Being and technics : humans, hybrids and the ontology of machines

This paper discusses the possibilities of mechanical life. A non-dual methodology borrowed from Martin Heidegger combines the materialist media theory of Friedrich Kittler with Bernard Steigler's teleological philosophy of technics. This perspective is employed to analyze the literature and film of science fiction, and in particular, the recent television series, Battlestar Galactica. This analysis permits the elaboration of a communications ontology that at once highlights the individual (human) and systemic (material) aspects of the life world, and ultimately delivers an articulation of Being that is systemic and individual. It attempts to transcend traditional subject object distinctions and to naturalize the theoretical progression from biological to technical life by suggesting that human being is always already hybrid technical being, and that technological being is not only a logical, but also perhaps necessary product of Western cultural progression.