Romanticism is usually seen as a historical artistic and cultural movement, starting at the end of the eighteenth century and—at most—reaching far into the nineteenth century: from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s return to nature to William Morris’s medievalism and beyond. As a reaction against mainstream classicism, Enlightenment rationalism, scientific objectivism, disenchantment, and attempts to crush religion, Romanticism1 attempted to revive and liberate subjective feeling and emotion, passion, horror, and melancholy. It tried to reenchant the world and unite what was divided. It searched for personal liberation and freedom from convention and tradition, experimented with drugs and various forms of sexual transgression, explored new aesthetic experiences such as the sublime, and tried to achieve mystical union. It embraced the exotic and the extraordinary. It tried to escape the conformism of the mainstream and the dullness of the everyday in imagination and art, for example, by evoking medieval imagery. Romanticism created imaginary worlds ranging from sweet medievalism and passionate love stories to graveyard poetry, nightmarish monsters, evil witches, and gothic horror; it even created fantasy buildings such as sham castles and other aristocratic architectural follies in order to escape to the past. At the same time, it found sublimity, liberation, and authenticity in nature. In France, Rousseau argued for liberation and for the value of authenticity as against the conventions of society. Closer to nature, the individual could be free and authentic and face the immense and overwhelming forces of nature. In Germany, intuition and emotion were prized over Enlightenment rationalism and the “I” was seen as intimately connected to a wider natural and spiritual history. Romanticism celebrated individual artistic genius and more general individuality, self-assertion and self-expression; artists had to express their innermost selves. Individual authenticity was the aim. The autonomous artist became the model worthy of imitation. At the same time Romanticism had a nationalist aspect when it supported expression and the liberation of “the people” (das Volk) and when it celebrated national or regional culture and history, as in England and Germany. And Romanticism was wholeheartedly utopian and revolutionary, especially if the latter could be achieved by means of shedding ink rather than blood.
Although in fact Romanticism was not solely an artistic and cultural phenomenon but had many links with other domains of life and society (think, for example, about its links to politics such as the French Revolution and nationalism and its links to religious developments), and although, as I argue in this book, there are still strong romantic currents in contemporary culture, today Romanticism is usually safely put at a distance. It seems that it has little to do with our contemporary lives and personal selves at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It seems that it might be interesting “for your free time” (art and aesthetics more generally are often seen in this way) or that it may be of “academic” interest (!), but that it is neither a “serious” matter nor directly relevant to twenty-first-century existence, with its global economies, high-tech devices, and smart environments. Moreover, the term romantic is often used without reference to historical Romanticism, its meaning reduced to going back to the past and nostalgia. There is hardly a public discourse about the romantic heritage and what it means for our lives today.
Especially the technological dimension of our contemporary lives seems to have little to do with romanticism. Romanticism is perhaps the last thing users and developers of information and communication technologies (ICTs) think about when they engage with computer programs, electronic devices such as tablets and smartphones, autonomous robots, and so on. Most people—and this includes many philosophers of technology—see such electronic technological devices as “machines.” At first sight, there seems to be nothing romantic about that; on the contrary, it seems to fit with a science-oriented worldview that excludes romanticism. But as I show in this book, this way of thinking about technology is itself shaped by romanticism and obscures a better and deeper understanding of our relation to technology, including our relation to today’s electronic ICTs. While there is some academic discourse on romanticism and technology and even some “technoromantic” visions of technology (see below), in common use and development of ICTs the rationalist way of thinking about technology is still dominant, and many interpretations in philosophy of technology still follow this—even if more attention is paid to implications for self and society. Computers, electronic devices, robots, and other devices are still mainly interpreted as belonging to the world of the rational, the instrumental, the mechanical. This is a world of engineers and scientists, not the world of poets, writers, artists, and visionaries. There is a gap between “technology” and “culture,” a gap that is mirrored in the one between an “engineering” type of philosophy of technology and a “humanities” type of philosophy of technology (Mitcham 1994).
This book responds to this situation by discussing the relation between technology and romanticism in the following ways, which corresponds to the steps of its main argument: (1) it argues that current uses of electronic ICTs are not romanticism free but can instead be interpreted as realizing a surprising marriage of Enlightenment rationalism and Romanticism. This “material romanticism” had nineteenth-century precursors, but there are also new forms: cyberromanticism and especially the cyborg as a romantic figure; (2) it shows how problematic these new forms of material romanticism or technoromanticism are, given the problems related to romanticism and given that this kind of romanticism seems to turn into its opposite (what I call “the dialectic of romanticism”), and (3) it deconstructs both previous steps of the argument by showing that the new, material romanticism and the objections against it are still part of modern thinking and still belong to the romantic dialectic, and that to achieve a more profound critique of contemporary technology and culture, we need to explore different forms of thinking and different technologies—and we also need the latter (new technologies) to achieve the first (new thinking). Finally, (4) the book reflects on how difficult it is to escape from modern and Romantic thinking when dealing with technology and otherwise.
