Read in "Aramis, or the Love of Technology" by Bruno Latour:
""Anthropomorphism purports to establish a list of the capabilities that define humans and that it can then project through metaphors onto other beings - whales, gorillas, robots, a Macintosh, an Aramis, chips or bugs. The word anthropomorphism always implies that such a projection remains inappropriate, as if it were clear to everyone that the actants on which feelings are projected were actually acting in terms of different competences. If we say that whales are ‘touching’, that a gorilla is ‘macho’, that robots are ‘intelligent’, that Macintosh computers are ‘user-friendly’, that Aramis has ‘the right’ to bump [etc.] ... , we are still supposing that ‘in reality’, of course, all this fauna remains brute and completely devoid of human feelings. Now, how could one describe what they are truly are, independently of any ‘projection’? By using another list taken from a different repertory that is projected surreptitiously onto the actants? For example, technomorphisms: the whale is an ‘automaton’, a simple ‘animal-machine’; the robot, too, is merely a simple machine. Man [sic] himself, after all, far from having feelings to project, is only a biochemical automaton. We give the impression, then, not that there are two lists, one of human capabilities and one of mechanical competencies, but that legitimate reductionism has taken place of inappropriate anthropomorphism. Underneath projections of feeling, in this view, there is matter. ...But what can be said of the following projection: ‘The chips are bugged’? Here is a zoomorphism - bugs - projected onto a technology. Or this one: ‘The gorilla is obeying a simple stimulus-response’? Here a technobiologism - the creation of neurologists - is reprojected on to an animal. ...
... Let us [therefore] say that ... there is never any projection onto real behaviour, the capabilities to be distributed form an open and potentially infinite list, and that is better to speak of (x)-morphism instead of becoming indignant when humans are treated as nonhumans or vice versa. The human form is as unknown to us as the nonhuman"
Why do I blog this? some inspiring quote by (again, no surprise) Bruno Latour about the relation we have/built/construct with technical artifacts. Some elements certainly brought into the discussion during the preparation of LIFT Asia/. Besides, I'll post my notes about that book later on, there's a lot to draw for my project about "technological failures".