Yuk Hui Books

Focusing on algorithmic catastrophes, the book explores their global impact and the contemporary challenges they present. It offers a historical analysis that intertwines philosophy, computation, and media, aiming to redefine the relationship between nature and technology. Through this investigation, it sheds light on the complexities of our current technological landscape and the implications of algorithmic decision-making.

In light of current discourses on AI and robotics, what do the various experiences of art contribute to the rethinking of technology today? Art and Cosmotechnics addresses the challenge of technology to the existence of art and traditional thought, especially in light of current discourses on artificial intelligence and robotics. It carries out an attempt on the cosmotechnics of Chinese landscape painting in order to address this question, and further asks: What is the significance of shanshui (mountain and water) in face of the new challenges brought about by the current technological transformation? Thinking art and cosmotechnics together is an attempt to look into the varieties of experiences of art and to ask what these experiences might contribute to the rethinking of technology today.

A systematic historical survey of Chinese thought is followed by an investigation of the historical-metaphysical questions of modern technology, asking how Chinese thought might contribute to a renewed questioning of globalized technics.

Digital objects, in their simplest form, are data. They are also a new kind of industrial object that pervades every aspect of our life today--as online videos, images, text files, e-mails, blog posts, Facebook events.Yet, despite their ubiquity, the nature of digital objects remains unclear. On the Existence of Digital Objects conducts a philosophical examination of digital objects and their organizing schema by creating a dialogue between Martin Heidegger and Gilbert Simondon, which Yuk Hui contextualizes within the history of computing. How can digital objects be understood according to individualization and individuation? Hui pursues this question through the history of ontology and the study of markup languages and Web ontologies; he investigates the existential structure of digital objects within their systems and milieux. With this relational approach toward digital objects and technical systems, the book addresses alienation, described by Simondon as the consequence of mistakenly viewing technics in opposition to culture. Interdisciplinary in philosophical and technical insights, with close readings of Husserl, Heidegger, and Simondon as well as the history of computing and the Web, Hui's work develops an original, productive way of thinking about the data and metadata that increasingly define our world.

The book explores the concept of post-European thought by advocating for a new approach that transcends both the homogenization of differences and a mere revival of traditional ideas. It emphasizes the importance of individuating thinking, bridging the philosophical divides between Eastern and Western perspectives. This innovative framework encourages a dynamic exchange of ideas, fostering a deeper understanding and synthesis of diverse intellectual traditions.

Exploring the urgent need for a new political thought, the book addresses contemporary global challenges such as artificial intelligence, ecological crises, and geopolitical tensions. It proposes "planetary thinking," emphasizing a new language of coexistence beyond nation-states and recognizing political forms as technological constructs. By analyzing the limitations of traditional state concepts and introducing ideas like biodiversity and technodiversity, it seeks to redefine our understanding of sovereignty and develop frameworks to confront the crises of modernity and the future.

A social history of AI that finally reveals its roots in the spatial computation of industrial factories and the surveillance of collective behaviour. What is AI? A dominant view describes it as the quest "to solve intelligence," a solution supposedly to be found in the secret logic of the mind or in the deep physiology of the brain, such as in its complex neural networks. The Eye of the Master argues, to the contrary, that the inner code of AI is shaped not by the imitation of biological intelligence, but the intelligence of labour and social relations, as it is found in Babbage's "calculating engines" of the industrial age as well as in the recent algorithms for image recognition and surveillance. The idea that AI may one day become autonomous (or "sentient", as someone thought of Google's LaMDA) is pure fantasy. Computer algorithms have always imitated the form of social relations and the organisation of labour in their own inner structure and their purpose remains blind automation. The Eye of the Master urges a new literacy on AI for scientists, journalists and new generations of activists, who should recognise that the "mystery" of AI is just the automation of labour at the highest degree, not intelligence per se.

In 1985, the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard curated a groundbreaking exhibition called Les Immatériaux, at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The exhibition showed how telecommunication techno-ogies were beginning to impact every aspect of life. At the same time, it was a material demonstration of what Lyotard called the Postmodern. This book features a previously unpublished report by Jean-François Lyotard on the conception of Les Immatériaux and its relation to Postmodernity. Reviewing the historical significance of the exhibition, his text is accompanied by twelve contemporary meditations. The philosophers, art historians, and artists – among them Bernard Stiegler, Sven-Olov Wallenstein, Anne-Elisabeth Sejten and Jean-Louis Boissier – analyse this important moment in the history of media and theory, and reflect on the new material conditions brought about by digital technologies in the last 30 years.

Yuk Hui untersucht in Gesprächen mit Milan Stürmer das Spannungsfeld zwischen Philosophie und Welt. Er thematisiert die Pluralisierung des Technikbegriffs und entwickelt eine Epistemologie des Unbekannten. Sein Denken überschreitet Grenzen und eröffnet neue Perspektiven auf Zusammenleben und technologische Ökologie.

Heideggers Kritik der modernen Technologie, die er in seinem berühmten Aufsatz >>Die Frage der Technik<< formulierte, grundiert alles philosophische Nachdenken über Technik. Auch im östlichen Denken ist die darin festgestellte Beziehung der Technik zur Metaphysik allgemein akzeptiert. Doch ist die darin zugrunde gelegte Annahme, es gäbe nur eine - ursprünglich griechische - Form der Technik, ein Hindernis, wenn es darum geht, ein zeitgemäßes kritisches Denken in Bezug auf Technologie zu entwickeln. Yuk Hui zeigt in diesem wegweisenden Essay die Notwendigkeit einer Suche nach einem ganz spezifisch chinesischem Denken über Technologie, das sowohl in der Lage ist, mit Heidegger in Dialog zu treten, als auch die affirmative Haltung gegenüber Technik und Technologie problematisiert. Unter Bezugnahme auf Denker wie Lyotard, Simondon und Stiegler, aber auch auf östliche Philosophen wie Feng Youlan, Mou Zongsan und Keiji Nishitani gelangt Hui zu einem besseren Verständnis der Eigenheiten chinesischen Denkens in Bezug auf Technologie. Er geht dabei so grundsätzlichen Fragen auf den Grund wie: Warum hat chinesisches Denken Technik so lange ausgeklammert? Warum war Zeit nie ein Thema für chinesische Philosophie? Yuk Hui liefert einen Überblick über Geschichte und aktuelle Debatten chinesischen Denkens und versucht davon ausgehend, Antworten auf die Fragen zu finden, die uns die entfesselte Technologie jeden Tag neu stellt. (Quelle: Verlagswebseite)