Paper short abstract:

Starting from of recent interests in AI, Cyborgs and Enhanced Humanity, this paper uses Leroi-Gourhan's "delegation of memory" and Simondon's analysis of technical objects, to examine the type of (real and imagined) situated practices afforded and promoted by contemporary and future digital devices.

Paper long abstract:

The paper is an experimentation on the recent resurgence of public and corporate interests in AI, Cyborgs and Enhanced Humanity, from André Leroi-Gourhan's idea of "delegation of memory" (1964). Taking as a starting point that all technical objects are partly made of delegation of human capacities, and building on Gilbert Simondon, this paper revisits some aspects of cognition from the angle of "technical objects" and the type of cognitive, social and political milieu they can generate. Cognition, whether embodied, distributed, extended, situated or mediated, cannot exist without the material world the subject lives. In turn, each apparition of "new" technical objects thus implies the emergence of "new" forms of engagement. This leads me to suggest that the relatively recent expansion of digital devices could thus be examined from the type of situated practices they promote and afford, be they real or imagined.