“The most powerful cause of alienation in the contemporary world resides in this misunderstanding of the machine, which is not an alienation caused by the machine, but by the non-knowledge of its nature and its essence, by way of its absence from the world of significations, and its omission from the table of values and concepts that make up culture” [SIM 58].

One day as we sat down to continue writing this book, our word processing software refused to “open” a blank page. The software license had expired. Payment was required to renew the subscription, and our words were being held hostage. This situation is a limit-experience. It shows that the digital object of a “blank page” is not entirely as it seems – in other words, our direct perception does not suffice to judge the identity of the object. We are misled by the appearance that the software developers chose to give their word processing service: a blank page¹. What is presented as a simple object is in fact an interface, an image that we have chosen to give the complex underlying technical mechanism. The limit-experience reveals our lack of understanding of the medium, so easily presumed an ally. But any work created with it is conditional on the payment of the subscription; it is alienated from us and does not truly belong to us.

This disillusionment is not unusual in university settings. It is a symptom of the two faces of the so-called “digital”: a nebulous mass of technical objects and protocols, of which inner workings are hidden.

A general technical definition of the term “digital” would cite the set of closely entwined devices exchanging information that can be reduced to binary code². This includes any terminal connected to the Internet, or indeed any other network³. Computer science, the subject of this study, is one of the branches of digital technology⁴.

The computer science aspect of digital technology is challenging because it studies social and technical realities that overlap very little. The definition given above is specific to our own times; our relationship with computers has evolved over history. When computers first began to spread in the 1970s, some of the dissenting movements of the American Left rejected them as symbols of bureaucracy and the establishment. Students feared the appearance of these new and imposing machines whose development was closely linked to the Second World War and the conflicts of the Cold War. This example from the United States shows that, in its infancy, computer science was part of the public discourse; it was subject to cultural reflection.

As the miniaturization and large-scale commercialization of computers continued, discussion of the stakes raised by the technicity of computer science gradually disappeared from the public discourse. Computers were no longer imposing machines; they increasingly felt like auxiliary devices for daily life, objects of marketing and desire. The social reality of today’s computers is like the word processor’s blank page; we live alongside them on a daily basis and use them without questioning what lies beneath their appearance. In this sense, digital technology⁵ is a “technical milieu” [FRI 66] that surrounds us, and our relationship with it is conditioned by habit.

Technical criteria no longer suffice to give a definition of digital technology. Instead, it must be understood by the internal tension coursing through it. Digital technology is an extremely heavy technical system that has gradually been reduced to an everyday utility-driven relationship, without ever fully examining its stakes. This technical system has become one of the unspoken assumptions of our culture.

Our modern age is caught in a major paradox. Even though digital technicity is eminently pervasive [BAC 04] and structures our existence, most of us are digitally “illiterate” [GUI 15]. We are not capable of dismantling the machines that we use every day or understanding the lines of code executed by familiar software. Even after 60 years, the diagnosis established in the introduction of On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects [SIM 12]⁶ remains relevant. Published in 1958, this book, Gilbert Simondon’s secondary thesis, aims to “raise awareness of the meaning of technical objects” [SIM 12, first sentence of the introduction]. This awareness raising is necessary because certain cultural spheres are faced by a technical reality that they reject.

In his introduction, Simondon denounces the hypocrisy of a culture that, despite being increasingly dependent on technics, treats it as “a strange or foreign reality” [SIM 12, first sentence of the introduction]. His primary objective is to give technical objects an ontological dignity so that they may be reconciled with culture. According to Simondon, this task is incumbent on philosophical thought. To accomplish it, the author adopts a particular approach. He examines the machines themselves and attempts to establish their mode of existence by drawing from biology; this approach follows a “naturalist axis”⁷, which aligns Simondon with his contemporaries A. Leroi-Gourhan and J. Laffitte⁸. Most importantly, Simondon’s philosophy of technics is functionalist; an object is a technical object if it functions. The irreducible aspect of a technical object that characterizes its existence in the world is its functionality, reflected by a genesis and a process of concretization.

Simondon’s mechanology also represents a direct dialogue with Wiener’s cybernetics [WIE 65] – which already provides a connection to computer science. Simondon was not directly targeting computer science with his philosophy, but he was aware of its development. The introduction of MEOT cites the example of “calculating machines”, and the glossary includes an entry for “rocker switches” which cites the Eccles-Jordan circuit⁹.

This book seeks to follow the threads left behind by Simondon to understand one of our own contemporary technical realities. Culture still constitutes itself as a “defense system against technics” [SIM 12, p. 1], so we must consider the same questions today as Simondon in the 1960s.

What are our technical objects? Before we can answer this question, we need to precisely identify a certain region of the author’s thoughts: his philosophy of technics.

We have chosen to argue from two texts: MEOT and a La Psychosociologie de la technicité¹¹. Our texts therefore fit into the global perspective of a review of Simondon’s past work in the light of his “new” texts – PST is a lecture that was only published recently. The dialogue between these two books will enable us to redefine Simondon’s philosophy of technics by extending it with his psychosocial method. Our starting hypothesis is that both texts form a single coherent entity both by virtue of the theoretical back-and-forth between them and how they complement each other, and by the difficulties associated with any attempt to reconcile them.

Simondon’s philosophy of technics rests upon an observation: the divorce between technics and culture. This conceptual framework is defined by the dialogue between the two selected texts that we shall study.

