Human-Technology Relations Down To Earth

A new article, co-authored with Wouter Eggink, has been published. The first presentation of this research was on a Philosophy of Human Technology Relations conference, in Kopenhagen in 2022. Nice that the article now features in the Journal of Human-Technology Relations. It is part of the topical collection Ethics In/Of/For Design, edited by Michael Nagenborg and Deger Ozkaramanli.

Dorrestijn, S., & Eggink, W. (2026). Human-Technology Relations Down to Earth. Journal of Human-Technology Relations, 4, 1–25. https://doi.org/10.59490/jhtr.2026.4.8011

The climate crisis calls for to a turn to Earth/nature in design and philosophy of technology. The relations between humans and technology are studied in the approaches of technical mediation and more specifically in the post-phenomenological analysis of human-technology relations. Our Product Impact Tool is a practice-oriented elaboration of such research for application in design, both for improving interaction with products and improving the social impact of design. However, it appears that the focus has been too much on human-technology relations alone, and Earth/nature seems absent. So, how to reconsider the approach of technical mediation in such a way that it adequately acknowledges Earth/nature? In answering that question, we first explore the meaning of “world” and “earth” in Earth science and philosophy. Then we proceed by investigating the place of Earth/nature in the post-phenomenological approach of “human-technology-world relations”. Our reconsidered post-phenomenological analysis leads to an alternative understanding and schematic expression of human-technology-world relations in which the relations have the character of embedded spheres: ((( human – a specific technology ) world of technology ) Earth ). Lastly, we also explore how these insights can be integrated in our own Product Impact Tool, which leads to an alternative model which expresses the embeddedness of human-technology relations in a Product Impact Tool-down-to-Earth.