Technology in the saddle
Does humanity decide the direction technology evolves in? And to what degree?
To what degree is the technology itself the determining factor? To what degree does technology decide?
Is technology in the saddle?
“(…) it is no wonder there is a widespread sense that, in fact, technology is in the saddle and rides humankind; as the sign above the portals of the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago put it presciently, ‘Science explores: Technology executes: Man conforms.’ But that, as it turns out is highly appropriate, for cybernetics, the science of computers, comes from the Greek ‘kubernetes’, ‘helmsman’ or ‘governor’, meaning simply that the machine is in charge.
More and more, it seems, human decisions get made because of technology rather than the other way around.”
Kirkpatrick Sale – Rebels Against the Future
The Slave
The Slave as a consenting adult, not fully realizing what he’s consenting to and what he might be losing in the process.
“Subjugation (…) has become a voluntary act. (…)
The self-subjugation of comparatively wealthy people to the laws of digital interconnection is in effect the acquisition of a new organ, a poweful filter made of bright colours and commercially exploited options that places itself between individuals and their environment, a filter constructed in such a way that it constantly urges, invites and demands new interactions, then sweetens them with little rewards”
Philipp Blom – Subjugate the Earth
Simulating Humanness
Beaglebot started with a found object, an incomplete machine that might once have been a vacuum cleaner.
It looked like it was missing it’s head, so I gave it a new one.
The worlds we are losing in the world that we gain
The disappearance of ways of living under the onslaught of the Machine.
Not machines in general, but the Machine as a metaphor for the technological organization of our society, and the direction of the evolution of that organization.
“Since technology is, by it’s very essence, artificial – that is to say, not natural, a human construct not otherwise found in nature, where there is no technology – it tends to distance humans from their environment and set them in opposition to it, and the larger and more powerful it becomes the greater is that distance and more effective that opposition: ‘The artificial world,’ says Jaques Ellul, the French philosopher, is ‘radically different from the natural world,’ with ‘different imperatives, different directives, and different laws’ such that ‘it destroys, eliminates, or subordinates the natural world.'”
Kirkpatrick Sale – Rebels Against the Future
The Cyborg
Sacrificing parts of our humanity.
Surrendering parts of what it means to be human.
What the idea of conquering nature leads to, trying to conquer nature in ourselves.
The cyborg as a representation of the ever increasing intertwining of life/biology with technology in our civilization.
While I was creating this piece, I also happened to read the novel ‘War Girls’ by Tochi Onyebuchi, which sets the Biafran Nigerian civil war in a future where the children and women who end up as fighters, get repaired and upgraded with advanced robotic technology, escalating as the war does.
It speaks to what war does to people and what they end up willing to sacrifice. A bit of synchronicity in coming across and reading this book while in the process of making this sculpture.
The Mother
Light representing new life, warming the heart, through internal reflection in the mirror mosaic.
This was my first attempt to combined my skills in working with wood and with metal. I added some broken mirror for good measure.
The idea of sculpting a mother to be grew out of the shape of the piece of wood. It had a pregnant look, so to say.
Copyright © 2026 Ides Parmentier.