A01=Alex Taek-Gwang Lee
Alex Taek-Gwang Lee
Author_Alex Taek-Gwang Lee
Category=JH
digital culture
does technology fail?
does technology inherently advance things?
does technology inherently lead to progress
does technology made us stronger?
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
experimenting with technology
forthcoming
is technology flawed?
Is technology powerful?
media and communication studies
philosophy of technology
science and technology studies
Theory Redux series
what happens when technologies fail?
Product details
- ISBN 9781509572885
- Publication Date: 19 Nov 2026
- Publisher: Polity Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Weak Technologies challenges one of the great myths of our time: that technology is powerful. We are constantly told that tools, technologies and especially Artificial Intelligence expand our reach, overcome our limits and make us stronger. But this book proposes the opposite. Technologies are valuable not because they succeed but because they fail – because they glitch, deviate, surprise, and refuse to obey faithfully the intentions of their designers and users.
The fascination with "powerful" technology rests on a fantasy of mastery: that human weaknesses can be overcome by machines. Yet every technology, from a screwdriver to a neural network, reveals itself to be interesting only when it does something unexpected: weakness, such as inconsistency, malfunction and improvisation, is where invention emerges. Technologies are not solutions to problems: they are problems, calling for new acts of imagination.
This book invites us to abandon the dream of seamless efficiency and instead to embrace experimentation and play. To use technology well is not to control it but to explore what else it can do. Weak Technologies proposes nothing less than an artistic education in technological life, a way of creating with machines, not commanding them. It is a manifesto for an experimental, curious, and genuinely inventive technological culture.
The fascination with "powerful" technology rests on a fantasy of mastery: that human weaknesses can be overcome by machines. Yet every technology, from a screwdriver to a neural network, reveals itself to be interesting only when it does something unexpected: weakness, such as inconsistency, malfunction and improvisation, is where invention emerges. Technologies are not solutions to problems: they are problems, calling for new acts of imagination.
This book invites us to abandon the dream of seamless efficiency and instead to embrace experimentation and play. To use technology well is not to control it but to explore what else it can do. Weak Technologies proposes nothing less than an artistic education in technological life, a way of creating with machines, not commanding them. It is a manifesto for an experimental, curious, and genuinely inventive technological culture.
Alex Taek-Gwang Lee is Professor of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Kyung Hee University, South Korea.
