The Question Concerning Technology in Northeast India

Mriganka Madhukaillya, Cristina Bogdan, Leon Tan

Paper presented at the Northeast Research Conclave held at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati between May 20-22, 2022

In Northeast India, an extremely rich cultural and historical setting, the challenge of the technological evolution of education makes it crucial to revisit the historical question concerning technology, as it was posed by Heidegger in his eponymous 1977 essay, then revisited by Chinese philosopher Yuk Hui in 2017, who coined the term “cosmotechnics” as a result. This paper discusses the project Library in the Forest, developed by research and design studio Forest Cybernetics, whose goal is to re-imagine how technology might serve, and not undermine, education, nature and the environment. Against universalizing notions of technology, it develops a cosmotechnical position – at once technological and ethical. The evolving curriculum brings together design practice, scientific investigation, coding and philosophy, with local/ indigenous knowledge systems, to re-situate technology in a specific set of histories of place, settlement and change.