Sound Research WIKINDX
Sound Research WIKINDX |
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Simondon, G., Malaspina, C., & Rogove, J. (1958/2017). On the mode of existence of technical objects. Univocal Publishing. Added by: alexb44 (07/07/2026, 06:24) Last edited by: alexb44 (23/07/2026, 06:15) |
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| Resource type: Book Published ID no. (ISBN etc.): 9781937561031 BibTeX citation key: Simondon1958 Email resource to friend View all bibliographic details  |
Categories: General Keywords: Philosophy, Philosophy of technology, Technology Creators: Malaspina, Rogove, Simondon Publisher: Univocal Publishing |
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| Notes |
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Some of Simondon's key terms as I understand them:
Hypertely: When a technology's traits evolve to the point of being over-specialised, causing it to lose its ability to adapt and meaning it functions only in the specific milieu it was developed to work in. This is at the cost of future potential for evolution and interconnection. Concretisation: A machine becomes more of a cohesive whole. It becomes one structure that functions synergistically, which is a direct contrast to the abstract stage, where each bit does its own little thing in the whole. Technical essence: The internal coherence of a tech object. It's the ovearching idea that allows a machine or technology to have a lineage and evolve further. Might think of this as the guiding light of a technical object. Adaptation-concretisation (pp. 58-59): The technical object exists only as an idea, and forces the creation of a different milieu. As such they both exist only virtually until invention. In this sense, the technical object becomes its own condition as it relates to the techno-geographical milieu overall. (not happy with this description yet...) Techno-geographical milieu (pp. 58-59): Exists between man and nature, and is only possible through man's intelligence. The physical conditions of a geographically specific location is integrated into the functioning of a technical being, and is also modified through it. Associated milieu: The associated milieu exists purely virtually until the actual inventio of the technical object. For instance, a thermostat is an open system, as it is capable of 'responding' to the temperature of the room (unlike automatic systems that are pre-programmed and closed). The room then changes temperature, and that in turn affects the thermostat. This is now the associated milieu of the thermostat as a technical object, as they both come into existence once the technical object is actualised. As one note below notes: as a tool bearer, humans can also act as an associated milieu of the tools themselves. They are incorporated based on needs and substituted accordingly, based on the skills and knowledge of the human. Metastability: The metastable is neither stable nor unstable, like a bowling pin that wobbles after a shove. Individuals exist in this metastable state because they retain preindividual potentials. When an external force, like a shove of the pins, acts upon them, it resolves a tension between the disparate, incompatible potentials within their preindividual being. The specific direction of their individuation is determined by which of these disparate potentials is actualised through that resolution. Simondon uses this merely as an analogy.
Good source: https://epochemagazine.org/34/gilbert-simondon-and-the-process-of-individuation/ Added by: alexb44 Last edited by: alexb44 |
| Quotes |
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pp. 16–17
"We would like to show, precisely, that the robot does not exist, that it is not a machine, no more so than a statue is a living being, but that it is merely a product of the imagination and of fictitious fabrication, of the art of illusion. The notion of the machine as it currently exists in culture, however, incorporates to a great extent this mythical representation of the robot. An educated man would never dare to speak of objects or figures painted on a canvas as genuine realities, having interiority, good or ill will. However, this same man speaks of machines as threatening man, as if he attributed a soul and a separate, autonomous existence to them, conferring on them the use of sentiment and intention toward man."
Speaks for itself.
Added by: alexb44
(07/07/2026, 10:16)
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p. 17
“(…) a purely automatic machine completely closed in on itself in a predetermined way of operating would only be capable of yielding perfunctory results.”
Simondon argues that automatism is a low degree of technical perfection, because automating a machine means sacrificing a wide range of possible usages. Instead, raising the technicity of a machine corresponds to a certain margin of indeterminacy, which allows the machine to be sensitive to outside information - an "open" machine.
Added by: alexb44
(07/07/2026, 10:27)
Comments:
Interesting in relation to AI. The shift to working on primarily post-training and harnesses is precisely a step towards determinacy, which robs it of this 'openness'.
