Exotic technologies vs. mundane technologies:
“In contrast, the term ‘mundane technologies’ connotes those technologies whose novelty has worn off;
these are technologies which are now fully integrated into, and unremarkable part of, everyday life. To
study mundane technologies are thus to explore how they mediate and reflect everyday life, how they
serve in the reproduction of local technosocial configurations.”
(Mike Michael; Between the mundane and the exotic, p. 131: Sage 2003)
“So, if the exotic is about change, transformation, production, becoming, the mundane is about
homeostasis, reproduction and being. “
(Mike Michael; Between the mundane and the exotic, p. 132: Sage 2003)
Michel Serres & quasi-objects:
“Our relationships, social bonds, would be airy as clouds were there only contracts between subjects. In
fact, the object […] stabilises our relationships, it slows down the time of our revolutions. […] The
object, for us, makes our history slow”
(Michel Serres 1995: 87)
“It should be noted that this movement of quasi-objects is not separate from human relations: “ The
relations at the group constitutes their object; the object moving in a multiplicity constructs these
relations and constitutes the group. These two complementary activities are contemporaneous”
(Serres, 1991: 102 in Mike Michael: Between the mundane and the exotic, p. 139: Sage 2003)
Donna Haraway: The Companion Species Manifesto:
“The debates in the last 150 years about whether the category “species” denotes a real biological entity
or merely figures a convenient taxonomic box sound the over- and undertones. Species is about
biological kind, and scientific expertise is necessary to that kind of reality.”
(Haraway: 2003: 15)
“I have come to see cyborgs as junior siblings in a much bigger, queer family of companion species”
(Haraway: 2003: 11)
“There cannot be just one companion species, there have to be at least two to make one. It is in the
syntax; it is in the flesh. Dogs are about the inescapable, contradictory story of relationships – coconstitutive in which non of the parts pre-exist the relating, and the relating is never done once and for
all. Historical specificity and contingent mutability rule all the way down, into nature and culture, into
naturecultures.”
(Haraway: 2003: 11)
Frédéric Kaplan: Artificial Attachment:
“Artificial pets […] Entertainment robot […] Artificial companion […] Artificial creature […] Hybrid
creatures”
The juvenile traits: In Konrad Loranz (founder of ethnology) such characteristics trigger innate
responses in humans similar to those invoked by a human (or mammal) baby, according to the
following characteristics: A relatively important head, an overdimensioned skull, large eyes placed
low, small and thick extremities, a firm and elastic body, and inaccurate gestures. I.e. figures in cartoon
and commercial design. Important: independent from issues of realism; does not have to look like a
living being. In fact the limitation in resemblance can cause better acceptance.
“ In the story of wizard of Oz, Dorothy leaves Kansas for the fantasy world where she meets strange
and hybrid creatures. In this country the differences between men, machines, animals are fuzzy.
Dorothy’s new friends are a coward lion, a woodman and a robot that talks and pretend it has a brain.
Entertainment robots are like the hybrid creatures of that story. They are machines but they are built to
be considered as pets or even friends.”
(Frédéric Kaplan: Artificial Attachment)
Fra kompendiumet:
To much emphasis on text and signs and symbols in comparison with the importance of materiality:
“Everything will melt into thin air”(Marx). In Johan Fornäs; “Cultural Theory and Late Modernity”:
“Nothing prevents us from emphasizing that a text may be any web of signification in whatever
material form”(kompendium p. 69) Materiality here is just another (slightly less important) symbolic
mode.
In Hugh Mackay: Technology as text. Encoding, decoding of artifacts. No agency attributed to the
artifact in itself. Asymmetrically/human centered relations on the consumer and producer.
Aberrant or oppositional decoding only focus on the alternative use of the artifact and to the symbolic
significance, i.e. there meaning and representations here of.