A Feel for Technology: Technocapitalism and the Symbiotic Ethic in Japan

In this article, I examine the work of human–technology interface researchers in Japan to argue for the emergence of a “symbiotic ethic” in their felt encounters with technologies. Using ethnographic fieldwork at university labs conducted since 2011, I explore why researchers create technologies that are made to be “felt” rather than “used” to show how they draw together theories of biological symbiosis, critiques of neoliberal society situated in recent Japanese technology policy, and bodily experiences of technology, uncanny and otherwise, into an alternative vision of technocapitalism in Japan. In their attempts to create a more “human-centered” “Ambient Information Society,” the researchers develop interfaces that will enable Japan's future economic and social development. Yet at the same time, the bodily experiences they have with their technologies push them toward human–technology relations in which the state's emphasis on economic value can be displaced by the ethical value of symbiosis. This article extends notions of value from anthropology and of ethical subject formation in STS to show how spaces to explore possibilities for symbiosis between humans and technologies become valued themselves, as the researchers imagine alternative technocapitalisms for Japan.