Human Image without People: Subject Constitution in the Mirror of Synthetic Competition

The digitization of our living environment calls for images of people that actually take “people” into account and design digital systems and processes in a socially oriented and people-friendly way. Unfortunately, however, processes and procedures in digitization efforts are often blind to people. They do not see them, they are not perceived, at least not as human beings. This finding may come as a surprise, since the designers of digital systems are also people who are in some way anchored in the world of life, who are capable of reasoning, and who are likely to have reflected on their professional activities. In view of the mediocre quality of the results of digitization processes, such as the usability of the federal government’s Corona app of 2020, the NINA warning app of the Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK) or the implementation of the Act to Improve Online Access to Administrative Services (OZG), the question arises in 2021 as to what kind of images of humanity the designers, developers and organizers of such digital systems and processes may have. And even if the creators themselves possibly carry humanistic images of man, in too many cases these are not reflected enough in the results – which indicates that the orientation to man is lost somewhere in the applied procedures and processes.

WENDLAND, Karsten. Menschenbild ohne Menschen: Subjektkonstitution im Spiegel synthetischer Konkurrenz. In: Wer bist du, Mensch?: Transformationen menschlicher Selbstverständnisse im wissenschaftlich-technischen Fortschritt. Herder, 2021. S. 240-259.

 

published on 25.06.2021