In the next section, I unpack this argument and say more about the relation between romanticism and technology, and about the contribution that this book makes.
Many people see romanticism and technology as opposites, and most classic philosophers of technology share this assumption. Technology is seen as belonging to the cold, rationalist, and instrumentalist side of modernity. It belongs to the world of “the machine” and its dirty mechanical and metal components, to “the system” and the management and bureaucracy that belongs to it, to what Max Weber called “the iron cage” (Weber 1905). It is alienating, dry, without life, and without love. Technology thus stands in stark contrast, so it seems, to life, passion, love, and the human desire for freedom and self-expression, for nature, for spirituality, and for authenticity—in stark contrast, therefore, to everything a romantic soul desires and aspires to.
This book argues against this opposition, which is itself a highly Romantic one, and shows that the relation between romanticism and technology is far more ambiguous and complex—in the nineteenth century and today. Those who see a gap between the two may have a point when it comes to industrial “mechanical” technology, although even this will be questioned. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, there was not only fear but also fascination with new science and technology (see Tresch 2012) and there were already “romantic machines” and a “mechanical romanticism.” But they miss in particular how contemporary ICTs, say, electronic devices, robots, and the Internet, have a strong romantic dimension. Even starker, these technologies seem to constitute a phase in the development of technological culture that can be interpreted as a unique and extraordinarily successful marriage of classic-rationalist and romantic modernity. Rather than representing romanticism’s antithesis, therefore, I argue that these technologies—or, more precisely, these devices and their use, not only the discourse and narratives about them, as Coyne (1999) has argued—amount to a synthesis of rationalism and romanticism. In the beginning of the industrial age, romanticism took on a “mechanical” shape (Tresch 2012). In the information age, romanticism is once again materialized, albeit in a different way. This book explores how people today, albeit unintentionally, try to realize their romantic craving for freedom, self-expression, spirituality, utopia, and authenticity by electronic means and how companies unscrupulously respond to these romantic desires with electronic gadgets that become what I call romantic technologies. Romanticism is not only present in, for instance, transhumanist visions and science-fiction dreams about artificial intelligence and space; it is right here in our face. As children of twentieth-century romantic counterculture, we seamlessly fuse technology and romanticism. Engaging with our many screens and smart gadgets and shielded from the inner, machine-like workings of our devices (developed by science), we try to satisfy our romantic desires and are more like Rousseau, Novalis, or Wordsworth than we think. We are not only romantics at heart; we are also romantics “at technology.” As in the nineteenth century, we have materialized our romanticism; only now the tools are different. This development seems to imply “the end of the machine,” signified by the celebration of the figure of the cyborg in which machine and human merge, united in love.
Yet this book is not content with analysis and interpretation; it also constructs and discusses a range of evaluations of this “cyberromanticism” or “material romanticism” when it warns for too much self-absorption and argues that much of the old criticisms of Romanticism, for example, by Irving Babbitt, are still relevant. It uses the myth of Narcissus to warn that by looking romantically into the mirror of our screens, we risk seeing only ourselves and losing sight of reality—which, as it does in the myth of Narcissus, leads to death. Moreover, the book shows that our technological hyperromanticism risks destroying its very aims when, in its obsession with authenticity and so-called social media, we become the people of “society” whom Rousseau despised: people who care only about appearances and always live in the opinion of others, needing constant confirmation from others. In other words, one can criticize these technologies and their uses from a romantic point of view: they pretend to be romantic, but in reality they are not. For example, the “love” and “care” that robots promise is not real love or care, and real authenticity is not about using the right kind of phone, tablet, or other product; we are being deceived by our devices and by the companies that promote and sell them. When we project romantic political aspirations onto the Internet, we see utopia but may end up in dystopia. (This view is in line with criticisms of the “delusions” of the Internet, as, for instance in Morozov’s 2011 criticism of cyber-utopianism.) Similarly, we are deceived if we use these technologies for spiritual and religious purposes; those who look for salvation in cyberspace meet the same dire, fragmented, and all-too-human world they wanted to escape from—let alone that there would be possibilities for resurrection or immortality. Furthermore, inspired by Heideggerian and Marxian criticism, I also discuss other potential objections to cyber-Romanticism and its technologies. For instance, it seems that through the use of our devices, the self is turned into a “standing-reserve” (Heidegger 1977) for data, which are then sold on the market. As we use these devices, we are commodified and objectified; we become alienated workers in the production process of data under capitalist conditions (see, e.g., Fuchs’s Marxian account of political economy of the Internet in Fuchs 2009 and subsequent work). In contrast to what they promise, these new technologies do not constitute the end of the machine but its continuation. We are merely in an advanced, later phase of “the system.” There is no synthesis of Romanticism and Enlightenment, no happy marriage of humanity and technology. Instead, romanticism has turned into its very opposite.
