La temperatura dell'interfaccia : Embodiment, ipnosi e allucinazione

The article aims to overcome the post-phenomenological dualism between embodied and hermeneutic interfaces, enhancing these theoretical concepts to describe more accurately the human-technology interactions disclosed by new digital media. For this purpose, in the first section, the post-phenomenological epistemology, its main theoretical proposals, and its most recent developments will be introduced. In the second section, this philosophical frame will be challenged by some technologies that, in McLuhan’s term, can be cold-embodied or warm-hermeneutic. The Canadian thinker will not only allow us to overcome the post-phenomenological dualism, but he will also give us a pragmatic-speculative hypothesis that will have its own test bench in the following two sections. In these parts, starting from the specific materiality of some media interfaces, we will develop our main theoretical proposal, i.e. we will propose two new possible relationships with the interface: one hypnotizing is specific of those technologies with high perceptual immersivity, which usually establish a warm-hermeneutic relationship; the other hallucinatory, belonging to technologies with operational immersivity, that activate a cold-embodied relationship. In conclusion, we will mention the ethical-pedagogical issues raised by the former and a redefinition of the concept of prosthesis made possible through the latter.