Being-in-the-City: A Phenomenological Approach to Technological Experience

Jason Wasiak

doi:10.3384/cu.2000.1525.09121349

Authors

Jason Wasiak York University and Department of Sociology, Ryerson University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3384/cu.2000.1525.09121349

Keywords:

being-in-the-city, technology, embodiment, perception, phenomenology, technological ecology

Abstract

This paper examines dynamics surrounding the negotiation and articulation of the body-technology relationship necessarily characterizing the experience of being-in-the-city. Nowhere is everyday experience more mediated by technology than in the city. Being-in-the-city involves being embodied by technology at levels ranging from micro to macro. Despite the fact that technologies are constantly evolving in city space, relations with technology tend to become quickly normalized — mundane — transparent. Given this normalization as well as the sheer pervasiveness of technology in constituting city space it is important to examine the ways in which technology comes to shape the experiential contexts of everyday life. In urban space, technologies result is new sights to be seen, sounds to be heard, smells to be smelt, textures to be felt, as well as altogether new modes of experiencing the everyday. In exploring the dynamics surrounding the ongoing, multi-layered negotiation and articulation of the body-technology relationship necessarily characterizing the experience of being-in-the-city a phenomenological perspective is adopted. Heidegger’s writing on technology, Merleau-Ponty’s writing on embodiment and perception, and Don Ihde’s writing on the body and technology contribute to a theoretical framework for a phenomenological examination of the experiential implications of being-in-the-city, a technological ecology.

References

Borgmann, Albert (2003): “Information and Reality at the Turn of the Century”, Robert Scharff & Val Dusek (eds): Philosphy of Technology: The Technological Condition, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 571–577.

Dreyfus, Hubert (1990): Being-in-the-world: A commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division 1, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Heidegger, Martin (1962): Being and time (J. Macquarrie. & E. Robinson, trans), San Francisco: Harper Collins Publishers.

Heidegger, Martin (1966): Discourse on thinking, New York: Harper Torchbooks.

Heidegger, Martin (2001): “Building dwelling thinking”, Poetry, Language, Thought (A. Hofstadter, Trans.) (pp. 141–159). New York: HarperCollins.

Heidegger, Martin (1977): The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, New York: Harper Torchbooks.

Ihde, Don (2002): Bodies in Technology, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Ihde, Don (1990): Technology and the Lifeworld: From Garden to Earth, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Jonas, Hans (2006): “Toward a Philosophy of Technology”, Robert Scharff & Val Dusek (eds): Philosphy of Technology: The Technological Condition, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 191–204.

Kittler, Friedrich (1996): “The City is a Medium”, New Literary History, 27:4, 717–729. [Read this article]

Kingwell, Mark (2008): Concrete Reveries: Consciousness and the City, Toronto: Viking Canada.

Kline, Stephen (2003): “What is technology?”, Robert Scharff & Val Dusek (eds): Philosphy of Technology: The Technological Condition, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 210–212.

Lash, Scott (2002): Critique of Information, London: Sage Publications.

McLuhan, Marshall & Fiore, Quentin (1967): The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects, New York: Bantom Books.

McQuire, Scott (2008): The Media City: Media, Architecture and Urban Space, Los Angeles: Sage Publications. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1962): Phenomenology of Perception (C. Smith, trans), London: Routledge.

Nardi, Bonnie & O’Day, Vickie (1999): Information ecologies: Using technology with heart, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.