Editorial

On Technology

In the twelfth century, the French philosopher Bernard de Chartres used a powerful image for humanity: dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants, discovering by building on what was discovered before.

Today, I believe that discovery has shifted. It is no longer about uncovering something entirely new but about inventing and reinventing through language and creativity. With the rise of advanced technologies, AI, AI-powered cameras, digital photography, our relationship with the past, with art, and with writing, creative or not, has become boundless, a word that captures both the infinite possibilities and the way these tools stretch and challenge traditional limits. They let us readdress old questions in new ways, agreeing and disagreeing, building on the ideas of centuries-old philosophers, critics, and artists.

Yet some institutions of higher learning have voiced concern, and even proposed restricting or banning some of these technologies. I was recently told that technology corrupts reality, the speaker citing the hyper-realism of high-definition photography, where what we see seems enhanced beyond the real. Another academic implied that using AI compromises the integrity of research. The MLA, like other style manuals, now offers guidelines for acknowledging AI use in scholarly work. In the humanities, at least in my experience, some scholars feel a need to stress that their research is untouched by AI, as if to affirm its purity, untainted by technology or outside influence.

But can we truly imagine modern philosophy without Plato, Aristotle, or Wittgenstein? Even when today's thinkers disagree with them, they are still reacting to their ideas, explicitly or implicitly. Can we conceive of post-structuralist art, in photography, sculpture, or painting, without the influence of Picasso or Braque? Can anyone claim to have written a work of literature that carries no echo of Homer? Influence is not the opposite of originality. It is its precondition.

In "The Essays", Francis Bacon reflects on Solomon's wisdom: "There is no new thing upon the earth". All knowledge, he reminds us, is a reworking of what came before. Plato imagined knowledge as recollection; Solomon suggested that novelty is only a form of forgetting. Bacon's insight holds in our own moment, where the vastness of information and the speed of technological change can leave us feeling that nothing is new. Rather than discouraging us, the thought invites us to keep redescribing what we know, adding a layer of meaning with each iteration.

With this in mind, it is a pleasure to introduce our featured artist, Wanda Koop of Canada. Koop's work, like the technologies that shape our modern reality, asks us to see past the visible and pushes the boundaries of perception. We also feature Ana Ivanovska of Macedonia, Stephen Mead of the United States, and Flora Mae Nguyen of France, each of whom contributes in a distinct way to the ongoing dialogue between past and present, and to the work of invention.

Jorge R. G. Sagastume, Editor