Some books are difficult to summarise because they are so rich and insightful that it is impossible to do them justice. Techno-Negative is such a book. Hence: This is not a summary, but a reflection on what makes this an outstanding book that provokes a ton of thought – even in the areas in which I would challenge its conclusions. It asks the big questions: How do humanity and technology relate to each other – and how are they actually separate? What does the history of technology tell us about dehumanisation and domination? And what can we learn from the usually untold stories of rejection of technological “progress”?
Dekeyser fully dismantles core beliefs about technology – it is neither tool nor progress, but “a political battlefield fraught with tension, contestation, and contradiction”. He opens up a space for rejecting technology. He allows us to see technology as a way to define humanity and thereby define what is the Other, the subhuman, the savage, those who reject the promise of technology. He calls this ontological policing; a fairly complex term for people not familiar with Heidegger et al. It essentially means drawing a line between who is worthy of being in a meaningful sense and who is not. The way out: abolitionism. But Dekeyser remains fairly vague about what that means as a target and about how to get there and might even open the door to apolitical nihilism. But we will come to that.
The book resonated deeply with me because it helped me to grasp contradictions in beliefs I held, but where I could not quite find a way out, a way to question my own assumptions. It would probably be a stretch for a white person to call another white person’s work decolonial, but the book certainly reveals the colonial framing of technology especially in the last few centuries. Those who fail to recognise or who even refuse to participate in new technologies can only be backward and suffer from “techno-phobia”. How did we get here?
Some stops in history
Starting in ancient Greece, Dekeyer reveals that unlike the current Luddite revival suggests, the rejection of technology started at the top. For the Greeks, both machines and slaves could be characterised as animate instruments: not human, but dangerously blurring the lines between humans and everything else. Humanism was born back then based on the idea that there is something inherently valuable about humanity, something that needs to be preserved. Dekeyser brings out the humanist principles in the works of many thinkers I appreciate, including Hannah Arendt, Langdon Winner and Jacques Ellul. We even see digital humanism becoming a thing again, right now, e.g. in the form of a fairly large conference.
Those who applaud Leo also legitimise the reasoning that underlies his critique: Accept the divine order.
The Christian church has rejected technology for slightly different reasons: Humans with technology might fail to accept their place in the divine order. It has been like this for millenia (at least the church cannot be blamed for a lack of consistency on this): Dekeyser describes the early days, but the topic is highly relevant these days: Not only does a recent manifesto of “Christians against AI” (it is brief and quite entertaining, “Peter Thiel is obsessed with the Antichrist and funds AI anyway”) express the same concepts. Pope Leo VIXIVX also recently got applause from pretty much everyone (even supposed tech critics and NGOs) for a supposedly critical “AI” encyclical. Both the manifesto and the encyclical perpetuate the tech bro myths of “AI” inevitability; and Leo even presented it together with one of them. Arguably, those who applaud Leo also legitimise the reasoning that underlies his critique: Accept the divine order.
Now turning back to the book: Actually, it was at the hands of the ruling classes that the first power looms were destroyed. Dekeyser documents that the rich and powerful decided to burn a loom in Hamburg in 1685 because they feared masses “hungry for food and regime change”. Social stability had to be maintained. This only changed with an increasingly international capitalism in the following centuries. Only in 1811 did the Luddites begin to smash machines, thereby kicking off a new era in which the oppressed and less powerful took the lead in refusing machines. And with that, a new era of dehumanisation began.
Less than human
Dekeyser brings out how colonial powers dehumanised those who were not willing to adopt their tools – in the very name of humanism. The details are as interesting as they are disturbing; many readers might not need much convincing to reject the colonial framings of the colonised as savage, irrational and less than human. However, Dekeyser’s analysis reveals that also the reaction to the violent expression of humanism in the form of posthumanism comes with its own flaws. While it promotes “an ethics of more-than-human interconnectedness and shared vulnerability”, it falls back to using the biological human as an anchor point for the co-constitutive relationship with technology that fails to get rid of its humanist core.
The violent attacks on those refusing technology continued also in the 20th century in cases I had not even heard of: Among them the Philadelphia administration that bombed members of MOVE, a group of technology enemies, in 1985. Also Gandhi had a farm on which producing food without machinery was a fundamental principle, but he just as others was belittled and dehumanised as “techno-phobic”, thereby insinuating that instead of having good reasons for their approach, they were driven by irrational anxiety. Narrow Western (and actually also male) conceptions of reason and rationality served as markers of humanity. Those who fail to adhere to the norms set by these standards were not worthy of being considered full humans, but, instead, could even be a threat. The threatening nature of those rejecting technology materialised when groups like the French CLODO turned to fire: Dekeyser also has an excellent documentary of their attacks on computer firms in the 1980s. They explicitly rejected the promises of cybernetics, a supposed science that, as Dekeyser puts it, “blunts virtuality by insisting on reducing it, and the future-becoming it enables to a procedure of “realization.”” What is more, CLODO even refused to offer a different futural trajectory: “there were no demands, just fire.”