I then show that both of these criticisms—what I call the dialectic of Romanticism and the end-of-the-machine thesis—are still based on modern rationalist and romantic views. The end-of-the-machine vision expresses a typically romantic aspiration. The criticisms presuppose the rationalism-romanticism dichotomy and rely on romanticism and its antithesis as a normative anchor. The criticisms also rely on a Platonic and modern distinction between reality and appearance: the argument that the device pretends to be a romantic tool, but that this is only appearance since in reality it still is a machine, presupposes a sharp divide between reality and appearance, between a rationalist thing-in-itself and a romantic (sur)face phenomenon. The machine as the antithesis of all that is romantic is still there: in our (use) of ICTs, as the critics point out, but also in the very thought instrument the critic uses, that is, the romantic dialectic of humans and machines, romanticism and rationalism. Therefore, neither material romanticism nor the criticisms it may receive constitute the end of the machine. If we really wanted the end of the machine, we would have to put an end to modern thinking: to machine thinking and romantic thinking. We would have to stop thinking within the dialectic between rationalism and romanticism, between the machine and its Romantic antithesis, and between romanticism and the objections discussed—all of which remain within the framework of modern and romantic thinking. And if we wanted to develop a more profound criticism of our current age and technology, we would have to move beyond Platonic thinking in terms of reality versus appearance. For instance, we could look at nonmodern practices and nonmodern cultures to explore radically different possibilities. Yet at the end of the book, I emphasize that this may easily collapse into a romantic exercise that seeks the exotic, the extraordinary and romanticizes the past. More generally, the desire to unite what has been separated, perhaps also the aspiration to overcome dualism, also belongs to the romantic heritage. The search for nonduality with regard to humans and technology, for instance, may well turn out to be another form of modern-romantic mysticism. Moreover, since our thinking is so much entangled with the devices we use, perhaps going beyond modernity also means exploring new technologies. In the conclusion to this book, I suggest that if we really wanted to move beyond modern thinking, we would have to develop nonmodern and “non-Platonic” technologies and use them in a nonmodern and non-Platonic way. If we wanted to end machine thinking, we would have to bring about the true death of the machine. However, the birth of the “nonmachine” (for lack of a better word) and the new, nonmodern forms of subjectivity that would accompany it (a stage that may have to be preceded by the development of “postmachines”), may be not entirely in our own hands. Perhaps we have to leave behind modern and romantic ideas about change, solutions, innovation, and progress and open up to different ways of how technological culture can change and is already changing.
In contemporary philosophy of technology, there is generally a lack of attention to the relation between romanticism and technology. Sometimes the term romanticism is mentioned, but mainly to say that we should avoid a “romantic” or “nostalgic” view (e.g., Verbeek 2005). (An exception is Carl Mitcham’s Thinking through Technology, 1994, which includes a discussion of what he calls “Romantic Uneasiness.” I say more about this below.) Within the field of philosophy of technology, generally there is little knowledge of historical Romanticism, let alone its ambiguities, little awareness of the persistent influence of romanticism and of the deeper and more complex relation between romanticism and technology, and no systematic analysis of the romantic dimension of today’s ICTs (e.g., use of the Internet, electronic devices).
By contrast, in related fields such as cultural studies, sociology, and media studies, there is a growing body of literature on romanticism and technology, which makes us aware of the history of the relation between romanticism and machines and its relevance for today’s technologies and culture. Consider, for instance, in history of science, John Tresch on The Romantic Machine (2002); in cultural studies, Walter J. Ong’s Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology (1971); in media studies and sociology, Thomas Streeter’s The Net Effect (2011); and in postmodern theory, Richard Coyne’s Technoromanticism (1999). In cultural studies and media studies, Morley (2007) also argues for more historical awareness, and Black (2002) even defends Romanticism as a framework for cultural studies. And in his literary criticism book Romantic Cyborgs (2002), Benesch has studied how the American Romantic literary discourse responded to technology, focusing on the relation between technology and authorship. Contemporary philosophers of technology should not ignore this wealth of scholarship. If in the work of many contemporary influential scholars in philosophy of technology, romanticism is confused with and reduced to nostalgia, we are missing something. Romanticism is much richer in meaning and is far more complex and ambiguous than usually supposed. Moreover, romanticism itself is not only a movement from the past; it seems to be alive today, and in an area where we might least expect it to thrive: the use of ICTs. Analyzing and reflecting on this dimension, and really thinking through its implications and future, may help us to better understand contemporary electronic technologies, our contemporary world, and, in the end, ourselves.
