Epiphylogenesis
Origin: Bernard Stiegler
Definition
Epiphylogenesis refers to memory transmitted through technical artifacts, independent of biology and the individual. Stiegler articulates it with two other forms of memory:
- Phylogenetic memory: inscribed in DNA, transmitted biologically from generation to generation, evolving slowly through mutations and natural selection.
- Epigenetic memory: constituted by individual experience, learning, and environment. It is not genetically inscribed and disappears with the individual.
- Epiphylogenetic memory: externalized in technical objects — tools, writing, works, machines, digital media. It survives the individual, enables intergenerational transmission independent of bodies, and has the capacity to transform the individual through individuation.
It is this third level that founds humanity as a “technical being”: the human constitutes themselves by appropriating the traces left by predecessors in objects, and by leaving their own traces in turn.
In my writings
Epiphylogenesis makes it possible to understand what is at stake when a professional externalizes their know-how into an AI system. By creating skills, structuring prompts, and instructions framing text production, they participate in the constitution of an epiphylogenetic (professional) memory. This know-how, once externalized, can function without the user and can, sometimes, function better on certain repetitive tasks.
The question this observation raises is what remains in human memory once contents, procedures, and argumentative structures have been externalized. Probably judgment, intuition, and the ability to recognize what is relevant in a particular situation. But these competencies are the most difficult to objectify and the most dependent on accumulated experience — the very experience that risks no longer being constituted if one delegates too early and too quickly.