Andrés Vaccari

Forthcoming in CTS: Revista Iberoamericana de Ciencia, Tecnología y Sociedad, 2012. I post an uncorrected proof here: vaccari-el-artefacto-como-estructura-intencional
ABSTRACT (English): The present paper carries out a comparative analysis of the notion of function in analytical philosophy (in particular, intentionalism and artifact dualism) and in the philosophy of Simondon. I examine the relation between agency, intentionality, and [...]

(Forthcoming in Techne: Research in Philosophy and Technology, 16:1 March 2012). I post an uncorrected proof in MS Word: vaccari_descartes__posthumanism
ABSTRACT: This paper is a historical inquiry into the philosophical fault-line that leads from mechanicism to posthumanism. I focus on a central aspect of posthumanism: the erosion of the distinction between organism and machine, nature and [...]

(Publicada en el foro CTS: Revista Iberoamericana de Ciencia, Tecnología y Sociedad, Noviembre 2011)
En un futuro no muy lejano, la especie que sucederá a homo sapiens sapiens elaborará (o quizás sus máquinas lo hagan por ellos) un mito acerca de sus orígenes. El relato comienza con la aparición de ciertos animales que se llamaban a [...]

In the last three decades or so, analytical philosophy seems to have rediscovered technology. Among the various aspects that have received attention, the ontology of artifacts stands out as a key concern. A salient feature of this body of work is a strong consensus on a basic axiom:
“Artifacts are objects intentionally made to serve a [...]

OK, I keep insisting I have discovered a new art form, not sure if it’s a literary art form, but it certainly seems unique to the 21st century (and late late XXth). Here’s the latest offering from our annonymous, mad digital Burroughs-wannabe. Enjoy!
Chameleon would the ice
is otis day a real person
blinding yellow whatever that
smashed [...]

Artículo presentado ante el III Congreso Iberoamericano de la Filosofía de la Cienica y la Tecnología, Buenos Aires, 8 de septiembre del 2010
(”Life and Technics: Rethinking the nature of artificiality.” Draft for a paper, presented at the Third Iberoamerican Congress of the Philosophy of Science and Technology, Buenos AIres, September 8, 2010. An English version [...]

Vida, Técnica y Naturaleza en el Pensamiento de Gilbert Simondon
Revista Iberoamericana de Ciencia, Tecnología y Sociedad, Vol. 5, #14 (April 2010).
This work examines the relation between the natural and the artificial, and between living and technics, in the philosophy of Gilbert Simondon. One of the strong points of Simondon’s thought is that [...]

“Unweaving the Program: Stiegler and the Hegemony of Technics”
Published in Transformations #17: “Bernard Stiegler and the Question of Technics” (2009)
Full text: http://www.transformationsjournal.org/journal/issue_17/article_08.shtml
This paper examines the empirical and historical aspects of Bernard Stiegler’s philosophy of technology, arguing that it consolidates, rather than challenges, a number of traditional ontological distinctions; in particular, those between living and technological, [...]

“Prolegomena to a Future Robot History: Stiegler, Epiphylogenesis and Technical Evolution”
(coauthored with Belinda Barnet)
Published in Transformations #17: “Bernard Stiegler and the Question of Technics” (2009)
Full text: http://www.transformationsjournal.org/journal/issue_17/article_09.shtml
How does one tell the story of a machine? Can we say that technical artefacts have their own genealogies, their own evolutionary dynamic? Bernard Stiegler feels this question is [...]

As any blogger and email user would now, there is a tremendous amount of spam out there. Apparently, 97% of the volume of all email correspondence consists of unsolicited emails. Anyway, I’ve been quite intrigued lately by a series of spam messages that have been sent both to my email account and to this site. [...]

“Legitimating the Machine: The Epistemological Foundations of Technological Metaphor in the Natural Philosophy of René Descartes”
Philosophies of Technology: Francis Bacon and his Contemporaries.
Edited by Claus Zittel. Volume 11: Intersections - Yearbook for Early Modern Studies (Brill: Leiden and Boston: 2008).
I post here a draft version, uncorrected.

Reensamblar lo Social: Una Introducción a la Teoría del Actor-Red
Bruno Latour
Ediciones Manantial, 2008, 390 páginas
(Revista de Ciencia, Tecnología y Sociedad, number 11, vol 4, July 2008)
¿Qué es lo social? ¿Qué es una sociedad? ¿Qué quieren decir los científicos “sociales” cuando hablan de ciertos fenómenos como “enmarcados en lo social”, socialmente “construidos”, “constituidos” o “determinados”?
La respuesta [...]

H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life
By Michel Houellebecq
(The Australian December 2-3, 2006)
In this short but eventful study of H.P.Lovecraft, Michel Houellebecq suggests the pioneering writer created modern horror while exhausting its possibilities. Perhaps the horror genre never lived up to its early promise because practitioners such as Edgar Allan Poe and Lovecraft are [...]

The Brain Takes Shape: An Early History
By Robert L. Martensen (Oxford University Press, 2004)
(Published in Metascience 15:3, December 2006)
Few people nowadays would dispute that the brain is the seat of personhood, the locus of all cognitive, sensory and emotional processes. This commonsensical, distinctively Western idea has had a relatively short but convoluted history, beginning in [...]

Is there anything NEW to say about 2001: A Space Odyssey?
I watched it again the other day for the fiftieth time. It occurred to me that we can read the film as presenting a synoptic, imagined history of technology. This imagined history perpetuates many myths about technology, as well as offering a comprehensive range [...]

Micronations
By John Ryan, Simon Sellars and George Dunford
Lonely Planet Publications, 144pp, $24.95
(The Australian September 23 2006)
THIS latest offering by Lonely Planet Books is a curious creature. Ostensibly a travel book, it turns out on closer inspection to be an exploration of the idea of nationhood. In our post-colonial, globalised times, some people see the nation [...]

COOLING DOWN
Andrés Vaccari (2006, unpubished)
Others collect stamps, train tickets, Star Wars figurines; Michael Mikelos collects entropy. The idea has haunted him ever since he encountered the laws of thermodynamics at university. It’s one of the few things he remembers from his failed attempt at becoming a scientist.
“Entropy,” he explains to the team, “is the sexiest, [...]

Evening in the Palace of Reason
by James Gaines
(The Weekend Australian May 6-7, 2006)
History is a messy business that rarely offers neat closures or a good story. Nonetheless, the exceptions can be more wonderful than any fiction. One such case is the meeting of Johann Sebastian Bach and Frederick the Great of Prussia, the subject of [...]

The World According to Y
by Rebecca Huntley (Allen & Unwin)
(Weekend Australian 18 march 2006)
While the notion of a ‘generation’ is largely a fabrication, it is useful to market researchers and sociologists as a way to study populations who lived through similar historical circumstances, and share certain attitudes and beliefs.
Just as I was beginning to figure [...]