Perhaps one reason that romanticism is neglected by many contemporary people in the field is that there has been not only an “empirical turn” (Achterhuis 2001) but also what we may call a “material” turn in philosophy of technology. In their attempt to move toward a more empirical and material philosophy of technology and science and technologies studies, contemporary Dutch and American philosophers of technology have focused so much on “artifacts” and “things” that they have neglected discourses about technology (e.g., Coyne 1999, on the technoromantic discourse) and the “symbolic” cultural significance of artifacts (e.g., Morley 2007 on the anthropology of contemporary technology). While it may be true that cultural studies, by contrast, have often neglected the material-technological dimensions, artifact-centered philosophy of technology, especially in the engineering tradition, has unduly and wrongly neglected the more in-depth study of romanticism and technology.
This book aims to start closing this gap with an inquiry into the relation between romanticism and technology (in particular, contemporary ICT). In the past two decades, attention to this topic in areas outside philosophy of technology has been growing. This book builds on that scholarship and at the same time relates to it in a critical way in order to shed new light on a central, if not the central, issue in modern philosophy of technology: the relation between humans and machines, or how to think (about) the machine and, hence, about the human.
In mediating between philosophy of technology and studies of romanticism, the book goes further than Mitcham’s (1994) seminal reflections on the matter by giving the topic a more systematic and more extensive treatment and by focusing on specific and contemporary technologies (ICTs) rather than only technology in general. Mitcham has done excellent work by suggesting some ambivalences of what he calls “the romantic way of being-with technology” and also noted links between Enlightenment and Romanticism. But he says little about the relation between romanticism and contemporary technology and their use. Yet this is important at a time when, almost twenty-five years after Mitcham’s book, we live in a world permeated by electronic ICTs. When today, as philosophers of technology but also as users of technology, we literally try to come to terms with the technological, societal, and cultural changes and challenges we face, gaining a better understanding of the relation between romanticism and ICT is not only helpful but necessary.
For this purpose, the book constructs its own narrative and argument about the marriage of rationalism and romanticism as instantiated in contemporary ICTs and their use, a narrative and argument that then is critically examined (and criticisms that are then deconstructed). This makes it more argumentative, critical, and philosophical than many other books on the topic in cultural studies and media studies. As a contribution to philosophy of technology, it is also more focused on technologies than on culture, although, as I have suggested, this distinction is problematic; it is precisely my purpose here to bring a cultural angle to philosophy of technology and to show how “cultural” ideas and “material” technologies are intimately connected. Furthermore, the book leaves the level of disinterested interpretation at a distance. In contrast perhaps to Streeter (2011) and Coyne (1999), this book renders itself more vulnerable and not only analyzes the romantic dimension of contemporary technologies but also takes a normative position in the debate about modernity. Yet its position differs from, for instance, that of Black (2002), who defends romanticism. Although I fully acknowledge that we can move forward only if we first better understand romanticism and its continuing influence in and on our time, including the historical variant, I suggest that we should try to move beyond romanticism. Furthermore, the book engages with Coyne’s (1999) very helpful book on technoromanticism but adds, among other things, an analysis of new electronic technologies. Coyne writes in the 1990s, when the current smart mobile technologies and social media were not yet fully developed. Similarly, Morley (2007) talks about cell phones at the end of his book, but most of his analysis still assumes older technologies, including an older Internet and even the Walkman. Of course, historical awareness is good, and Morley shows a longer historical perspective. In this book, I also bring in a historical perspective aided by this kind of literature. But an update is also necessary. Similarly, Streeter writes about the Internet and ideas in the 1990s and earlier technologies and thinking. Since then much has changed. This book is concerned with the contemporary world, with technologies at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It attempts to catch up with what is happening in current society and with current ICTs, including smartphones, robots, and all kinds of cyborg technologies that are now much more “material” than in the time that Haraway (1991) wrote her rather abstract manifesto from what turns out to be a rather “cultural” perspective, not obviously directly relevant to our contemporary quotidian material-technological existence. More generally, the 1990s focused on issues regarding (virtual) reality and the Internet. Some of this interest refigures in this book, especially when it articulates the escapist, Platonic tendencies in material romanticism and when the myth of Narcissus is used to construct an anti-Romantic narrative (which I then later deconstruct). But today, living in a time when online and offline have merged (see also Floridi 2014), we face different issues. Therefore, this book is not only an interpretation and an argument but also an update.
