Abstract

This chapter is an exploration, from the perspective of political anthropology and philosophical anthropology, of the new type of human condition that is currently taking shape with the advent of a wide sphere of smart technologies and artificial intelligence. Digital technologies of communication, transport, telepresence, interface, workflow optimisation etc. advance at high speed, and social scientists have little time to reflect upon, to discern and to analyse the fundamental ways in which such technologies alter, fracture and reshape our basic modes of being-in-the-world and of relating with each other. As coding and algorithms claim an ever increasing importance in the governance of our selves and our communities, I try to anticipate in this chapter some of the unintended consequences of this engineering fever, which is being highly encouraged and supported by many governments and transnational organisations in the Western world. I show that these technologies alter social action and the object/agent/subject relationships at a very deep level, giving rise to a shift in the political, economic and social structure of society. I explore the impact of smart technologies in the light of such notions as performance, commodity, fairground, mediality, surveillance, code-space and so on. I argue that this global attempt at “technologising the social” is part of the long-term march of modernity towards a trickster-inspired universe that is plunged into a state of permanent liminality.