Added by: alexb44
(07/07/2026, 10:27)
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pp. 60–61
On invention and ground.
"The reason the living being can invent is because it is an individual being that carries its associated milieu with it; this capacity for conditioning itself lies at the root of the capacity to produce objects that condition themselves." Here Simondon mentions that psychologists missed not schemas, forms or operations, but the dynamic ground upon which these schemas confront each other, combine and participate: "[...] a deeper analysis of the inventive process would no doubt show that what is deterinant and plays an energetic role are not forms but that which carries the forms, which is to say their ground; the ground [...] is what harbors the dynamisms; it is that through which the system of forms exists" "For the ground is the system of virtualities, of potentials, forces that carve our their path, whereas forms are the system of actuality. Invention is the taking charge of the system of actuality through the system of virtualities, the creation of a unique system on the basis of these two systems." Forms then, are actualised potentials and virtualities.
Added by: alexb44
(07/07/2026, 08:21)
Comments:
I sense a lot of parallels to Merleau-Ponty's intentional arc.
Added by: alexb44
(07/07/2026, 08:21)
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p. 60
"The unity of the future associated milieu, within which the causal relations will be deployed that will enable the functioning of the new technical object, is represented, it is played or acted out as much as a role can be played in the absence of the true character, the way of the schemes of the creative imagination"
Simondon says that these objects can only exist by virtue of imagination, and that humans can make use of these schema in their minds to envision how things will work. This is why the milieu is purely virtual until the invention of the technical object itself, which in turn puts the new milieu into existence, and so they affect each other.
Added by: alexb44
(07/07/2026, 08:13)
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p. 67
”In the evolution of technical objects we thus witness a passage of causality proceeding from prior ensembles to subsequent elements; such elements, once introduced into an individual whose characteristics they modify, in turn enable technical causality to rise from the level of the element to that of the individual, then from the level of the individual to the level of the ensemble; here, in a new cycle, technical causality once more descends to the level of the element via the process of fabrication, where it reincarnates itself in new individuals and then in new ensembles”
Added by: alexb44
(16/07/2026, 05:27)
Comments:
Simondon argues that elements, or parts, evolve or individuate causally from ensembles. So a functioning ensemble will ‘negatively’ direct its inventors towards its required conditions, which will result in a natural selection for its elements, causing it to evolve to fit the requirements of the ensemble. This in turn means that once the element is re-integrated, it now constitutes a new individual, which becomes a part of a new ensemble.
Added by: alexb44
(16/07/2026, 05:27)
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p. 74
“We can consider the technical imagination as being defined by a particular sensitivity to the technicity of elements; it is this sensitivity to technicity, that enables the discovery of possible assemblages; the inventor does not proceed ex nihilo, starting from matter that he gives form to, but from elements that are already technical, with respect to which an individual being is discovered as that which is susceptible to incorporating them.”
As with above example from p. 67 – Technical imagination takes rise from prior elements that can then help constitute future ensembles.
Added by: alexb44
(17/07/2026, 05:33)
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p. 74
“An engine is an assemblage of springs, axes, and volumetric systems, each defined by their characteristics and their technicity, not by their materiality; thus, a relative indeterminacy can subsist in the localization of this or that element in relation to all the others.”
It is the way that an ensemble contributes to the overall operational schema that is important to Simondon. So a concrete example might be the localisation of an element—a cylinder doesn’t need to be placed in a specific place to serve its function, or perhaps the material can be changed, so long as its functional participation is intact.
Added by: alexb44
(17/07/2026, 05:33)
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p. 75
On technicity
“The technicity of a spring increases when it is capable of bearing higher temperatures without losing its elasticity, when it preserves its coefficient of elasticity without significant modification within larger thermal and mechanical limits: it technically remains a spring but within a much larger framework, and is suited to a less restricted incorporation into this or that technical individual.” Good example of what technicity means to a simple object like a spring.
Added by: alexb44
(17/07/2026, 05:33)
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p. 77
Similar thinking both to the extended mind thesis and the concept of multistability of postphenomenology. Also refers directly to the body (embodiment).