Finally, this book also offers a critical discussion of romanticism and makes suggestions for how we might want to move beyond (techno)romanticism. At the same time, however, it also argues that it is difficult to escape (techno)romantic thinking. Therefore, I explicitly acknowledge some romantic influences on my approach. First, as in other literature on technoromanticism, what I call “romantic epistemology” is at work in efforts to reveal the hidden ghost of romanticism that haunts contemporary technology. The hermeneutic work involved in uncovering the links between romanticism and technology assumes that there are some concealed things that may be revealed. Perhaps it even involves the assumption that there is a kind of organic and dynamic material-cultural whole in which our thinking and our technologies participate (and to which they contribute). And it certainly acknowledges that a lot remains unknown. This book does not assume that the meaning(s) of our own culture, our technologies, and our time can be made entirely transparent to us. It offers concepts, interpretations, distinctions, and arguments, but reality will always be richer, more complex, and more chaotic. These assumptions are all in line with romantic thinking. Second, romanticism is sometimes hidden in small corners, in the details, and I do not claim that my thinking and writing are entirely romanticism free. For instance, the metaphors I use here and elsewhere may be influenced by romanticism (e.g., organic metaphors), and this is also true for many of the sources I use. For example, occasionally I refer to Wikipedia and other online encyclopedias in order to point readers to more information on a particular topic or concept. Now one way to criticize this controversial tool (or to defend it?) would be to say that Wikipedia already participates in the Romantic encyclopedia project insofar as it is functioning not only as a collection of “facts” or as a store of information, as in the Enlightenment encyclopedia project, but also as a living and growing whole to which many people contribute. It instantiates a kind of organic way of dealing with knowledge, which embodies the acknowledgment that knowledge is always interconnected (Rayan 2004), incomplete, and changing. This may be seen as problematic by scholars who believe that this kind of tool does not match the authority of an academic text. And it might well be that Wikipedia’s “Enlightenment” side prevails; perhaps it partly fails in its romantic ambitions. But at the same time, this very discussion already reveals a link between romanticism and contemporary information technology that is instrumental in supporting my project. The controversy about Wikipedia and about encyclopedia shows that information technology can be a site where Enlightenment and Romantic notions of knowledge meet and play out. Third, in order to construct the end-of-the-machine vision (which I then criticize), I had to think with, rather than against, romanticism. I had to construct a romantic narrative, a romance about humans and technology. This required engagement with, rather than disinterested distance from, romanticism as a tradition. To conclude, the means of analysis is already infected and infused by Romanticism in various ways, and I acknowledge this from the start.
The book is structured in three parts, which reflect the three steps in my argument and which each contain two chapters. Part 1, “Romanticism against the Machine,” evokes the widely accepted opposition between romanticism and technology. I explain how romanticism, since historical times and still today, is itself the source of this dichotomy; the assumption that romanticism and technology do not go well together is part of its very definition, or so it seems. I also show how philosophers of technology—classic and contemporary—are romantic when they inscribe themselves in this schema: whether they are for or against romanticism, they presuppose the same romantic dichotomy and dialectic. In part 2, “Romanticism with the Machine,“ I question this dichotomy and show that romanticism, not only at the beginning of the nineteenth century but also at the beginning of the twenty-first century, has a far more ambiguous and complex relation to technology. In particular, I argue that then and today, many new ICTs can be interpreted as constituting and incorporating the fusion (transcendence, suspension) of romanticism and its antithesis rather than the continuation of the romantic dialectic. In part 3, “Beyond Romanticism? Beyond the Machine?” I first construct objections against this interpretation: the marriage between rationalism and romanticism turns out to be an illusion; the romantic aims are not achieved, and insofar as there is a new material romanticism, its romantic side is deeply problematic. However, then I show that these criticisms are themselves still hostage to either romanticism or antiromanticism, and therefore to the romantic dichotomy and dialectic. I explore how we can go beyond modern and romantic thinking, and hence beyond machine thinking.
Let me now give a more detailed overview of the chapters.
Romanticism is often seen as a movement of the past, but this must be questioned. In chapter 2, I outline historical Romanticism (capital R) and show its link to romanticism (without the capital) more broadly defined, which persists today: I argue that in many ways we are still romantics and that there is a line to be drawn start from Rousseau in the late eighteenth century to twentieth-century counterculture and beyond. First, I outline some features of Romanticism as it emerged and thrived in Germany, Britain, and France around 1800 and as it reached deep into the nineteenth century. I use Rousseau, Novalis, and Morris for this purpose. I also show that Romanticism and romantic Gothic had a social and political side. Then I argue that we are still living in a romantic culture: early twenty-first-century forms of subjectivity are still very much shaped by Romanticism—mainly in the form of our heritage from the romantic counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. We still value the kind of individual freedom and authenticity Rousseau longed for, and we still yearn for community, transcendence, and the wonder, magic, and all the superstition we think we have left behind when we entered the modern world. We value the rebel, the anti-establishment. We still love nature and the natural. Creativity is worshipped and the artist is deemed more important than the work of art. And we still—secretly or not—dream of utopia. However, like other structures and conditions of our thinking and practice, romanticism itself is usually invisible. Usually we are not aware of the horizon, of the glasses we wear, and this is also true for philosophers of technology.
