Postphenomenology of technology: from mediation to the constitution of experience

Archive of Scientific Articles

ISSUE:

Manuscript. 2025. Volume 18. Issue 4

COLLECTION:

Philosophy of Science and Technology

All issues

Abstract. The research aims to demonstrate how postphenomenology re-conceptualizes technology: not merely as a tool (a means to an end) nor as something transcendent (e.g., Heidegger’s “essence of technology”), but as an active participant in shaping human experience, embodiment, and cultural life. The article analyzes the key concepts of postphenomenology: 1) technical/technological mediation – technology does not passively transmit experience, but actively structures it itself; 2) multistability – the same artifact can influence experience differently depending on the context; 3) embodiment – technology becomes an extension of the body (e.g., eyeglasses); 4) hermeneutic mediation – technology requires interpretation (e.g., instrument readings); 5) “partnership-relation” – technology is perceived as a quasi-subject (e.g., a voice assistant); 6) background presence – technology remains unnoticed, yet establishes the conditions of everyday life (e.g., heating or urban infrastructure). These concepts demonstrate that technology is not a passive object but an active mediator that shapes how we perceive the world, act within it, and make ethical decisions. The scientific novelty lies in presenting a holistic reconstruction of postphenomenology as interrelational (everything exists in relations, not as isolated entities) and anti-essentialist (rejecting the search for the “essence of technology”); its critical function is revealed: it helps to overcome hidden anthropocentrism (the idea that everything in the world is organized around humans) and the remnants of classical epistemology (e.g., the notion of technology as an “object of knowledge”); the necessity to expand the so-called “empirical turn” is substantiated: the analysis of technology should encompass not only how people use it, but also its subtle yet significant effects that constitute the background of the lifeworld. As a result, it is revealed that in postphenomenology, technology is neither a given nor a threat, but a field of ethical and ontological choice. Humans do not merely use artifacts – they constitute themselves and the world in conjunction with them. The true strength of postphenomenology manifests when it combines attention to specific practices with ontological analysis, thereby avoiding both abstract metaphysical generalizations and superficial empiricism.