Yuk Hui is a Hong Kong philosopher and professor of philosophy at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. He is known for his writings on philosophy and technology. Hui has been described as one of the most interesting contemporary philosophers of technology.^[1][2]

Education

Hui studied Computer Engineering at the University of Hong Kong, wrote his doctoral thesis under the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler at Goldsmiths College in London and obtained his Habilitation in philosophy of technology from Leuphana University in Germany.^[3]

Career

Hui has taught at the Leuphana University, Bauhaus University, and has been a visiting professor at the China Academy of Art and the University of Tokyo. He has been the convenor of the Research Network for Philosophy and Technology since 2014^[4] and sits as a juror of the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture since 2020.^[5] He lately teaches at the Erasmus University^[6] and the City University of Hong Kong.^[7]

Influence and concepts

Hui works on the intersection between technology and philosophy. His first monograph titled On the Existence of Digital Objects (2016), an homage to the work of Gilbert Simondon, was prefaced by Bernard Stiegler. The book was endorsed by Jahrbuch Technikphilosophie as having "all the qualities of becoming a genuine classic in the future."^[8] Hui's second book The Question Concerning Technology in China. An Essay in Cosmotechnics (2016) is a response to Martin Heidegger's 1953 essay "The Question Concerning Technology". Hui questioned that the concept of technology in Western philosophy literature may not coincide with that of China and therefore suggested reconstructing a technological thought in China. The American philosopher of technology Carl Mitcham in a review of Hui's book writes "There is no more challenging work for anyone interested in trying to understand both the manifold philosophical challenges of Western scientific technology and the contemporary rise of China on the world-historical scene."^[9]

Hui's third monograph Recursivity and Contingency (2019) is a philosophical treatise of cybernetics. The Philosophical Quarterly in its review states that "Despite the historical span of roughly 250 years, the diverse range of authors, disciplines and underlying problems, Recursivity and Contingency is held together firmly by its two eponymous concepts."^[10] The professor Bruce Clarke in his review for the American Book Review states that "Recursivity and Contingency submits cybernetics to a massive genealogical reading grounded in German idealism and Naturphilosphie, demonstrating its deepest roots in the "organic condition of philosophizing" since Immanuel Kant, which has developed the concept of the organic in a way that subordinates the phenomenon of technicity to a more general definition of organism."^[11] Hui continues his work on recursivity in a sequel titled Art and Cosmotechnics (2021).^[12][13] Hui's anthology Fragmentar el futuro, assembling his writings on politics and technology, was published in 2020 in both Portuguese and Spanish. It has received many reviews and endorsements in Latin America.^[14][15][16] The Spanish newspaper El Mundo described him as a "new superstar of thought."^[17]

Hui is most known for his concept of technodiversity and cosmotechnics, which is based on what he calls the antinomy of the universality of technology.^[18] The intention is to diverge away from the conception of a universal science and technology which came out of Western modernity and escalated on a global scale today. Hui proposes to rediscover the history of technodiversity to cultivate different conceptions of technology through diverse forms of thinking and practice in order to invent alternatives.^[19] He calls on others to contribute to the project of cultivating technodiversity through an investigation of technological thought through different epistemologies to open to a diversification of technologies in our modern world. The journal Angelaki (vol. 25 issue 4, 2020) and Ellul Forum (Issue 68, 2021) dedicated a special issue on Hui's concept of cosmotechnics.^[20][21]