"The Humane Technology", abstract (for The Two Cultures: Balancing Choices and Effects Oxford University July 20-26, 2008).

The paper will investigate the use of technology in everyday aesthetics such as TV-commercials for mobile phones for Nokia, which slogan is, as it is well known, "Nokia - connecting people". Which function does this technology get in narratives, images, interactions and affects here?

     The mobile phone and its digital camera are depicted as being able to make a unique human presence and interaction. The medium, the technology is a necessary helper to get towards this very special and lost humanity. Without the technology, no special humanity is the prophecy. This personification or anthropomorphism is important for the branding of new technology. The technology is seen as creating a technotranscendens towards a more qualified humanity, which is in contact with fundamental human values like intuition, vision and sensing; all the qualities the technology, the industrialisation and rationalisation, or in short modernity, has been criticized for having taken away from human existence. What technology has taken away now comes back through new technology as an aid for as a better humanity.

     The paper will investigate how the two cultures are combined in this way in a TV-commercial. Technology points, is the conclusion, towards a forgotten pre-human and not to the often-motioned post-human condition.