Pharmacology of technics

A philosophical approach that regards every technology as a pharmakon — at once remedy, poison and scapegoat: it demands care (a therapeutics) to maximise its curative effects and minimise its toxic ones, rather than making it the outlet for our collective failures of care.

The pharmacology of technics is an approach developed by Bernard Stiegler that extends the Greek concept of the pharmakon (remedy/poison/scapegoat) to the whole of technics. This perspective holds that every technology is originarily and irreducibly ambivalent: it carries within itself at once a potential for emancipation and for alienation, for construction and for destruction.

This ambivalence is not accidental but constitutive. Alphabetic writing, for instance, can be an instrument of intellectual liberation as much as a tool of control; the web can foster democratic participation as much as it can serve the exploitation of personal data. Pharmacology as a discipline attempts to grasp “in one and the same gesture” this double aspect, thereby situating itself beyond the alternative between naïve techno-enthusiasm and paralysing techno-phobia.

Stiegler moreover holds the third sense of the Greek word to be inseparable from the first two: the pharmakos is the scapegoat — the expiatory victim charged with the city's ills. “In principle, a pharmakon must always be considered according to the three senses of the word: as poison, as remedy and as scapegoat (outlet)”, states the vocabulary of Ars Industrialis, the think tank he founded. This third sense describes a massive contemporary temptation: to accuse technology itself — “it's the screens' fault”, “it's AI's fault” — so as to spare oneself any examination of the failure of care that does not know how to turn it to curative account. Technophobia is then no longer a critique of technology: it is an operation of de-responsibilisation that makes the pharmakon the outlet for our collective abdications.

For Stiegler, this pharmacological condition demands a “therapeutics”: a set of prescriptions, forms of knowledge and collective practices that make it possible to “take care” of technologies — that is, to maximise their remedial effects and limit their toxicity. This therapeutics belongs to what he calls general organology, which studies the transductive relations between three levels: psychosomatic organs (the body), artificial organs (technics), and social organisations (institutions).

Conceptual necessity: This concept makes it possible to move beyond the impasse of the debate between technophilia and technophobia. Faced with AI, it offers a framework for thinking simultaneously the emancipatory potentials (cognitive augmentation, democratisation of knowledge) and the toxicities (proletarianisation of thought, attentional exploitation), without falling into naïvety or catastrophism — nor into the ease of the scapegoat.

What this concept is not

Not a technical relativism. To affirm that every technology is a pharmakon does not mean that all are equivalent or that the “dosing” is always possible.
Not a neutralisation of critique. The pharmacological approach does not neutralise political judgement but shifts the question (from “for or against” to “how to care”).
Not a recipe. Pharmacology does not provide ready-made solutions but a framework of analysis that demands a collective work of prescription.
Technocratic paternalism. Who prescribes the therapeutics? Who defines the right remedy/poison dosage? A risk if pharmacology is not democratically defined.
Disguised technological optimism. Believing that every pharmakon can always be “cared for” with the right practices.
Paralysing complexity. The dense conceptual apparatus (organology–pharmacology–grammatisation–proletarianisation) can seem hermetic and difficult to operationalise.

Examples

Alphabetic writing

The founding case, studied by Plato and then by Derrida. Writing can serve intellectual emancipation (access to knowledge, democratisation, transgenerational transmission) as much as alienation (bureaucratic control, propaganda, the weakening of living memory). Plato already criticised it as a pharmakon in the Phaedrus.

Generative artificial intelligence

LLMs and recommendation AIs constitute a pharmacological case par excellence: they can serve cognitive augmentation (research assistance, democratisation of knowledge) or the proletarianisation of the activities of thought (excessive delegation, loss of critical capacities). A risk of the “massification of art” and industrial exploitation of symbolic resources.

Social networks

An exemplary pharmacological apparatus: they enable democratic participation AND exploit personal data through targeted marketing and attention-capturing recommendation algorithms. The platforms want to become “THE tertiary retention of our secondary retentions”.

counter-exampleCounter-example: Nuclear energy

A limit-case illustrating that some pharmaka may be too toxic to be “cared for” satisfactorily. The potential toxicity (catastrophe, millennia-long waste) can render impossible any sufficient positive implementation. It shows the limits of the pharmacological approach in the face of certain technologies.

The concept in detail

Pharmakon (threefold sense)

The central Greek concept inherited from Plato by way of Derrida, meaning simultaneously: (1) remedy — curative capacity, (2) poison — destructive potential, (3) scapegoat — a mechanism for projecting toxicity onto an object. Every technology possesses these three inseparable dimensions. Stiegler quotes: “There is no simple pharmakon.”

Originary ambivalence

The remedy/poison duality is not a side effect or a consequence but the very nature of technics. It cannot be definitively “resolved” but must be constantly “cared for” (managed, regulated, prescribed). It is “at once” remedy and poison — simultaneity, not succession.

Tertiary retentions / Hypomnemata

Technics are external supports of memory (tertiary retentions) that make transgenerational transmission possible. These hypomnemata (writing, the book, the digital) condition our individual memories (primary and secondary retentions). A major stake of power: “From Google to Flickr, all the major players of the web want to be THE tertiary retention of our secondary retentions.”

Grammatisation

The process of discretisation and technical reproduction of human behaviours (gestures, languages, calculations). Grammatisation makes reproducibility possible but also brings about proletarianisation — a loss of knowledge — when it is not accompanied by an appropriate therapeutics.

Generalised proletarianisation

A process of dispossession of knowledge resulting from uncared-for technical automation. It no longer concerns only know-how (the worker) but also savoir-vivre (the consumer) and the knowledge of how to think (the digital cognitariat). An extension of the Marxian concept to society as a whole.

General organology

A theoretical framework articulating three organological levels in transductive relations (after Simondon): physiological organs, technical organs (prostheses), social organisations. Pharmacology is the praxis of this organology — its practical and political application.

Therapeutics / Care

A set of collective prescriptions and practices aimed at “dosing” the pharmakon — maximising the remedy, limiting the poison. “The pharmakon is at once that which makes it possible to take care and that of which one must take care.” It requires an economy of care (economy = taking care of the oikos).