Our age has often been called "an age of technology." However, somewhat ironically, our philosophy, as the crystallization of the spirit of any age, has done little to study the issues of technology, and its understanding of technology itself is very superficial. The reason is not that there are no philosophical questions worth investigating in technology, or that the technological mode of thought is not worth reflecting upon from the angle of philosophy. Rather, as some Western philosophers have pointed out, (...) the fundamental reason for philosophy's neglect of technology lies in that people have "mistakenly assumed that technology is too far removed from the elegant realm of thought and ideology" ([1], p. 219). (shrink)

The technological virtual demands philosophical scrutiny. Existing methodologies, like pragmatism and social constructivism, often limit the examination of technology to the social, neglecting questions of embodiment. Said approaches tend to overlook the intricate existential connection between the embodied individual and digital technology artefacts. This article argues that Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology may be mobilised to describe, understand and reconceptualise the category of the virtual and the dynamic relation between the digital technology artefact and its user. The result is a clearer description and (...) deeper understanding of the richly intertwined reversible relationship between the embodied individual and the artefactual – two poles or points from which virtual space as emergent perceptual characteristic arises. Questions of the body and the artefactual are therefore not tangential to the question of virtual space; rather, the re-deployment and development of key concepts from Merleau-Ponty’s work shows that such considerations are crucial for the ongoing development of a phenomenological account of the phenomenon of digital technology. We thus see that digital technology artefacts constantly, and in an encompassing manner, challenge perceptual faith, necessitating increased imaginative signification to make sense of a world via these technologies. In this manner, the process of sense-making as regards the self, world and others is modified. (shrink)