Never Alone

It’s always the same with machines: they’re badly thought of. Especially among historians and sociologists. As if humanities meant defense of humanoids. And above all, as if a clear line could be drawn to separate humans and machines. On one side, true life, relationships, values, work, society. On the other, a mechanical coldness threatening and corrupting human nature. We hear such a discourse a lot of times. Its critical strength lying on the continuous repetition of the replacement rhetoric. Machines replace humans. They steal their work and substitute for human relationship.
One simply has to observe this selling machine to understand that things are not so simple. The distinction can never be made so easily. As soon as the machine stops displaying its (inhuman?) messages to customers, it is opened by a worker who comes and repair it. The same who regularly comes to maintain it. Who goes with the ones cleaning it at least once a day. But these people are not simple humans. They come with their measurement instrument, their diagnosis tools, their screwdrivers, their brushes. Does it mean that anything worth everything? That the installation of machines and interfaces everywhere cannot be discussed or fought?
Certainly not. One just has to accept that it’s impossible to sort things out of the joint running of humans and machines at first sight . And to refine a little bit political and moral foundations of critique.