Are we really separate from the things we make? Do we really control our own tools? And where do we end, and they begin?

All That We Touch explores the relationship between technology and society, and how the things we make shape and reshape us in turn.

Host Matt Ryan speaks with Tamson Pietsch about the podcast's central questions and its sources of inspiration.

In a changing climate, the powerful Western notion that humans are separate from nature, enjoying dominion over it, is coming undone. Meanwhile, digital life has us doubting whether we are fully in control of some of our most everyday objects and technologies.

Our title is taken from Octavia Butler's novel, The Parable of the Sower. The dystopian story opens with the lines "all that we touch, we change, and all that we change changes us." It's a credo that seems to neatly sum up philosopher Bruno Latour's central idea: that humans, tools, language and technologies are bound together in networks where nothing stands apart, pure and untouched.

You'll hear a sneak preview of the first two stories we'll bring you over the coming months, on a podcast that will feature documentaries, talks and recordings of live events - all on that theme of technology and society.

Voices

Dr Matthew Ryan is a Chancellor's Research Fellow at UTS' Faculty of Design and Society.

Associate Professor Tamson Pietsch is director of UTS' Australian Centre for Public History at UTS and managing director of Impact Studios.

Actress Lynne Thigpen reads the excerpt from The Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Buter.

Professor Heather Ford and Dr Francesca Sidoti, along with author Richard Cooke, present our inaugural series on Wikipedia - coming very soon.

Michelle Maloney and Abe Noe-Hayes feature in a forthcoming episode, Liquid Gold.

Credits

Produced by Lachlan A'Court.

Excerpt from Parable of the Sower is by Octavia E. Butler, narrated by Lynne Thigpen, provided courtesy of Recorded Books, © 2000. The full recording is available wherever audiobooks are sold.

All That We Touch is made on Gadigal land, in Sydney, by UTS Impact Studios.

Executive producer is Sarah Gilbert.

Further listening

To learn more about Bruno Latour, you can listen to Ep 169 of Philosophize This! or Ep 230 and 231 of The Partially Examined Life.

The Parable of the Sower, read by Lynne Thigpen, is available at Audible. You can hear an excellent discussion of the novel on Backlisted, Ep 223.

1

Tamson Pietsch:

Welcome to all That We touch. I'm Tamson Pietsch,

director of the Australian Centre for Public History at UTS.

2

Matt Ryan:

And I'm Matt Ryan, a researcher in social and political sciences,

also at UTS.

3

Tamson Pietsch:

And this is a brand new podcast from Impact Studios.

4

Matt Ryan:

Okay, Tamson, let's talk about the title,

All That We Touch.

5

Why did you choose it? What are you getting at with this title?

6

Tamson Pietsch:

Well, are you telling me it's a bit obscure?

7

Is that what you are? Fair enough. This is going to be a podcast about

technology and society,

8

and I wanted a name that would capture some of that.

9

And I'd been reading Octavia Butler's The Parable of the sower.

10

And look, I didn't have to confess. I didn't actually finish reading it because

it terrified me.

11

But its key message was one that has really stayed with me.

12

Audible archive:

All that you touch, you change. All that you change changes you.

13

The only lasting truth is change.

14

Tamson Pietsch:

And this becomes the credo for us, for the heroine,

as she tries to navigate this entangled,

15

collapsing world. And it really struck me as a lovely line to encapsulate this

notion that we are somehow part of the world we

16

have made.

17

Matt Ryan:

Those are really interesting ideas, and I can totally relate to not necessarily

finishing books that are that grim.

18

I had a similar experience with Tim Winton's Juice,

but as you speak about these kinds of entanglements between people and society

19

and things that are in flux, that are moving and changing,

it reminds me a lot of Bruno Latour's work,

20

and I know that's something that you're really interested in.

21

So can you tell me a bit more about the connection you saw there?

22

Tamson Pietsch:

Yeah, well, Latour has this similar argument.

23

He calls them assemblages or hybrids that everything in the natural and social

world,

24

both humans and non-human things interact in in dynamic kind of networks.

25

Nothing for. For Latour is pure. Even humans need tools.

26

They need language. They need resources.

27

They need technologies and institutions to be who we are.

28

So humans are not detached from the things we make.

29

And in fact, for Latour, it's precisely because of our entanglement in the world

we have created that that human action is central to addressing climate change,

30

a situation that humans have created. So there's no kind of world in which

humans and things are disentangled.

31

Matt Ryan:

And I guess that's going to be our focus here in this podcast,

right?

32

We're going to be focusing on things, often things we take for granted,

things that we're familiar with that shape our lives,

33

and also pattern other possible lives in ways that we might not necessarily

think of or notice.

34

And it's worth remembering that that is not the way that we've thought about

these relationships,

35

particularly in Western thought, over quite a long time.

36

The idea is that humanity and human history was defined by its separation from

nature,

37

from the material world was the the bedrock of entire academic disciplines like

history.

38

So it's you know, it's worth saying that this this stuff from Latour and from

Butler is radical in a way,

39

but also in a way that is increasingly,

I think, visible to us today because of the way in which things are getting out

40

of control all around us. There used to be a time when we saw trees as trees,

but now a forest isn't just a bunch of trees,

41

it's a network of trees and fungi and carbon and soil and microbial life.

42

The internet too, that used to be a place of dinky little chat rooms.

43

Now it's something that pervades objects in the home,

like fridges and boilers.

44

And of course, we can't think about the internet today without thinking about

artificial intelligence and the idea that machines might think for themselves.

45

Tamson Pietsch:

So what you're saying is that things are always more than just things.

46

Matt Ryan:

Of course, things are relationships between people and materiality,

and the ecology and systems beyond our consciousness.

47

Sometimes that it's all relational. It's all in.

48

Defined by its interactions.

49

Tamson Pietsch:

Yeah. And I like thinking about what this notion of technology means to like,

technology is a kind of tool,

50

really, that a human or actually some non-humans make.

51

And yet those tools also make us. And it's that way of thinking about the

intersection between the material and the human.

52

That technology comes in a way. This is a really productive.

53

What we think it's a really productive way to think and rethink about systems

that are affecting our daily lives.

54

So this is a podcast about technology, but it's also a podcast about society.

55

Matt Ryan:

So all that we touch begins with a series on Wikipedia.

56

It's the largest compendium of human knowledge ever created,

and most of us use it all the time,

57

even if we're not aware of that fact.

58

Speaker 4:

It's become part of the furniture. But Wikipedia isn't just something we live

with,

59

it's something we learn from. It shapes how we understand the world.

60

But we're wondering what shapes Wikipedia.

61

Matt Ryan:

Later you'll hear a very different story.

62

It's all about toilets and what we are really wasting when we wash away our

waste.

63

Speaker 5:

A society that's disconnected from nature is not exactly going to go forth and

embrace its relationship with the waste it creates.

64

Speaker 6:

I think it's alchemy. Turning a waste into gold.

65

Matt Ryan:

On this podcast, you'll hear documentaries like these along with interviews and

live recordings.

66

All of it grappling with this complex relationship between ourselves and

technology,

67

nature and politics. All that we touch,

we change and all that we change changes us.

68

So hit subscribe and stay tuned.