Yuk Hui is one of the most important figures in contemporary philosophy of technology. His central intervention is to show that it is insufficient to think technology only within the historical line of Western modernity. Technology is often treated as if it were a universal set of tools. It is imagined as though all societies occupy different stages of development within the same technical logic. Hui breaks this assumption. For him, the question of technology is not merely a question of engineering or tools. It is related to each culture’s understanding of the universe, the human being, nature, morality, and order.
Hui’s book The Question Concerning Technology in China: An Essay in Cosmotechnics stands at the center of this intervention. In this text, Hui takes Heidegger’s question concerning technology seriously; but he does not accept it as a universal answer. Heidegger thinks modern technology through the history of Western metaphysics. Hui moves the question elsewhere: Is technology only the destiny of the West, or are different technical relations to the world possible in different cultures?
This approach is directly important for Synthetic Epistemology. In the age of artificial intelligence, technical systems are often presented as global, neutral, and as belonging to a single model of progress. Data, model, image, code, and algorithm are treated as if they meant the same thing everywhere in the world. Yet every technical order carries a particular image of the world. Hui’s thought of cosmotechnics allows us to ask the following question in the age of artificial intelligence: Is technology the result of only one civilizational line, or are other technical futures possible?
Yuk Hui’s Position
Yuk Hui’s thought stands between philosophy of technology, cybernetics, Chinese thought, German Idealism, Heidegger, Simondon, Stiegler, and the discussion of digital objects. Hui’s background in computer engineering prevents him from interpreting technical systems only from the outside. He also thinks digital objects, data structures, networks, and software at a technical level. His philosophical formation places this technical knowledge within a broader ontology and critique of culture.
Hui is one of the key figures who should be read after Stiegler. Stiegler showed that technology and the human being are constituted together. Hui carries this question to another level: Should the relation between technology and the human being be thought through a universal model, or do different cultures have different technical relations to the world?
Hui’s originality becomes clear here. He does not reject Western philosophy of technology. He takes Heidegger, Simondon, and Stiegler seriously. But he does not leave this philosophical line as a Eurocentric technical destiny. Through Chinese thought, he investigates another technical possibility. This makes him not only a “thinker of technology,” but also an important philosopher for the pluralization of technical thought.
From Stiegler to Hui: From the Constitutive Role of Technics to the Plurality of Technics
Hui’s relation to Stiegler is not merely biographical. Stiegler showed that the human being cannot be thought independently of technics. The human being is constituted through tools, writing, recording, archive, and externalized memory. In this sense, technics is not an external instrument that the human being uses afterward; it is a condition of humanization.
Hui accepts this line, but pluralizes it. If technics constitutes the human being, this constitution cannot be explained through a single civilizational line. Different cultures may have constituted technics within different cosmologies, moral understandings, and images of nature. In Stiegler, technics is thought as the constitutive ground of the human relation to time and memory. In Hui, this ground becomes culturally plural.
The question is no longer only “How does technics constitute the human being?” The deeper question is this: Which technics constitutes which human being within which understanding of the world? While the technical line of Western modernity reveals nature as a calculable, usable, and optimizable resource, other traditions of thought may have established different relations with technics. Hui’s concept of cosmotechnics is born precisely at this point. Technics is not a universal sum of instruments; it is a relation to the world that gains meaning within a specific cosmology, morality, and order of life.
What Is Cosmotechnics?
Hui’s most important concept is cosmotechnics. This concept states that technical activities are not only instrumental or economic, but are related to cosmic order and moral order. In other words, technology is not only a way of doing something. It also includes how a world is constituted, how the human being relates to nature, to which moral principles social order is attached, and how the universe is understood.
Within Western modernity, technology is often associated with the calculation, transformation, control, and use of nature as an energy source. In Heidegger’s critique of technology, this situation is thought through the concept of Gestell, or enframing. Under modern technology, nature is revealed as standing reserve. Hui values this critique, but he does not universalize it. For him, Heidegger’s question concerning technology is powerful, but this question arises from the history of Western metaphysics.
