Navigating in the age of magical reproduction
My master thesis is an experimental epistemology of magical thinking, through the prism of enhancing technologies, to show another interpretation of the rational, instrumental technological determinism that resides in the prosumption of information communication technologies.
Magical thinking (in a classical anthropological understanding) is observed in its complex relationship with technology through several historical examples within the techno-scientific discourse. These include its hybrid usage in alchemy (and science of the 16th and 17th century), its excommunication in the age of enlightenment in order to define science as a pure objective and rational field, following up with the birth of public relations and the subsequent appropriation of magical discourse in the age of consumer technologies. Monetizing through appropriating and adapting magical thinking is explained as both cause and effect (through amplification) of naturalizing complex obscure systems today. The paradox of the parallel development of both complexity and simplification becomes a technological superstructure where the dynamics and distribution of power are not constant, but one’s position in relation to control within technology is constantly in play.