Summa technologiae

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Summa technologiae is a book by the Polish writer Stanisław Lem , first published in 1964 and translated into German by Friedrich Griese in 1976. The West German edition was published in 1976 in bound form in the Insel-Verlag and 1981 in paperback at Suhrkamp . The GDR edition was published in 1980 by Volk und Welt , Berlin. In 2013 an English edition was published by the University of Minnesota .

The title of the work refers to the large "sums" of theology: Summa theologica by Thomas Aquinas and Summa Theologiae by Albertus Magnus . "Technology" is understood by Lem as the totality of the material foundations of our civilization and culture. The author approaches his subject in a philosophical way. He wants to show what we can hope for from science and technology. Lem's predictions about “virtual reality”, often mentioned in connection with this work, are actually only by-products. For the actual development of information technology, these predictions - due to the lack of an earlier English translation of the work - are likely to have had little effect.

These predictions are e.g. B. about the virtual reality called by Lem "phantom" or about the nanotechnology , furthermore about the artificial intelligence , which he calls "intellectual". The Lem'schen word creations indicate that the terms used today were only formed after the publication of the work.

The meaning of this book, which is difficult to classify in terms of genre, can hardly be comprehensively captured with these trend predictions. From the typical futurological statements z. B. of a Herman Kahn , Lem's approach differs in the fundamental nature of the questions. Lem is not asking what will be in 30 or 100 years, but what will be when we fully exhaust all possibilities of technology, where the limits of today's technology lie and how these can be overcome. Lem is more concerned with a metatheory of technical evolution than with futurology: “Does technology move us or we it?” “Is the relationship between mankind and technology always the same or does it change historically?” “Are there technologies that are conceivable but are now and forever unrealizable? Would the reason for this impossibility lie in the structure of the world or in our limitations? ”“ Is there any other possible development direction for civilization besides the technological one? ”“ Is the direction we have taken something typical in the cosmos, is it this Norm or is it an aberration ? ”In turn, Lem's work differs from a science or technology-philosophical approach by the point of view of the designer who is interested in the feasibility of a technology.

A prerequisite for Summa technologiae is the expansion of the term “ technology ”. According to Lem, “technologies” are “the methods of realizing goals that society has set for itself, but also those that no one had in mind when they started their work”. As "effectors" in such procedures (based on the cyberneticist Pierre de Latil ) not only simple devices (hammer, typewriter etc.) and feedback systems (computer, animal, human) come into question, but also self-changing systems (e.g. B. a living animal species) or even systems with an even higher degree of freedom, in which the selection or even creation of the material with which the system builds itself is possible.

On this basis, Lem comes to the comparison of technical and biological development. Both are material, self-organizing systems in which development and progress are possible. The driving force of these self-regulating developmental schemes is their inherent striving for a stable state of equilibrium. Lem uses the term “ homeostasis ” from cybernetics for this .

bibliography

  • Stanislaw Lem: Summa technologiae . Insel Verlag, Berlin 1976, ISBN 3-458-15021-8 .
  • Stanislaw Lem: Summa technologiae . Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin.
  • Stanislaw Lem: Summa technologiae . Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-518-37178-9 .
  • Online text ( Memento from October 12, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) of a partial translation of Lem's book (by Dr. Frank Prengel)
  • Stanislaw Lem: Summa technologiae . University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 2013, ISBN 0-8166-7576-7 .