The concept of cosmotechnics enters here. Technology does not have the same meaning in every culture. For one society, technology may be an instrument of domination over nature. In another world of thought, technology may be a way for the human being to establish harmony with cosmic order. Hui’s aim is not to nostalgically glorify the “ancient technologies” of China. His more important aim is to show that technology is not determined by a single universal reason.
This is a critical idea in the age of artificial intelligence. Today, AI is often presented as a global technical destiny. Every society is expected to adopt the same platforms, the same data logic, the same optimization goals, and the same forms of automation. Hui’s concept of cosmotechnics questions this expectation: Can technology be rethought within different understandings of the world?
Dao, Qi, Li, and Ren: The Ground of Cosmotechnics in Chinese Thought
Hui’s concept of cosmotechnics should not be left as an abstract claim of plurality. His return to Chinese thought is an attempt to think the relation between technology and world order through concrete concepts. Here, the concepts of Dao, qi, li, and ren become especially important.
Dao is not merely a simple principle meaning “way.” It expresses the order of the world’s operation, the direction of becoming, and how the human being can establish harmony with this order. When technics becomes an instrument of domination detached from Dao, it becomes only a useful tool; but it ceases to be a mode of action harmonious with the world. Dao therefore suggests that technical action is related not only to efficiency, but to a broader world order.
The concept of qi discussed by Hui must be understood carefully. In Chinese thought, different written forms open different fields of meaning. The line Hui brings forward in the context of technics is often qi in the sense of 器: vessel, instrument, tool, technical object. In this sense, qi is the instrumental form through which Dao appears at the material-technical level. Dao does not remain merely an abstract principle; through qi, that is, through tools, practices, apparatuses, and technical forms, it settles into the world. Cosmotechnics is therefore the thinking of the relation between Dao and qi: which broader world order does the technical object serve?
The concept of li is also important here. Depending on context, li may be thought as ritual order, principle, form, pattern, or appropriateness. Technical action is not measured only by functional success; it stands within an order, measure, and appropriateness. A tool does not merely transform nature; it gains meaning within social rhythm, moral boundary, and cosmic harmony.
Ren opens the field of humanity, relation to the other, compassion, and moral sensitivity. If technology is detached from ren, it produces only efficiency, speed, and power; but it loses the relation of responsibility between human being and world.
When these concepts are thought together, Hui’s difference becomes clearer. Cosmotechnics is not the simple pluralist claim that “every culture has its own technology.” It is a deeper claim: technology is always connected to a worldview. In Chinese thought, technics can be understood within the order of Dao, the instrumental form of qi, the ritual and principled measure of li, and the moral-human orientation of ren. Within this framework, technology is not merely an instrument for dominating nature; it is a way of establishing relations between human being, society, and cosmos.
The Myth of the Universality of Technology
The basic assumption Hui criticizes is that technology is universal. According to this assumption, technics operates everywhere with the same logic; different societies merely reach this universal technology earlier or later. When thought in this way, European modernity appears as the central path of technical reason. China, the Islamic world, the Ottoman world, India, Africa, or Indigenous technical traditions are then often read through categories such as “underdevelopment,” “delay,” or “adaptation.”
Hui rejects this schema. For him, technics is not a singular universality. Technologies certainly circulate globally. Computers, networks, AI systems, sensors, data centers, and robotic infrastructures spread across the world. Yet this spread does not make the meaning of technology universal. The purpose with which a technical system is built, the ethical order within which it operates, the cosmology to which it is attached, and the social imagination that carries it may all change.
For this reason, the issue is not only “let us produce local technology.” The deeper question is this: What is our technical thought? Do we understand technology only through competition, speed, efficiency, security, and growth? Or can technology be thought as part of the human relation to nature, society, memory, justice, morality, and the future?
Technodiversity: Are Other Technical Futures Possible?
Hui’s thought of cosmotechnics opens onto the idea of technodiversity. Technodiversity argues that technical development does not have to progress in a single direction. Just as biodiversity is important for ecological life, technical diversity is important for humanity’s imagination of the future.
