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In the last chapter we discussed a stripped down approach to knowledge, information, and data that was compatible with OOO's essential insight into our fleeting brushes with reality as we become more familiar with things in the world. This final chapter brings together what we've considered so far, from the definition of a more "natural" conception of technology to the nature of the objects that we encounter, but it focuses on the kinds of knowledge that are stored in our artefacts, particularly those best suited to being at the heart of technological interactions because the data that they possess, the things that they know, coordinate well with their human users. We'll begin by looking at how the development of technologies can be seen as an evolutionary process and then twin this with our discussion of knowledge by focussing on how such evolutionary processes imbue artefacts with particular data in relation to their environment.¹ Finally, I will argue that every technological interaction can be seen as an encounter between two knowing components that are both flatly responsible for the successful action and inform one another, generating new expertise, without ever really meeting each other as real things — the human and the tool, despite the seeming intimacy of Incorporation, escape from contact; they remain, to extend Nabakov's idea, more or less ghostly to one another.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137377869_6

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