“[…] the function of technical individualization, however, is assumed by human individuals; the process of learning, through which man forms habits, gestures, and schemas of action that enable him to use the highly varied tools that the totality of an operation requires, pushes this man to individualize himself technically; it is he who becomes the associated milieu of these diverse tools; when he masters all of his tools, when he recognizes the moment he must change tools in order to continue working or to use two or three tools at a time, he ensures an internal distribution and self-regulation of the task through his body.”
He continues: “In some cases, the integration in the ensemble of technical individuals happens via the intermediary of an association of human individuals working in twos, in threes, or in larger groups; when these groupings do not introduce functional differentiation, then their only direct purpose is to increase the available energy or speed of the work, but when differentiation is called for, they clearly demonstrate the genesis of an ensemble on the basis of men employed as technical individuals rather than as human individuals” In other words – more people = more energy and therefore speed, but sometimes more people can accomplish things otherwise not possible. These humans would then all possess separate technical individualities.’’
Added by: alexb44
(17/07/2026, 05:34)
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p. 78
“[…]if man often feels frustration before the machine, it is because the machine functionally replaces him as an individual: the machine replaces man as tool bearer.”
Added by: alexb44
(17/07/2026, 05:34)
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p. 81
The function of a technical individual never actually belonged to humans, it just had no yet been realised
“The unease of this situation relating to man and machine thus comes from the fact that one of the technical roles, that of the individual, has thus far and until this day been played by men; no longer a technical being, man is, henceforth obliged to learn a new function and to find a place within the technical ensemble that no longer corresponds to the technical individual; the first movement consists in occupying two functions that are not individual, that of elements and that of the direction of the ensemble; yet in these two functions man finds himself to be in conflict with the memory of himself: man has for so long played the role of the technical individual that the machine, once it has become a technical individual, still appears like a man occupying the place of another man, when it is, on the contrary, man who in fact provisionally replaced the machine before truly technical individuals could emerge.” In Simondon’s argument here, this function of a technical individual never actually belonged to humans, it just had no yet been realised. In modern day, this is the holy argument of AI – become the leader of AI agents, the conductor of machines (the ensemble), and rise above this role of technical individual, which was never actually an essence of humanity. Interesting take.
Added by: alexb44
(17/07/2026, 05:34)
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p. 106
“[…] if a very poorly rationalized technics requires an extremely precocious initiation of learning, then the subject will, even as an adult, retain a basic irrationality in his technical knowledge; he will possess it by virtue of a very profound acquisition, due to his early habitual immersion; as a result, the technicians knowledge will not consist of clearly represented schemas, but of a manual dexterity possessed almost by instinct, and entrusted to this second nature that is habit. His science will be at the level of sensorial and qualitative representations, very close to the concrete aspects of matter; this man will be endowed with a power of intuition and complicity with the world that will give him a very remarkable aptitude that can only manifest itself in work and not in consciousness or discourse; the craftsman will be like a magician, and his knowledge will be operational rather than intellectual; it will be an ability rather than a knowing; by its very nature, it will be a secret for others, because it will be a secret for himself, for his own consciousness.”
Simondon values both the ‘magical’ knowledge that is attained often from childhood, describing it as lacking intellectual schema, as well as the intellectual knowledge of knowing exactly what to do (important to note that he is not making claims of one being superior, merely describing why they occur).
Added by: alexb44
(17/07/2026, 05:46)
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p. 107
“In his remarkable tale titled The Mines of Falun, E. T. A. Hoffmann describes a similar power o f intuition in the miner; he feels danger and can find minerals in the most hidden veins; he lives in a kind of co-natural relation with underground nature, and this co-naturalness is so profound that it excludes all other feeling or attachment; the true miner is a subterranean man; the one who descends into the mine without loving it won’t discover this essential co-naturalness, as is the case with the errant sailor who bravely signs up to work in the mine because he loves a young girl; he becomes the mines victim, on the very morning of his wedding.”
