Posthumanism, open ontologies and bio-digital becoming: Response to Luciano Floridi’sOnlife Manifesto

Abstract

In The Onlife Manifesto: Being Human in a Hyperconnected Era Luciano Floridi and his associates examine various aspects of the contemporary meaning of humanity. Yet, their insights give less thought to the political economy of techno-capitalism that in large measure creates ICTs and leads to their further innovation, development and commercialization. This article responses to Floridi's work and examines political economy of the blurred distinction between human, machine and nature in the postdigital context. Taking lessons from early history of the Internet across the Eastern and the Western Bloc, it examines ideological underpinnings of development of information and communication technologies. The paper points towards the postdigital challenge of the rising importance of biological sciences, their mutual connection with information sciences, and the society at large. It introduces the concept of bio-informational capitalism, and closely examines the relationships between biology and information. Based on authors' previous works the chapter introduces the concepts of homo economicus and homo collaborans, and claims that their mutual differences do not make a case for a dualist philosophy-instead, the two concepts should be understood as opposite poles of a continuum. However, it shows that the biological challenge is not a mere continuation of our existing (research) questions, and that it introduces new postdigital ways of understanding our reality. In conclusion, the chapter calls for developing a new, postdigital language of inquiry, which reinvents the digital challenge and invents its relationship to biology.

Biodigital Philosophy, Technological Convergence, and Postdigital Knowledge Ecologies

“…The philosophical aspect is not simply bioethics, but also biopolitics (after Foucault), ‘bioepistemologies’ (or evolutionary theories of epistemology), and evo-ontologies (Peters and Jandrić 2019a , b ). In broad terms, it focuses on the historical flash point where forces of biology and information come together to determine the paths of cultural co-evolution through the development of eco-cybernetic systems and its form of rationality in relation to Earth system governmentality.…”

“…In this context, we need a postdigital critical philosophy that examines the nature of these convergences and especially the convergence of information and genomic science at the nanolevel, linking it to techno-science, techno-politics, and techno-nationalism (Peters and Besley 2019 ). A central point of critique in the critical philosophy of convergence is the political economy of ‘post-biological technocracy’ and its tendency to ‘numb’ the biological self and creates a kind of digital obedience where Big Tech ‘platform ontologies’ know us better than we know ourselves (Peters 2020b ; Peters and Jandrić 2019b ).…”

“…Biodigitalism is inherently Anthropogenic, so this engagement does not stop at human beings but extends towards all life forms—as can be seen from the recent example of the Covid-19 pandemic, our dietary practices are dialectically intertwined with humankind’s collective health and well-being (O’Sullivan 2020 ). New knowledge ecologies are a ‘part of the wider innovation of technocapitalism and can only really be understood in postdigital terms of posthumanism though biodigitalism—specifically how these two forces between them shape the future of human ontologies of what we can become’ (Peters and Jandrić 2019b ). Situated within bioinformational capitalism (Peters 2012 ), and co-developed by humans and machines as we write this article, the new knowledge ecologies further bring about perhaps the most fundamental shift in the typology of traditional scientific disciplines and their economy in the history of science.…”

Biopolitical Commons in the Postdigital Era

“…Following these developments, traditional economy of scarcity (of material goods) has been supplemented by a new economy of abundance (of immaterial goods). Sharing and distributing material artefacts usually decreases their value but sharing and distributing immaterial artefacts almost always increases their value (Peters and Jandrić 2019;Martínez-Cabezudo 2014). This context transcends the labour horizon, affecting our mutual interactions, our sense of own reality, and our interactions with that reality (Peters and Jandrić 2019).…”

“…Sharing and distributing material artefacts usually decreases their value but sharing and distributing immaterial artefacts almost always increases their value (Peters and Jandrić 2019;Martínez-Cabezudo 2014). This context transcends the labour horizon, affecting our mutual interactions, our sense of own reality, and our interactions with that reality (Peters and Jandrić 2019). Postdigital mashup of material and immaterial production reaches well beyond the economic sphere to directly address the cultural, the social and the political.…”