Abstract

In this paper I try to enter a specific field of the phenomenology of digital technologies in modern infrastructures by returning to an inside view of modern wastewater management. In order to open a broader context, I first draw attention to the enormous impact of a phenomenon that Erich Hörl defines as “the displacement of technological sense”. In my view, its origins lie in the pragmatist mindset and its realization in the cybernetic turn. I go on to spell out the concrete technological sense of modern wastewater management in terms of a hermeneutic frame that is constituted and limited by an institutional discourse. This leads to my thesis that digital technologies in modern wastewater management tend to extend the cybernetic regime without transcending its institutional limits. Sketching a phenomenology of digitally mediated experience in this context helps to identify a naturalness in dealing with digital devices that leads to essential problems due to increasing complexity.