Added by: alexb44
(17/07/2026, 05:47)
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p. 109
Embodied technics without intellectual schema - how community shapes knowledge and vice versa
“The secret and stable aspect of such a technics is thus not only a product of social conditions; it produces the structure of groups as much as this structure of the group conditions it. It is possible that every technics must to a certain extent contain a coefficient of intuition and instinct necessary for establishing the appropriate communication between man and the technical being. But besides this first aspect of technical formation, there exists a second aspect that stands in an inverse relation to the first, and which is essentially aimed at the adult. As in the preceding case, there is a dynamic action exerted on the individual man and on the group, leading him to possess an adult mentality.” Referring here to the embodied technics without intellectual schema. It happens because of the group or community, but it also acts as the glue of the structure of the group.
Added by: alexb44
(17/07/2026, 05:50)
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p. 118
“This is why humanism can never be a doctrine or even an attitude capable of being defined once and for all; each epoch must discover its humanism, by orienting itself toward the main danger of alienation.”
Because our understanding of our collective self (though I don’t believe there can be said to be just one for all of humanity) changes, se can we never truly determine what it is to be human. It will inevitable evolve.
Added by: alexb44
(17/07/2026, 05:52)
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p. 122
What encyclopedism does to knowledge
“The autodidact is tempted to bring everything back to the present: the past, insofar as he assembles it within his present knowledge, and the future, to the extent that he considers it as necessarily flowing in a continuous manner from the present through the intermediary of progress.” The autodidact neglects historicity of technical objects, and regards them as fully formed tools rather than steps in the ongoing evolutionary lineage of the technical object. In this same way, the autodidact views the future as a simple extension of the present, and so progress seems completely natural, but technological evolution is not linear in reality. Essentially the autodidact completely misreads the genesis of technical objects. The autodidact in Simondon’s view is the encyclopedic learner. They accumulate knowledge in a horisontal way, so the inventions are sort of presented in what might appear a continuous, “side-by-side” fashion. This leads to a view of the technical invention as merely assembly, which is not what real genesis and concretisation looks like. Although he doesn’t mention embodiment spefically, he makes mention of skills that just belong to a person and are not ‘recorded’ knowledge so to speak. The encyclopedic learner doesn’t possess this knowledge/skill.
Added by: alexb44
(23/07/2026, 06:05)
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p. 124
“… [T]he primacy of literature in cultural education comes from this omnipotence of opinion; a work [ceuvre], in particular a work that has survived, is in fact a work that has expressed the ethics of a group or of an epoch wherein this group could recognize itself, a literary culture is thus enslaved to these groups; it is at the level of these groups of the past. A literary work is a social witness.”
Added by: alexb44
(23/07/2026, 06:05)
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p. 127
On how society evolves
“However, this maturity can only be fully achieved to the extent that society is stable and is not evolving too rapidly, otherwise a society that is in the process of transforming itself, in privileging the order of succession, communicates a dynamism to its adult members that turns them into adolescents.” Concludes a part – my takeaway from the whole thing: AI can be seen as a forced transformation within society itself, in which leading actors determine the narratives that guide the internal tensions that influence the transduction of society as a whole. Transduction in this sense is an illusion, until it is not. In this analogy, the internal tension comes from society itself—its people, who see things a certain way. The external tensions come from those in power, attempting to enfroce their ideology onto those who exert the internal tensions, and they do so leveraging the very technology that will in turn be affected by the tensions. They try to force those who represent society to adopt certain ways of thinking, in turn aligning the interior and exterior tensions and shaping the ultimate transduction of society. This view is purely mine, and the use of Simondon’s terms might need a bit of adjusting here.
Added by: alexb44
(23/07/2026, 06:05)
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p. 130
On tools and instruments
“[…] if by tool one understands the technical object enabling one to prolong and arm the body in order to accomplish a gesture, and by instrument the technical object that enables one to prolong and adapt the body in order to achieve better perception; the instrument is a tool of perception.”
Added by: alexb44
(23/07/2026, 06:05)
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p. 133
On alienation - adds physio-psychological angle. Lack of embodiment.