Discourse policing: when the refusal of AI disappears
I find this history extremely insightful to understand why the “AI” debate feels so unbearably narrow. Those who reject “AI” can easily be dismissed as irrational, as phobic, even as subhuman. Every critique needs to have at least a disclaimer to reassure everyone that the rejection does not go too far. In a German TV interview with Dekeyser, the journalist starts by asserting to Dekeyser: “You are not against progress”, just to make sure the audience is not disturbed by his perspective. I can also personally give testament to this: How many talks do I now have to start with a declaration of “I am not against technology/automation per se” because even refusing one specific technology is considered highly suspicious and already a sign that something is probably wrong with me. Many people like to suggest that I just did not understand, or I am a primitivist who advocates for living in caves. just as other sessions at a conference were. The official reason is that the panel was not “scientific enough” even though I have spoken at that institution in the past. It is fairly clear (also from additional factors) that this is a political decision in order to make invisible the critique of “AI” that was articulated on the panel as well as the repeated applause from the exclusively academic audience. How scientific is research on “AI” when it is confined to the sphere of “AI” inevitability? I already know from various prestigious researchers that they adjust their framings and their recommendations because to present solutions that would match the analysed problems would not be acceptable or at least not conducive to their academic careers.
Where to go from here?
Dekeyser makes it clear that reform is not an option – but, somewhat confusingly, neither seems to be a revolution. He wants to strive for a truly emancipatory path to overcome the violence of ontological policing by finally decentring the human in order to also get rid of the dehumanised “Other”. However, he leaves the reader fairly clueless regarding what will come after that. This seems consequential: Just deconstruct and sit still for a moment with the discomfort of not having new concepts to fill the void. He concludes that “what we encounter again and again in techno-politics is a humanist optimism” and rejects techno-politics altogether because they can too easily reproduce the violence inherent in ontological policing, be it driven by humanism, posthumanism or techno-rationalism. But what does it mean to reject politics altogether? In times like ours, I think there is a risk of becoming apolitical, of disengaging with collective concerns. My hunch is that Dekeyser does not want readers to disengage, but he gives them very little to hold on to. I (and also others) want to know more and hence we are hoping to get Thomas to Berlin sometime this autumn.
A balanced recommendation
Again, the book is so dense that there are so many other things I would love to discuss with whoever has read the book. Hit me up if you are up for a session in Berlin. Two things I find worth highlighting as challenges:
- Firstly, Dekeyser brings in many names of philosophers and others without any introduction. Such an introduction would have probably expanded the book considerably, but I probably also benefited a lot from studying philosophy in my undergrad so terms like ontology and epistemology are quite accessible to me. But sometimes, the lack of context seems problematic indeed; for example, Dekeyser cites Arnold Gehlen who was an outspoken nazi (and he only briefly mentions Heidegger’s failure to distance himself from nazi politics even in hindsight). Combined with his apolitical ending, this opens up a reactionary interpretation of parts of the book (but Dekeyser makes his stance clearer in an interview).
- Secondly, while Dekeyser describes the colonial side of humanism, he does not engage with the gender dimension at all. The debate seems to have happened mostly between cis-male individuals that Dekeyser cites extensively. That this probably results from the ways in which rationality and reason devalue women is not a consideration; instead, I was slightly put off by a section which Dekeyser dedicated to speculating about libidinal motives in relation to refusing technology. To me, this read like a very masculine perspective that is inclined to identify with guys walking down an alley with beer in their hands. It is not a big deal and more of an omission than a mistake in my view, but still worth mentioning – I would be curious to hear what others think.
Dekeysers opens up a space to think about technology and its refusal in a less linear way. Let’s make sure we use it.
I am still rethinking my own stance on humanism. I can only repeat it: This is an excellent, thought-provoking book, beautifully written and engaging. Dekeyser is clearly not just an observer studying what is happening in an outside world, but he genuinely seems to consider himself part of that world and the struggles taking place therein. He opens up a space to think about technology and its refusal in a less linear and a more open-ended way. Let’s make sure we use it.
Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash.