Technology, Maturity, and Craft: Making Vinyl Records in the Digital Age

Abstract

Drawing from Michel Foucault’s reading of Immanuel Kant’s essay “What is Enlightenment?,” and specifically his definition of ascesis, we associate maturity with a capacity for, and interest in, forming the self. On the basis of an empirical study of making vinyl records following the successful commercialization of digital media, we identify micro-disciplinary techniques of self-forming that emerge as enthusiasts steadily learn the craft of vinyl record manufacturing. It is, we argue, through technology, rather than against it, that organizational immaturity can be resisted. Craftwork involves testing and transforming, rather than just acquiring, traditional skills. Maturity involves an ongoing struggle of selectively and reflectively engaging with technologies via attempts to be the subject of one’s own subjection. The former contributes to the latter.

Organized Immaturity in a Post-Kantian Perspective: Toward a critical theory of surveillance capitalism

“…The resulting socio-technological system organizes both undemocratic governance and immaturity in individuals, leaving the latter ill-prepared to challenge the governance shift and, furthermore, priming them to subliminally accept it (Hari, 2022; Lanier, 2018). As a result, ‘[t]he informed individual is being formed by machine computation’ and only ‘seemingly sovereign’ (Holt & Wiedner, 2023, p. 536, with reference to Chun, 2011). The task of citizenship thus becomes one of finding or creating new resources for maturity, to counteract these effects and to protect and uphold democratic governance.…”