“This alienation grasped by Marxism as having its root in the relation of the worker with the means of production, does not only derive, in our view, from a relation of property or non-property between worker and the instruments of work. Beneath this juridical and economic relation exists an even more profound relation, that of the continuity between the human individual and the technical individual, or of the discontinuity between these two beings.” […] “It [alienation] also emerges outside of all collective relation to the means of production, at the physiological and psychological level of the individual properly speaking. The alienation of man in relation to the machine does not only have a socio-economic sense; it also has a physio-psychological sense; the machine no longer prolongs the corporeal schema, neither for workers, nor for those who possess the machines.” Continues on Marx’ theory of alienation by including here the lack of embodied connection to the machines, much like LLMs.
Added by: alexb44
(23/07/2026, 06:06)
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p. 134
"The technical individual [the machine] is not of the same era as the labor that enacts it and the capital that frames it”
Simondon points out that alienation is certainly a result of the worker no longer being the owner of his means of production, but also at the physiological and psychological level of the individual. He says that: "the machine no longer prolongs the corporeal schema, neither for workers, nor for those who possess the machines" (p. 133), meaning that the machine doesn't function as an extension of the mind, but instead we feed ir ot manage its logistics.
Added by: alexb44
(07/07/2026, 10:56)
Comments:
This might be viewed as both a cognitive and physical discontinuity and is an interesting perspective as it relates to the extended mind.
Added by: alexb44
(07/07/2026, 10:56)
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p. 136
Machines do not perceive, as such recordings contain no order to them. No signification.
“[…] there is no order in the preservation of recordings by the machine, which does not possess the faculty of selecting forms. Human perception distinguishes forms, perceptual units, when looking at or listening to recorded documents. But the recording itself does not really contain these forms. The inability of the data-preserving function of the machines is relative to the recording and reproduction of forms. This incapacity is general, it exists at every level.” Any modern machine capable of ‘understanding’ recordings still does so in relation to inherently anthropocentric heuristics.
Added by: alexb44
(23/07/2026, 06:06)
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p. 137
Difference between human and machine memory.
“In human memory, on the contrary, it is the form that is preserved: preservation itself is only a limited aspect of memory, which is the power of selecting forms, of schematizing experience. The machine would be capable of performing a similar function only if the already-recorded magnetic tape was superior to a new tape in recording certain sound figures, which is not the case. The plasticity in the memory of machines is that of the medium, whereas in human memory it is the plasticity of the content itself. One can say that, in man, the function of preserving recollections resides in memory, because memory, conceived as a set [ensemble) of forms, of schemas, receives the recollection it records because memory connects the recollection with its forms; in a machine, on the contrary, recording occurs without prior memory.” We do not learn numbers for the sake of being able to re-create them purely in a technical sense. We learn the numbers in order to count and calculate real world scenarios. As such, the forms to us contain not merely shape, but signification. Signification fundamentally cannot be ascribed to text-in-itself, and as such an LLM cannot grasp form in any sense of the word beyond its technical properties, purely as they exist within the system on which it operates. This system again is inherently anthropocentric and merely a heuristic that serves humans, no machines. Is it nothing more than measurements translated into a format that we as humans have decided are suitable for a given type of data.
Added by: alexb44
(23/07/2026, 06:06)
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pp. 137–138
Difference between human and machine memory
“For the machine lacks the plasticity of integration, which is the vital aspect of memory through which it distinguishes itself in that very instant from machine memory: the storage of the calculator or the translating machine (which is nothing but a classical calculating machine coded in a certain way) is very different from the function of the present through which memory exists, in man, at the very level of perception, through perception, making sense of the present word according to the general turn of phrase and of earlier phrases, or even according to the totality of experience acquired in the past regarding the person who speaks.” On differences between human memory and machine memory.
Added by: alexb44
(23/07/2026, 06:06)
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p. 138
Difference between human and machine memory
“Content introduced into human memory will superimpose itself on prior content and take form on it: the living is that in which the a posteriori becomes a priori; memory is the function by which a posteriori matters become a priori.” This is the alleged promise of LLMs tools with all their “memory”, “attention” and “context” modules – but they are merely analogous, and do not function nearly the same way. […] “A complex technical operation, however, requires the use of both forms of memory. Non-living memory, the memory of the machine, is useful in cases where faithfulness in the preservation of details outweighs the syncretic nature of a recollection integrated into experience, having signification through its relation with other elements. Machine memory is the memory of the document, of the result of measurement. Mans memory is that which, after an interval o f many years, evokes a situation because it involves the same significations, the same feelings, the same dangers as another, or simply because this similarity makes sense according to the implicit vital coding constituted by experience.” This is not to diminish what machines can do, but instead to acknowledge what either one can do, and what their possibilities and limitations then are.
