Body, environment, technicity. Technical action and experience between SPIDERs and ANTs

Abstract

Various (techno)pessimistic readings support the idea that in modern society the advent of technology has led to a deterioration of the relationship between perception and action and between body experience and material reality. Particularly, the advent of electronic and digital technologies would have caused the loss of the ability to explore the world and the solipsistic closure of the body in the artificially machine-generated virtual world. The aim of this article is to criticize this perspective presenting an interpretation of ‘technicity’ based on the intimate interweaving between organism (the body) and environment. To do this, the author defines technical action in the framework of the SPIDER (Skilled Embodied Practice Involves Developmentally Responsiveness) model, based on Tim Ingold’s ecological perspective, Such a model is interpreted has having some points of friction with the ANT (Actor-Network Theory) perspective, by Latour and colleagues. Finally, the author suggests to apply the SPIDER model to understand uses and practices of modern digital technologies.