The collective in the seemingly individual: Highlighting the world in human-technology relations​

Since the last edition of PHTR in Copenhagen in 2022, technologies have become even more entrenched in our everyday lives. The emergence of user-friendly Generative AI applications continues to excite and puzzle people, bringing forth not just new opportunities but also the reformulation of related values and standards, particularly the urgent questions of the social and environmental sustainability of this technology. Meanwhile, the world is shaken by the increasing number of military conflicts, forcing people and governments to invent or creatively reappropriate technologies in order to support living conditions, maintain a sense of normalcy, and uphold human dignity. Emerging technologies can't avoid being entangled with world-consequential events that raise questions about how humans relate to one another, their conflicts, and their collective potential to overcome current crises.

This edition of PHTR aims to highlight the collective dimension of seemingly individual human-technology relations by revealing the world that is always present within them—politically, culturally, environmentally, and otherwise. In particular, we invite explorations into the role of design in the philosophy of human-technology relations as a practice through which the collective shaping of new worlds can be imagined, negotiated, and materialized.

We welcome everyone interested in exploring the relations between humans and technology from diverse disciplinary angles, including philosophers, social scientists, artists, designers, and engineers. These inquiries may take experimental, multimedia, and other formats in addition to more conventional ones, provided they remain tied to human-technology relations as an object of philosophical study - see the CfP.

Original Website Layout: Arie Adriaensen

PHTR Website Design: Jordi Viader Guerrero

Graphic Design: Değer Özkaramanlı

Banner Image Credits: Hanna Barakat & Cambridge Diversity Fund / https://betterimagesofai.org / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/