This Keynote lecture was held on the occasion of the yearly Internet Of Things conference, organised by the Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences in April, 2017. Abstract: Once upon a time animism ruled people’s beliefs: both organisms and objects were imbued with a conscience. The conception that there is no distinct division between objects and organisms seems to be gaining ground again, since today’s Internet of Things increasingly creates organisms that used to be called objects. Consequently, the distinction between myth and science will gradually disappear.

1. techno-animism
&
the internet of things

2. techno-animism
&
the internet of things

3. Animism: a worldview that does not discriminate
between living and non-living matter but believes
in universal animation of nature.
Edward Burnett Tylor
Primitive Culture (1871)

4. The world is full of people, only some of whom are human.
Ojibwe Saying
Irving Hallowell, anthropologist (18992-1974)

5. ! ‫پاییز‬ ،‫سنگی‬ ‫
باغ‬
The Stone Garden / Baq-i Sangi
Darvish Khan Esfandiarpoor

8. dispersion
∞
serendipity
condensation
∞
proximity
oblique strategies
∞
oblique communication

9. dispersion
∞
serendipity

20. condensation
∞
proximity

21. ‫תפילין‬

24. oblique strategies
∞
oblique communication

27. The Well.
“ The town may be changed but the well cannot be
changed. It neither decreases nor increases. They
come and go and draw from the well. If one gets
down almost to the water and the rope does not go
all the way, or the jug breaks, it brings misfurtune.”
I Ching Hexagram 48 - Ching / The Well

29. οἶδα δ'ἐγὼ ψάμμου τ᾽ ἀριθμὸν καὶ μέτρα θαλάσσης,
καὶ κωφοῦ συνίημι, καὶ οὐ φωνεῦντος ἀκούω. ὀδμή
μ᾽ ἐς φρένας ἦλθε κραταιρίνοιο χελώνης ἑψομένης
ἐν χαλκῷ ἅμ᾽ ἀρνείοισι κρέεσσιν, ᾗ χαλκὸς μὲν
ὑπέστρωται, χαλκὸν δ᾽ ἐπιέσται.
✱
I count the grains of sand on the beach and measure
the sea; I understand the speech of the dumb and
hear the voiceless. The smell has come to my sense
of a hard shelled tortoise boiling and bubbling with a
lamb's flesh in a bronze pot: the cauldron underneath
it is of bronze, and bronze is the lid.

31. “Give way to your worst impulse”.
Brian Eno/Peter Schmidt
Oblique Strategies/Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas Card Deck (1975)

33. dispersion
∞
serendipity
condensation
∞
proximity
oblique strategies
∞
oblique communication

34. Animism is the flip side of rationalism and the belief
in techno-scientific progress. Here, animism acquires
another layer of meaning — one that does not point
to a strange form of religion but to the paradoxical
and animating effects of endorsed technological and
scientific practices.”
Cornelius Borck
E-flux - Journal #36 - July 2012

36. E here kau mai te Awa nui
Mai i te Kahui Maunga ki Tangaroa
Ko au te Awn, ko te Awa ko au
The Great River flows from the Mountains to the Sea
I am the River, and the River is me.

37. Ruruku Whakatupua Te Mana o te Awn Tupua
✱
(upholding the Mana of the Whanganui River)

40. The hallucinatory effect derives
from the extraordinary clarity
and not from mystery or mist.
Nothing is more fantastic ultimately than precision.
André Robbe-Grillet