Here diversity does not mean only different devices or different applications. It is a deeper diversity. Different societies can establish technology with different aims, different limits, different ethical principles, and different cosmological visions. For one society, technology may be a means of optimizing nature without limit. For another, it may be a way of keeping the relation between human being and nature within measure. In one place, data extraction may be the priority; in another, privacy, communal memory, or ecological harmony may be the priority.
This idea is especially important in the age of artificial intelligence. AI is often thought through a single line of development: larger models, more data, greater computational power, faster automation, more prediction. Hui’s thought of technodiversity breaks this line. Are other forms of AI possible? Can we think smaller, local, contextual, public, ecological, ethical, and culturally situated AI systems?
This question is also directly related to the context of Turkey within Synthetic Epistemology. Turkey’s relation to AI cannot be established only through the use of imported models, integration into global platforms, or technical consumption. A technical orientation that thinks its own language, concepts, archives, visual memory, and ethical needs is necessary.
Recursivity and Contingency
Hui’s book Recursivity and Contingency opens another powerful dimension of his technical thought. Recursivity may be thought as the process by which a system turns its own output back into input and constitutes itself through feedback. This concept is central for cybernetics, systems theory, biology, artificial intelligence, and digital networks.
Today, algorithmic systems often work recursively. User behavior becomes data for the system. The system produces recommendations according to this data. The recommendation creates new behavior. The new behavior becomes data again. Thus the system feeds itself cyclically.
Contingency reminds us that not everything is necessary and that things could be otherwise. This concept is important in Hui for freedom and technical futures. If technical systems close themselves within their own recursive cycles, the future becomes an extension of past data. But contingency shows that the system can be constituted otherwise, that new interruptions and new orientations can be opened.
From Cybernetics to Artificial Intelligence
Hui’s thought of recursivity allows us to understand the bond between cybernetics and artificial intelligence. Cybernetics was founded on feedback, control, communication, and the regulation of systems. Artificial intelligence carries this inheritance on many levels. Feedback loops, optimization, prediction, model updates, analysis of user behavior, and automated decision processes can all be seen as contemporary forms of cybernetic thought.
For Hui, however, this is not only a technical history. Cybernetics is also a philosophical problem. If the world is thought as systems, feedbacks, and calculable relations, how will human freedom, nature, organic life, and political decision be understood? If everything is reduced to system logic, does contingency disappear?
In the age of artificial intelligence, this question becomes even sharper. The model extracts patterns from past data. The system predicts possible behaviors. The platform directs the user toward certain options. Automation may narrow fields of decision. In this situation, the future becomes attached to the recursive predictions of technical systems.
Hui’s contribution is that he does not merely issue an ethical warning in order to break this loop. He brings a deeper philosophical proposal: technical futures must be diversified. Technodiversity and cosmotechnics can become the philosophical and political ground of contingency in the age of artificial intelligence.
The Limit of Hui
Hui’s thought is very powerful, but it carries the risk of remaining abstract. Concepts such as cosmotechnics, technodiversity, recursivity, and contingency open broad philosophical horizons; yet they must be related to concrete technical policies, datasets, platform orders, and AI applications. Otherwise, cosmotechnics may remain only a beautiful concept.
Yuk Hui’s thought questions one of the most basic assumptions about technology in the age of artificial intelligence: technology is not a single and universal destiny. Technology is always constituted together with an understanding of the world, a moral order, an image of nature, and an idea of the future.
The concept of cosmotechnics is powerful for this reason. It shows us that technology is not merely an instrument; it must be thought together with culture, cosmology, and morality. Technodiversity reminds us that other technical futures are possible. In the age of artificial intelligence, this idea is vital. Global platforms, large models, and data-centered systems tend to compress the technical future into a single line.
From the perspective of Synthetic Epistemology, Hui’s contribution is the pluralization of technical thought. Data, code, model, and algorithm are not merely universal instruments. They establish particular worlds. The question, then, is this: technology for which world? Artificial intelligence for which human being? Algorithm for which memory, which nature, which morality, and which future?
In the context of Turkey, this question becomes even more urgent. Without a local cosmotechnical thought, artificial intelligence remains an imported technical regime. Yet Turkish thought, local archives, cultural memory, art history, and social diversity must think their own technical future. The line opened by Hui is a powerful call for this thinking.