Finally and most importantly, the use of a particular methodology is why the publication of MEOT reverberated so strongly through academia. John Hart explains this in his preface:

“As a scholarly work explaining the humanity contained in the machine, there was nothing like it in the entire philosophical corpus devoted to the machine; nothing, that is, which combined a philosophical treatment with the same proximity to the technical object” [SIM 12, preface by J. Hart].

Defying every academic imperative, Simondon filled his complementary thesis with lengthy discussions of motors, diodes and triodes – examples of concrete technical objects.

This is why we can speak of a Simondonian gesture in the first part of MEOT. The philosopher is theoretically postulating the ontological dignity of technical objects, while simultaneously demonstrating these rights by giving a voice to technical objects as arguments themselves. This Simondonian method is this powerful act of inserting the technical object as an argument into discursive reasoning.

Despite its radical status within the philosophy of technics, the Simondonian method has fallen into a historiographical void.

Many studies on Simondon have examined the aspects of this method but few have studied in any depth the author’s use of examples as part of his ideas. This historiographical void echos a paradoxical feature of Simondonian studies; the Simondonian gesture has been discussed and praised for its relevance but never reproduced, even though it was intended to initiate a long series of philosophies that would be reconciled with the reality of their objects.

Studies of Simondon and computer science¹² show that “the ambition to technically understand the computer object based on Simondon demands a redefinition of the technical schema that is inseparable from a meticulous study of the technical objects themselves” [GRO 16]. To understand digital technology in the light of Simondon, we must test Simondon’s technical schemas against a technical object. To reproduce the Simondonian method, we must theorize reflexively, then apply our efforts to a domain that is a priori unfamiliar to philosophy: the technics of computer science.

Accordingly, to create a dialogue between Simondon and computer science, we chose to present a concrete technical object and study its functionality. This object must derive from the digital world described above, which encompasses an array of heterogeneous realities under a single name. Software is one of the cardinal points of contemporary digital technics, understood as a program that instructs the computer machine of the actions that it must perform¹³.

To reproduce Simondon’s gesture, we must reproduce his method, and so we must approach our object of study with sufficient proximity that it may inform and be informed by Simondon’s categories of analysis. We must therefore select an example that can illustrate our analysis of software in full generality. We selected the web browser¹⁴ as a complex software program that plays a key role for every web user¹⁵; both the specialized technicity and the nodal nature of this digital object provide ample motivation for an analysis. We chose the Mozilla Firefox browser¹⁶ because it is open source¹⁷; this meant that we could access its source code, thus opening up intriguing forms of technical production.

We decided to familiarize ourselves with the functionality of the technical object by writing code and conducting interviews with programmers. We needed to understand the technical workings of software (through the lens of a web browser) from the inside, in the same way that Simondon studied the technical objects of his own time. Second, we needed to bring forth this knowledge into the reflexive discourse of philosophy, while making it accessible to the masses; like Simondon, we therefore introduced pedagogical tools that would allow a non-technical audience to understand the relevant technical arguments. We hope that this will allow readers to appreciate the questions associated with digital technology, while simultaneously facilitating critical distance and reflection. At the end of the book, there is a glossary of key terms and a bibliography. The arguments in the text are illustrated at various points by diagrams. For our work to be credible, the form must exemplify the substance; our petition for the concrete study of an object and call for pedagogy must be effectively accompanied by the fulfillment of both objectives.

One advantage of studying software is that its highly specialized technical configuration could not possibly have been foreseen by Simondon¹⁸. Examining a digital object that had not yet materialized as such during the era of the philosopher himself might shed new light on his categories of analysis. Software provides a direct questioning of Simondon’s notion of the technical object. As we have noted, Simondon was studying machines and objects that were exclusively material; by contrast, software, viewed as a digital object, is not strictly speaking reducible to material components, but is made up of binary information.

Against this background, do the Simondonian categories of analysis allow us to view software as a technical object? In other words, is it possible to radicalize Simondonian functionalism to the point where it can be used to understand immaterial technical objects?

This question has three aspects. At the level of the general philosophy of technics, an answer would allow us, by way of Simondon’s functionalism, to establish a definition of a digital technical object that does not (fully) require materiality to be considered a technical object. This would signify a modified conception of technicity, partly detached from materiality. At the level of Simondonian philosophy, successfully erecting a definition of an immaterial digital object would have consequences for the second facet of his philosophy of technics, the psychosocial aspect; the particular configuration of a software would modify its contours. Finally, our object of study itself, the software, can be understood anew through a Simondonian lens.

We will adopt the following approach; reproducing the Simondonian gesture is a risky path to tread that would demand diligence and attention from any author to avoid misappropriation. We will require a precise commentary to define the dual framework of what we have called “Simondon’s philosophy of technics”: a conceptual framework (genetic and psychosocial philosophy of technics) and a methodological framework (demonstration by example). We will then seek to apply this framework to our selected digital object – a software program (and the example serving as a guiding thread, a web browser) – at the levels of genetic technology (Chapter 2) and psychosociology (Chapter 3).

Beyond a simple commentary, we wish to reproduce Simondon’s gesture. The entirety of our work strives to fulfill the program outlined Deforge’s claim in the postface of MEOT: “Our conclusion: republishing Simondon is good. Having many Simondons would be even better” [SIM 12, postface, end of the eighth open question, p. 325].