Romele A. Digital Habitus. A Critique of the Imaginaries of AI 2023

Textbook in PDF format

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 AI, media studies, and science and technology studies.
Introduction
Part I
From Transhumanism to Technological Imaginaries
From Technological Imaginaries to Habitus
From Habitus to Technological Habitus
Part II
Technological Habitus
Digital Habitus 1
Digital Habitus 2
Conclusion
Index