In chapter 3 I show how romanticism (historical Romanticism and romanticism more broadly defined) is usually seen in opposition to technology: in the past, by many Romantics themselves, but also by later interpreters and critics—including philosophers of technology. Romanticism is seen as an attempt to escape the machine; it is the machine’s very antithesis. It moves away from cold rationality, from the lifeless, from the mechanical, from the machines. Science and technology are supposed to be domains where passion, love, freedom, spirituality, and authenticity have no place. Scientists are supposed to be disinterested; engineers are supposed to be busy with mechanical things. Bridges cannot be built from poems. Machines need electricity, not love. Science and technology have disenchanted the world. Romantics try to escape the new industrial and urban worlds, which are experienced as ugly, dark, and threatening. Technology is experienced as alienating, monstrous, and dangerous. Already in the nineteenth century Mary Shelley warns against technology going out of control. Later critics of modernity such as Weber and Heidegger argue, in a rather romantic fashion, that modern technology has created an “iron cage” (Weber 1905), an “enframing” and a danger (Heidegger 1977). But even contemporary philosophers who claim to reject a romantic view of technology tend to presuppose the romantic dialectic. The same is true for the public discourse about technology that is still largely caught up in the romantic language-world of beauty and terror. Romantic thinking is not only nostalgic and against the machine; it also looks forward to a future with the machine. Indeed, it turns out that the writings of Weber, Heidegger, and Benjamin—all influenced by romanticism—are more ambiguous with regard to technology than usually supposed. This point is also supported by my discussion of the relation between romanticism and technology in an American context: authors such as Leo Marx and Melville also show that ambiguity, and so does, for instance, the twentieth-century film Koyaanisqatsi. Perhaps romanticism and technology are sometimes compatible.
In chapters 4 and 5 in part 2, I question the opposition between romanticism and technology, humans and machines, culture and materiality—itself an opposition inherited from romanticism. But here I do not attempt this (yet) by trying to step outside “the romantic order” (to use a term from Taylor), but rather by revealing ambiguities and complexities in romanticism itself. In chapter 4 I argue that already in historical times, the romantic relation to technology cannot be reduced to mere opposition. I show how in the early nineteenth century, romantics were not only fearful of but also fascinated by the new science and technology that delivered magic machines, wonderful scientific phenomena, and mysterious forces such as electricity. There was escapism, but also experimentation. Even industrial machines and romanticism were not always seen in opposition. There were “romantic machines” and a “romantic science”: drawing on Tresch (2012) and Holmes (2008), I argue that a current in Romanticism viewed science and the arts as entwined and tried to fuse the organic and the mechanic, life and science. I show how the line between Enlightenment and Romanticism was thinner than one might expect—even for philosophers like Kant, who was haunted by both rationalism and mysticism. And perhaps Mary Shelley did not so much warn against technology as against the widening gap she perceived between, on the one hand, unchecked scientific development and individual genius and, on the other hand, life and society—not to mention the gothic strand in romanticism, which thrives on the horror associated with the machine, of course, but also on the fascination with science and technology, in particular the cyborg project of merging the machine with life, indeed, with bringing the machine to life. These material romanticisms are neglected by philosophers of technology who reduce romanticism to escapism, nostalgia, or antimachine thinking.
This brings us to our age, with its life sciences and its robotics that share these deeply material-romantic aims. I first show how in the twentieth century, there was a romantic science (Freud) and how technology and romanticism became very much entangled: not only in science fiction—from Verne in the nineteenth century to today’s films about robots and artificial intelligence—but also in reality: born as hippie computing in the context of the 1960s and 1970s counterculture (here I zoom in on Steve Jobs’s romanticism), there is a development of what we may call romantic devices.
This is the topic of chapter 5, in which I continue constructing the hybridity and fusion narrative, but now focused on contemporary electronic ICTs. For the purpose of trying to understand the relation between romanticism and these ICTs, I construct the working thesis that contemporary use and development of ICTs can meaningfully be interpreted as contributing to, if not completing, material romanticism’s project to marry Enlightenment and Romanticism: rather than creating new machines, there is an attempt to reach a synthesis of rationalism and romanticism by fusing humans and machines. Romantic aims are not only present in the discourse around the new technologies (the liberation promised by the Internet, the escape in cyberspace, the authenticity we hope to achieve by using electronic devices, the idea that everyone can be an artist); efforts are going into making machines alive (robotics) and in creating new unions and fusions, for instance, in the life sciences or in neurotechnology. In this sense, the figure of the cyborg is as much romantic as it is scientific. Shelley’s dream and nightmare takes on new forms: in the life sciences, in the engineering sciences, and in material-romantic strands in philosophy of technology. When new natures are created, the modern-romantic project is not over but reaches its summit. Using romantic devices and the Internet, we try to achieve authenticity, escape to cyberspace, and shape our romantic selves in various ways.
