The Philosophy of Simondon Between Technology and Individuation

The last two decades have seen a massive increase in the scholarly interest in technology, and have provoked new lines of thought in philosophy, sociology and cultural studies. New disciplines such as cyber-culture studies and Informatics have emerged, and the ideas of Simondon are central to these debates. Organized into three parts, the first provides introductory material on Simondon, and positions him as a philosopher of technology. The second part describes Simondon's theory of individuation, including his crystalline ontology, and the third offers a bridge between these two concerns, and explores how they are related. Simondon is an essential reference point for anyone seeking to understand the shape of contemporary thinking in relation to the most pressing issues of our time - technology, nature and the future of humanity.

PASCAL CHABOT has a doctorate in philosophy from the Free University of Brussels, Belgium. He is a researcher at the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research.

Graeme Kirkpatrick is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Manchester, UK. He is the author of Critical Technology (2004) which won the 2005 Philip Abrams Memorial Prize from the British Sociological Association; Technology and Social Power (2008) and the co-editor of Historical Materialism and Social Evolution (2002).

Part One: Philosophy of Technology:
Objects;
The Encyclopaedic Character of Technique;
Marx and Simondon on Alienation
Cybernetics
Part Two: Individuation: an Essay;
Part Three: Bridges:
Simondon and Depth Psychology
An Ideal World
Three Philosophies and The Matrix
Index