Pharmacology
Origin: Bernard Stiegler, from the concept of pharmakon
Definition
Pharmacology is the analytical and practical approach that follows from the recognition of the pharmakon: since all technology is constitutively ambivalent (remedy and poison simultaneously), pharmacology is the art of working this ambivalence rather than denying it. It refuses technophilia (which sees only the remedy) and technophobia (which sees only the poison) in order to maintain a permanent critical tension.
A pharmacology of technology does not seek to neutralize its negative effects once and for all: it seeks to identify, in each situation and each use, the conditions that allow the remedy to prevail over the poison. These conditions are never definitively secured.
In my writings
Pharmacology is the stance I try to maintain in duality. It involves using generative AI while critiquing it, drawing benefits from it while documenting its effects of dispossession, consciously delegating certain tasks while actively cultivating the competencies at risk of erosion.
The “therapeutic practices” I describe are pharmacological gestures. They are not definitive solutions but permanent adjustments in a relationship with technology that remains fundamentally unstable.
Articles where this term is used
- Grammatize and observe.
- Knowing without doing. Doing without knowing.
- Ethics and compliance. Beyond the hype.