Of course today there is also resistance against new technologies; for instance there are concerns about addiction and distraction (see Carr 2010) and about, for instance, using robots in health care and robots taking over jobs.2 But my study of today’s technoromanticism helps to explain why we are attracted to some of these technologies in the first place. Moreover, what people think about the technologies also depends on, if, and how they are used. Many people are not so familiar (yet?) with robots in their daily lives, but they are very familiar with devices such as smartphones and computers, with apps and with the Internet. And they love them.
Indeed, there is not only discourse about technology and subjectivity separate from materiality; instead, the devices themselves shape that discourse and subjectivity. And as many new devices are increasingly designed to merge the beautiful and the machine, the arts and technology, body and artifact, life and matter, they become highly attractive to the romantic soul. Those lucky enough to be liberated from industrial, dirty, oily, iron machines, find lovely, human-compatible things they can incorporate in their lives and bodies. Smooth, shiny, and curvy objects no longer appear to us as machines but as means of self-expression, as personal extensions of our ego, as beautiful mirrors we can use to shape ourselves and transform our world by creating personal realities that suit our demanding selves, and perhaps even as friends or partners. Now it seems that everyone has the means to become artists and change the world. “You wanted a revolution? You wanted love? Here is the technology.” As Enlightenment rationalists, we love machines. As romantics, we want life, love, humans, wonder, and mystery. Now it seems that we can have both: our machines are not caging and enslaving us but are friendly and kindly living with us and even melting with us. Robots become friendlier, and cyborgs celebrate the union of humans and machine. Passion, relationships, beauty, and the sublime are not to be found outside technology; smart technologies and media offer it all. Technology becomes human; media become social. And the new romantic machines become more magical than ever before. Combining cold science and warm use, new experiences of wonder expel the ghost of disenchantment. We are bewitched by the Internet and study the wonders of the human mind. The haunted castle of the Romantic imagination has turned into an immense, seemingly infinite new universe with room for new gothic monsters and new genius artists-scientists. Never before have romantics had such powerful tools, and never before was romanticism so alive. There are plenty of possibilities for mystery and transcendence. Salvation is just a few mouse clicks away. Liberation from your body seems possible with new Platonic devices. And if you like colorful fantastic, spiritual, and demonic figures, be my guest: reenchantment is core business in the games and entertainment industry. Technology enables you to escape reality, to overlay reality by augmenting it with a romantic game, or to reach wholeness and union, perhaps reach a communion of matter and spirit. The new material romanticism as it takes shape today promises to finally realize what we may call the end of the machine.
Again, there is also resistance. There are not only promises but also threats. Our romantic self is not always seduced by the new gadgets. But first I focus on what makes us fall in love with them as romantics, on technology’s romantic promises. Chapter 5 is also an update of the technoromantic literature: I do not only show the romanticism of the1990s Internet and (engaging with Turkle) the romantic identity practices related to it. I also reveal romanticism in the development and use of smartphones, social media, games, surveillance technology, algorithmic art, robots, transhumanist human enhancement, and other technological practices and phenomena. In addition, I show how romanticism and even gothic is present in contemporary science and scientific-technological practice, for instance, in astronomy and physics. It seems that with these new hybrids, technology and romanticism merge to an unprecedented extent. Commenting on Haraway, I especially discuss the figure of the cyborg, which exemplifies this merger—albeit a much more material one than Haraway imagined in her “Manifesto.” It seems that the end of the machine is near.
This synthesis of rationalism and romanticism speaks directly to the heart and mind of romantics. Yet as I argue in chapters 2 and 4, inspired by Turner’s (2006) and Streeter’s (2011) history of computing and commenting on Steve Jobs, it is a development that perhaps does not always directly originate in historical Romanticism. Although much contemporary music and game culture is at least as medievalist, romantic, and gothic as its nineteenth-century forerunners, it mainly has its roots in much more recent forms of romanticism: the escapism of the Internet and technoculture of the 1990s in part, but also, and especially, the romanticism of twentieth-century counterculture. The countercultural current in the 1960s and 1970s tried to merge art and electronic technology, hippie culture and high tech, Easter mysticism and material devices, poems and silicon, the muses and the geeks. Yet I also remark that this counterculture now has become mainstream and has quickly been absorbed by consumerism, commodified by pop artists, and cannibalized by capitalism. We are all romantics, and we pay for it.
