Toward an Aesthetic Criticism of Technology

Toward an Aesthetic Criticism of Technology argues that technology can and should be understood and experienced aesthetically. A method for this new approach to technology, developed from aesthetic criticism, makes style a vital component of any technological artifact (as it is of any artistic artifact). Style, defined through perception, cognition, and construction, places the technological artifact within an aesthetic frame. The technological object is thus shown to initiate the aesthetic processes of imitation, transformation and reconstitution. In this aesthetic frame, a technological product can provide an integrating experience between the self and the world, by changing and refining the self's ways of seeing, thinking, and making.