A Genealogical Analysis of Information and Technics

This paper explores how the concepts of information and technics have been leveraged differently by a variety of philosophical and epistemological frameworks over time. Using the Foucauldian methodology of genealogical historiography, it analyzes how the use of these concepts have impacted the way we understand the world and what we can know about that world. As these concepts are so ingrained in contemporary technologies of the information age, understanding how these concepts have changed over time can help make clearer how they continue to impact our processes of subjectivation. Analysis reveals that the predominant understanding of information and technics today is based on a cybernetic approach that conceptualizes information as a resource. However, this analysis also reveals that Michel Foucault’s conceptualization of technics resonates with that of the Sophists, offering an opportunity to rethink contemporary conceptualizations of information and technics in a way that connects to posthuman philosophic systems that afford new approaches to communication and media studies.