I took a look at your This&THATCamp webpage. I’ve known of
BarCamp events but not your unConference THATCamp meetings.
You have a wonderfully unstuffy way of describing and
explaining what these are and how they work. I hope your
This&THATCamp meeting next month will lead to many more
THATCamps. They are, I think, very much what can attract and
engage all the kinds of people needed for constructive
conversations about the Humanities and Technology.

Something that usefully compliments the Leo Marx article you
point to is, I think, W Brian Arthur’s book “The Nature of
Technology: what it is and how it evolves,” Allen Lane, 2009.
Probably you know this.

I like Arthur’s treatment, but it’s only half the story. He
doesn’t deal with Leo Marx’s hazards of reification of the
notion of technology. To do this we need to separate and hold
apart two closely interrelated notions: technology and tools.
Arthur doesn’t do this enough, but nor does Marx.

Tools are used by humans to aid purposeful activities and to
successfully complete tasks. Being human is, in an important
way, tool using. Tools don’t do things completely on their
own, not even automatic tools. Tools are rendered from
technologies, to be usable, effective, efficient, safe,
reliable, robust, etc. And, tools are used to develop
technologies. So, humans make technologies; they have no
autonomy from humans.

Making this tool and tools use aspect explicit in the
relations between being human and technologies helps, I think,
as a way to identify and locate the responsibilities needed to
avoid Marx’s hazards, and it helps to make clear why humans
are and must be at the centre of the whole business of
technology, and that it can’t be otherwise.

A nice conversation for your This&THATCamp meeting in May,
perhaps.

Best regards,

Tim

Tim Smithers
Independent Research Practitioner
Donostia / San Sebastián
The Basque Country

LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/timsmithers