Pure information: on infinity and human nature in the technical object

Abstract

ABSTRACT The technical object is said to carry a pure information. This idea is as bold as it is perplexing, seeing that it does not refer straightforwardly to a technical concept, such as negentropy, nor to any semantic sense related to communication. This purity of information can indeed be understood in light of something human, whose trace we find in the technical object, but Simondon once more confounds expectations. Untying the idea of human nature from anthropological, social or even psychological terms, he refers instead to what, in each of us, remains tributary to the metaphysical notion of the unlimited and indefinite (ἄπειρον; ápeiron). We are thus in the presence of an aporia, a puzzlement. To grasp the idea of pure information and to understand it in light of in the human ‘ápeiron' requires that we think through the apparently paradoxical notion of an imprint of infinity on the technical object. To help us in this endeavour is Simondon’s conception of a power of initiative that marks both human collectivity and the technical object with an axiomatic audacity.