1. Human and non-human aggregates Political technologies
Flavia Zucco
Neurobiology and Molecular Medicine Institute,
National Research Council, Rome, Italy.
Italian Association Women in Science

2. Transition of dualisms Natural/artificial - human/non.human
The differentiation of these two categories appears more difficult than in the past, due to technological environment which characterize our lives.
However it was not useless, because of the teleological significance of the artificium, while the natural is fixed by its previous history of compatibility.
Moreover the classification was often including a positive or negative evaluation, of each of the two components, according to the “situated knowledge”.

3. Transition of dualisms
In the century past, however the search of o continuity among the two opposite has been a challenge for many scholars:
When the great collections of strange objects were started in the 15th century by powerful and rich owners we can found that the classification of the object in the Kunstkammer was:
Natural forms - antique forms (fossils) - works of art - machine.
Nowadays they are philosophers and anthropologist who claim that, indeed, the very nature of humankind is the nurture, i.e. the artificium.

4. Human/machine aggregates
Artificial prosthesis: not only those belonging to the medical equipment, but also all the other techniques which allows us to abolish space and time, to see and work on the micro as well on the macro levels.
My question is: what is the fate of the real body?
The body is the interface that individuals have with the world.
All the stimuli are elaborated by our brain, but they also build our brain. A lot of the traditional stimuli are vanished in the technological world and the person individuality is not anymore built by means of the 5 senses.

5. Human/machine aggregates
The meaning of the human experience is completely changed.
Sociologists speak about a de-materialisation and de-synchronisation of the experience, in which the close contact with our physical and natural environment is lost.
Becoming the humankind a human/machine aggregate, ethical and aesthetics value are expulsed from our subjectivity, being technology, by definition, accepted as neutral.
The machine is a spokesperson. The subject is acting more than being.

6. Human/machine aggregates
Science and Technology are by definition deprived of affects.
The technology is judged, in fact, with respect of its use:
is it working or not? No other concepts are embodied in it.
This principle is so widely accepted that individuals are deprived of even the idea that they can decide about a technology.
Philosophers, as Zygmunt Bauman, have well described this liquid society, where the individuals are obliged to surface, in order to survive, done the space-temporal dimension into which technology is projecting us.

7. The scientific /technical framework
Science has the power in the post-modern world: it has open the doors to the globalisation, which is a dimension that, by itself, raises the problem on how to have a control on the choices.
Moreover the faith in a positive continuous progress, thanks to science, is at least faded.
The concept of certainty (truth) is more and more replaced by the concept of probability, especially in sciences dealing with living systems.

8. Political and social implications
The complexity of the systems is full of aspects of ambiguity (ambivalence). These aspects causes a sense of disorientation and fears.
Arnold Gehlen states that for ethics it is impossible to engage a confrontation with science, because the latter is always beyond.
Will the virtual environment select for a new humankind?
Will the cyborg be compatible with democracy?

9. The two cultures
Fantasy and wishes will be of help in keeping together emotions, affectivity and the rational and moral judgements
The re-use of the word passion may have political implication
It is from this situation that individuals may start again to pay attention to their deeper feeling, to meet again their consciousness, “by exploring the peripheral territories of the existence”.

10. Political implications
The new world need new language, because they are new concepts to be translated and transferred.
Probably the new language will be of signs and images.