This brings me to chapter 6, which constructs (first historical and then 1990s style) objections to these material romanticisms and to the narrative about romanticism and technology. Is their relationship and marriage an illusion? First, I draw on classic antiromantics such as Irving Babbitt to construct the argument that romanticism leads to escapism and what I call cybernarcissism: looking into the mirror of our screens, we lose sight of reality, and this can be lethal. I also discuss Berlin and Popper to show the merits and problems with this position. Then I construct a position that is more sympathetic to romanticism, one that criticizes the current material romanticism for not being romantic enough, for failing to reach the romantic aims. I argue that our hyperromanticism in the form of Web 2.0 and its social media risks destroying its very aims when, in its obsession with authenticity, we become the people of “society” whom Rousseau despised: people who care only about appearances and always live in the opinion of others, needing constant confirmation from others in social networks. And technologies such as robots pretend to provide care, companionship, and love, but in reality they are mere machines. We are also deceived by our personal devices that merely adapt to our preferences to commodify our identity and harvest our data. The self is commodified and turned into a “standing-reserve” (Heidegger 1977) of data. (Note that of course there are far more criticisms of contemporary technologies; here I construct only criticisms that target their romantic character.) I conclude that, seen from these perspectives, material romanticism’s promise of a synthesis of enlightenment and romanticism is not kept and there is no end of the machine in sight. Romanticism has turned into its opposite—what I call the dialectic of Romanticism.
However, then I argue that the criticisms I discuss may well be antiromantic, but they largely (but not completely and not always) remain within the “romantic order.” To further show these limitations, I also construct and discuss what one could call “Marcuse’s objections to romanticism.” Then I draw on Coyne’s reading of the phenomenological tradition in order to start exploring what a less dualistic and less romantic view would look like. I end the chapter with a summary of what we can nevertheless learn from the romantic tradition.
In chapter 7, I continue the project of trying to think beyond romanticism. First, I conclude the previous chapters by restating the end-of-the-machine thesis and analyzing the meaning of “end” in it. Then I ask how we can move beyond the assumptions made by the criticisms constructed in chapter 6, which are still trapped in the romantic dialectic and in Platonic dualism. For instance, the idea of cyberspace is extremely Platonic, and the figure of the cyborg in its postmodern form is still romantic through and through. To really move away from romanticism, we would have to move beyond modern and Platonic thinking. But how can this be done, is this desirable, and is it possible? Can we find a language to make sense of the new technologies that is not enchanted by “machine thinking,” not bewitched by the picture (to use a Wittgensteinian term) of the romantic dialectic? Can we think without the modern-romantic binaries? I argue that in any case, we should become more aware of and acknowledge the romantic horizon. I also explore some ways in which we could begin to take some distance from romanticism.
First, I propose the notion of skilled engagement as a way to escape the Enlightenment-Romanticism binary (and the classicism-romanticism binary) and to decrease modern “distance.” Then I explore (other) forms of nonmodern thinking. Using Latour (1993) and Szerszynski (2005), I further question the disenchantment myth and argue that if we really want to change our thinking into less modern directions, we cannot avoid a discussion about religion and spirituality, broadly understood. Modern binaries such as enchantment versus disenchantment and theism versus atheism have blinded us to spaces of experience and thinking that escape these categories, and it is impossible to conceptually grasp our technological culture and address its problems without talking about it. An interesting position that deserves consideration is that the world was never disenchanted in the first place and that romanticism and even Enlightenment can be understood as different forms within a history of the sacred (Szerszynski 2005). A related route is to rethink our relation to the environment. In line with Ingold (2000), we could take the view that the environment should be understood as neither a dead realm of objects studies by science nor a blank slate onto which we project our romantic imagination; instead we are engaged and entangled with, and involved in, our environment. Such views could then lead to a different view of technology, for instance, not as machine but as praxis, which interweaves the material and the cultural. However, it turns out that it is difficult to escape romanticism, not only in the narrow sense of escapism or nostalgia, but also in the richer sense articulated in this book. Our language and thinking seems to be trapped; we can try to change language, but this is difficult; language also has its own kind of autonomy or life.
In my conclusion, I suggest that it is difficult to move beyond romanticism by means of language alone. If we take seriously the idea that things matter for thinking, then perhaps an exploration of a nonromantic thinking and a nonromantic space also needs to involve exploring and experimenting with technologies. I suggest that we try to invent, “await” (to say it in a Heideggerian fashion), and accompany the birth of the nonmachine (for lack of a better word). The birth of nonmachine thinking and nonmachine culture would also require a different language for sure, but such a different language can come into being only with a different praxis and different technologies. Until then we remain romantic cyborgs.