Review: Yuk Hui, On The Existence of Digital Objects

Human made technical objects are constantly changing, taking on new forms that are appropriate to their epoch. Technical objects in the digital age are no exception. In fact, the digital object’s rate of change at the moment is one of rapid acceleration. Only a few years ago email went out of fashion only to be replaced by Facebook and Twitter. The digital form of the technical object is in full flux and yet neither philosophy nor engineering is able to grasp its ever-changing essence. Here lies the premise of Yuk Hui’s On The Existence of Digital Objects published by University of Minnesota Press in 2016. Hui is no stranger to the nuances of either technical or the natural object having studied both Computer Engineering at The University of Hong Kong and philosophy at Goldsmiths at the now defunct Culture Studies department where he met his mentor Bernard Stiegler who offers his views on the book in the preface. Evidence of Stiegler’s influence is seen in many parts of the book but most prominently in Hui’s choice of thinkers, Husserl, Simondon and Heidegger, three figures that feature repeatedly in Stiegler’s own work most notably the three volumes of Technics and Time (Stiegler, 2009).