bsky.social · 6d

By highlighting these inscriptions, Dagognet showed how scientific practice depends on the mediation of instruments and the stabilization of data in material form.
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Society for the History of the Philosophy of Technology (HPT) @hptsociety.bsky.social · 6d

For him, knowledge was not only a matter of concepts and theories but also of the marks, graphs, and images that experiments leave behind.
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Society for the History of the Philosophy of Technology (HPT) @hptsociety.bsky.social · 6d

Ten years ago, François Dagognet died. A philosopher of science and technology, Dagognet extended the work of Gaston Bachelard by turning attention to the material traces and inscriptions produced by scientific instruments.
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Society for the History of the Philosophy of Technology (HPT) @hptsociety.bsky.social · 7d

Simondon's thought left a lasting mark on later philosophers such as Herbert Marcuse, Gilbert Hottois, and Bernard Stiegler, and remains central to contemporary reflections on the role of technology in shaping human life.
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Society for the History of the Philosophy of Technology (HPT) @hptsociety.bsky.social · 7d

Simondon hoped to reconcile humans with their machines, cultivating a shared understanding of technology as a living process of individuation that shapes both objects and ourselves.
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Society for the History of the Philosophy of Technology (HPT) @hptsociety.bsky.social · 7d

The ambition of Simondon was to create a "technical culture" since he believed that modern societies suffered from a deep misunderstanding of technology-treating machines as either threatening or purely utilitarian - while ignoring their creative and evolutionary dimensions.
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Society for the History of the Philosophy of Technology (HPT) @hptsociety.bsky.social · 7d

In his influential book On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects (1958), he showed how technologies evolve through a process of concretization, becoming more coherent and integrated as they develop.
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Society for the History of the Philosophy of Technology (HPT) @hptsociety.bsky.social · 7d

On this day in 1924, Gilbert Simondon was born. A pioneering French philosopher of technology, Simondon challenged us to see machines not as passive tools but as entities with their own modes of existence.
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Society for the History of the Philosophy of Technology (HPT) @hptsociety.bsky.social · 13d

This interview, which was published only after Heidegger's death, also contains remarks on technology, most famously his claim that "only a god can save us" from the increasing power and scope of technical productivity.
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Society for the History of the Philosophy of Technology (HPT) @hptsociety.bsky.social · 13d

He also conducted a wide-ranging interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel in 1966 in which he addressed his association with National Socialism during the war.
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Society for the History of the Philosophy of Technology (HPT) @hptsociety.bsky.social · 13d

His remarks on technology can be found across his work, beginning with a phenomenology of tool-use in Being & Time (1927) and then taking a more pessimistic turn after the war with The Question Concerning Technology (1954) and remarks found across his post-war essays.
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Society for the History of the Philosophy of Technology (HPT) @hptsociety.bsky.social · 13d

On this day in 1889, Martin Heidegger was born. Heidegger holds a prominent place in the history of the philosophy of technology as he is often taken to be one of the first philosophers to take technology seriously.
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Society for the History of the Philosophy of Technology (HPT) @hptsociety.bsky.social · 18d

Thank you for catching the mistake, our apologies!

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Society for the History of the Philosophy of Technology (HPT) @hptsociety.bsky.social · 18d

He argued that we must critically engage with technological advancements, considering their impacts not just in terms of utility but in their broader social, moral, and human dimensions.
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Society for the History of the Philosophy of Technology (HPT) @hptsociety.bsky.social · 18d

For him, technology was a powerful force capable of improving the human condition, but only if it was approached with rigorous, ethical responsibility.
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Society for the History of the Philosophy of Technology (HPT) @hptsociety.bsky.social · 18d

Bunge argued that technology is not merely a collection of tools but a complex, structured system grounded in knowledge and guided by scientific principles.
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Society for the History of the Philosophy of Technology (HPT) @hptsociety.bsky.social · 18d

Though he reflected in many texts on the relationship between technology, science, and society, he is particularly known for his 1966 article “Technology as applied science”.
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Society for the History of the Philosophy of Technology (HPT) @hptsociety.bsky.social · 18d

Today, we celebrate the life and contributions of Mario Bunge (1919–2025), a prominent philosopher of science who also reflected on technology.
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