Added by: alexb44
(23/07/2026, 06:07)
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p. 139
How man and machine couple. Why automata especially need human regulation.
“[…] there is coupling when a single and complete function is carried out by both beings. Such a possibility exists every time that a technical function has a defined self-regulation. Functions that contain a self-regulation are the ones where the accomplishment of a task is directed not only by a model to be copied (according to an end), but by a partial result of the accomplishment of the task, intervening as a condition. In the artisanal operation, this control through information gathering is frequent; man being at once the mover [moteur] tool and the perceiving subject regulates his action according to instantaneous partial results. The tool is at once tool and instrument, which is to say a means of action prolonging the organs and a channel of recurring information. The machine, on the contrary, as a complete closed individual replacing man, generally has no system of self-regulation: it goes through the motions of a stereotypy of successive gestures according to a predetermined conditioning. This first type of machine is what one could call a mechanical being without self-regulation. It is indeed a practical technical unit, but not a technical individual stricdy speaking.” Interesting take in regards to the collaboration-with-LLMs perspetive. The issue then becomes that the LLM itself is given a role of self-regulation, of which it is fundamentally incapable. This dilutes the human’s autonomy in the regulation, which leads to reliance on what appears to be actual self-regulation, but is merely statistical approximation. This is precisely the lure and the fault of LLMs: “Despite appearances, it is, on the contrary, the truly automatic machine that least replaces man, because the function of regulation that exists in this machine presupposes a variability in its operation, an adaptability of its functioning to the completion of this work. A rather elementary enthusiasm for self-regulating automata lets us forget that these machines are precisely the ones that are most reliant on man; while the other machines need man simply as a servant or organizer, self-regulating machines need man as a technician, which is to say as an associate; their relation to man is situated at the level of this regulation, not at the level of elements or ensembles.”
Added by: alexb44
(23/07/2026, 06:07)
Comments:
Psychologically, this technology leads us to anthropomorphise them and thereby conflate their capabilities with those of a living being. It lures us into a state of collaboration that is really no collaboration at all—the machine takes ownership of tasks which it is fundamentally incapable of carrying out. As Simondon says, we really should be the regulators in this case, but the design is extremely faulty in this sense. This only appears to work because the result of knowledge work is diffuse in its own right – what is the measure of success and progress, exactly?
Furthermore, the alleged superintelligence of these technologies inevitable lead to a sense of inferiority for the human collaborator, skewing both autonomy and regulation towards the machine. If instead, the machine is not viewed as having this superior intelligence, then what exactly is its use-case? An expert in their field would not bounce ideas of a toddler, and yet here we are… A statistical tools deployed to produce natural language is a futile direction in the first place, let alone for translation purposes… Added by: alexb44 (23/07/2026, 06:15) |
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pp. 162–163
"(…) From then on the most positive, most direct aspect, of the first notion of progress, is no longer experienced. The progress of the eighteenth century is a progress experienced by an individual through the force, speed, and precision of his gestures. The progress of the nineteenth century can no longer be experienced by the individual because it is no longer centralized with the individual as the center of command and perception in the adapted action. The individual becomes the mere spectator of the results of the functioning of the machines, or the one who is responsible for the organization of technical ensembles putting the machines to work."
Said in relation to technology that didn't directly replace humans, but rather animals or tools. The automatic weaving loom, for instance, is a bearer of tools much like humans.
Added by: alexb44
(07/07/2026, 10:37)
Comments:
This is very similar to the promise of AI. Agents specifically make this very promise of operating just as a human would. Regardless of whether it works or not (it doesn't), the human individual experiences technological advancement as a spectator, rather than as a wielder of a new tool.
Added by: alexb44
(07/07/2026, 10:37)
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