Yuk Hui is a Hong Kong philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam. He is known for his writings on philosophy and technology. Hui has been described as one of the most influential contemporary philosophers of technology.
Education
Hui studied computer engineering at the University of Hong Kong, wrote his doctoral thesis under the French philosopher
Bernard Stiegler at Goldsmiths, University of London, and obtained his
habilitation in philosophy of technology from Leuphana University of Lüneburg.
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
and sits as a juror of the
Berggruen Prize since 2020.
He currently teaches at the Erasmus University Rotterdam
and the City University of Hong Kong.
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."
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 posited that the concept of technology in Western philosophical literature may not coincide with that of
China and 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."
Hui's work on Chinese philosophy of technology has contributed to discourse around
sinofuturism.
Hui's third monograph, Recursivity and Contingency (2019), is a philosophical treatise of cybernetics. A review in The Philosophical Quarterly 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."
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.
Bibliography
Monographs
-
On the Existence of Digital Objects, pref. Bernard Stiegler, University of Minnesota Press, 2016. (Translations: Spanish, Chinese, Korean)
-
The Question Concerning Technology in China: An Essay in Cosmotechnics, Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2016. (Translations: German, French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian)
-
Recursivity and Contingency, pref. Howard Caygill, London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2019. (Translations: Spanish, Polish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian)
-
Art and Cosmotechnics, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2021. (Translations: Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Russian)
-
Post-Europe, New York: Sequence Press/Urbanomic, 2024.
-
Machine and Sovereignty, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota press, 2024.
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Kant Machine, London: Bloomsbury, 2026.
Anthologies
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Fragmentar el futuro: ensayos sobre tecnodiversidad, Buenos Aires: Caja Negra, 2020. (Spanish)
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Tecnodiversidade, trans. Humberto do Amaral, São Paulo: Ubu, 2021. (Brazilian Portuguese)
-
Teknodiversitet, trans. Anders Dunker, Oslo: Existenz Forlag, 2022. (Norwegian)
-
Pensare la Contingenza. La rinascita della filosofia dopo la cibernetica, Rome: Castelvecchi, 2022. (Italian)
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Technodiverzita, Prague: UMPRUM, 2022. (Czech)
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Tecnodiversità. Tecnologia e politica, Rome: Castelvecchi, 2024. (Italian)
-
在机器的边界思考, Guilin: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2025. (Chinese)
Edited volumes
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Cybernetics for the 21st Century Vol.1 Epistemological Reconstruction, Hanart Press, 2024.
-
Philosophy after Automation, Special Issue of Philosophy Today (Volume 65, Issue 2, Spring 2021)
-
On Cosmotechnics, Special Issue of Angelaki, Vol 25 Issue 4 (August 2020)
-
30 Years after Les Immatériaux: Art, Science and Theory (co-edited with Andreas Broeckmann), Meson Press, 2015.
-
Cosmotechnics For a Renewed Concept of Technology in the Anthropocene (co-edited with Pieter Lemmens), Routledge, 2021.
See also
External links
