Ali Vahdati Daneshmand, Bernard Stiegler and the Crisis of Modernity XI

Professor Ali Vahdati Daneshmand is among the Iranian philosophers engaging with Stiegler’s work. His approach offers a framework for examining how technology reshapes attention, memory, education, and collective life. In Iran, where a digitally connected younger generation navigates internet restrictions and competing visions of modernity, these questions have particular urgency. Yet they extend far beyond national borders: how can societies harness digital technologies without allowing them to erode the capacities that sustain independent thought and collective intelligence?

1. The Translator of a Connected Generation’s Crises

For Iran’s digitally connected youth, the internet is both a window onto the world and a source of political and cultural tension. Social platforms offer access to knowledge and new forms of expression, while filtering, surveillance, and algorithmic manipulation constrain their possibilities.

This situation resembles an anthropological shock: a rapid transformation of everyday life that unsettles inherited habits and institutions. The challenge is not simply that technology evolves faster than society can adapt. Digital systems also reorganize how people learn, remember, communicate, and construct their identities.

Earlier Iranian debates about modernity often opposed Westernization to cultural authenticity. Ahmad Fardid’s notion of Gharbzadegi, or “Westoxification,” expressed concern about cultural dependency and the uncritical adoption of Western models. Heidegger’s critique of modern technology offered another way to question technological rationality.

Stiegler proposes a different path. Technology is neither merely an external instrument nor an inevitable source of progress. It participates in the formation of human capacities. The task is therefore not to reject technology but to understand and transform its effects.

2. The Pharmakon: Technology as Poison and Remedy

At the centre of Stiegler’s philosophy lies the Greek concept of pharmakon, meaning both poison and remedy. Drawing on a concept famously explored by Jacques Derrida, Stiegler uses it to describe the ambivalence of technical systems. Technology can support memory while encouraging dependence, expand communication while fragmenting attention, and democratize access to information while concentrating control over its circulation.

In Iran, the Persian expression dāru va zahr (دارو و زهر)—medicine and poison—offers an accessible way to articulate this tension. Digital networks become zahr when they intensify surveillance, polarization, and distraction. Yet they can also function as dāru when they facilitate learning, preserve cultural knowledge, and enable intellectual cooperation.

The same platform may provide access to a restricted text while extracting personal data. Its effects depend on its design, governance, and social context. The question is therefore not whether technology is good or bad, but how its powers can be directed towards individual and collective autonomy.

3. From the Pharmakon to Arabic Concepts: ʿAqqār, Dawāʾ, and Therapeia

Arabic conceptual vocabulary offers another way to explore this ambivalence through three distinct notions: ʿaqqār (عقّار), a drug or medicinal substance; dawāʾ (دواء), a medicine or remedy; and the Greek therapeia, meaning treatment or care. These terms are not exact equivalents of one another. Rather, they provide the basis for a proposed philosophical framework distinguishing pharmacological power, remedial potential, and therapeutic practice.

The ʿaqqār can designate the material bearer of ambivalent power, while dawāʾ foregrounds its potential to remedy harm. Therapeia emphasizes the practice through which that potential might be realized. Arabic terms such as mudāwāt (مداواة) and muʿālaja (معالجة) more directly express treatment or care.

This is a conceptual proposal, not a claim of established lexical equivalence. Its value lies in distinguishing what a technical system can do from the possibility of using it beneficially and the collective effort required to achieve that outcome.

Applied to digital technology, the ʿaqqār represents an ambivalent technical system, the dawāʾ its remedial possibility, and therapeia the work of directing it towards human flourishing. None guarantees a therapeutic result. A remedy can fail, and an intervention intended to heal can itself cause harm.

4. Negentropy: Orienting Technology Towards Life

This distinction leads to a further question: what should count as a successful remedy? Stiegler’s concept of negentropy provides a philosophical horizon.

Negentropy should not be understood simply as the restoration of order. In Stiegler’s thought, it concerns the production of difference, knowledge, and new possibilities of individuation. Technical supports such as writing, libraries, and digital networks preserve experience across generations and allow knowledge to be transformed. But they can also undermine these processes when they standardize behaviour or concentrate control over knowledge.

A negentropic approach asks whether technologies strengthen people’s ability to learn, interpret, create, and cooperate. Do they cultivate independent judgment, or encourage passive consumption? Do they support diverse forms of knowledge, or impose increasingly uniform patterns of attention?

Within the proposed Arabic framework, dawāʾ can name the remedial potential of technology when directed towards such outcomes. It is neither a synonym for negentropy nor a guarantee of healing. Rather, it expresses the possibility of orienting technical power towards the renewal of knowledge, attention, and collective agency.

Therapeia, understood as a practice of care, describes the ongoing work needed to realize this possibility. It requires more than individual self-discipline: it also demands responsible technological design, educational reform, and institutions that support independent thought.

5. The Destruction of Attention and the Proletarianization of the Mind

One central battleground is attention. The Persian expression Eghtesād-e Siyāsi-ye Tavajjoh (اقتصاد سیاسی توجه), or “political economy of attention,” captures the struggle over what people can notice, value, and understand. Tavajjoh means attention and can also carry connotations of consideration or regard.

Digital platforms compete to capture users’ time through notifications, recommendation systems, and rapid content cycles. Although these mechanisms facilitate access to information, they can fragment attention and reward immediate reaction over sustained reflection.

Stiegler describes a related process as proletarianization: the loss not only of control over labour, but also of practical and intellectual capacities. People may lose the know-how to make things, the know-how to live with others, and the know-how to think when these activities are increasingly delegated to automated systems.

Education is particularly vulnerable. Digital tools can broaden access to resources, but digitization may also reduce teachers to executing standardized protocols and students to navigating interfaces. A negentropic approach would instead use technology to deepen understanding, cultivate judgment, and support the production of shared knowledge.

6. A Bridge Between Iranian Intellectual Traditions and Modern Technology

Stiegler’s ideas can enter into dialogue with Iran’s philosophical and spiritual traditions without being reduced to them. The Persian expression Falsafe-ye Mote’āli-ye Teknoloži (فلسفه متعالی تکنولوژی), or “transcendental philosophy of technology,” may evoke Mulla Sadra’s Hikmat Muta’aliyah. The resemblance offers a point of dialogue, not a claim that the two concepts are identical.

Stiegler’s account of technical memory is especially relevant. Human beings externalize experience through writing, images, archives, and digital networks. These technical supports preserve knowledge beyond individual lifetimes, allowing later generations to reinterpret and transform it. Yet storing information does not automatically produce understanding: people must retain the ability to question and interpret what they inherit.

The Persian term morāghebat (مراقبت), resonant with the Arabic murāqaba (مراقبة), evokes vigilance and watchfulness. In a contemporary technological context, it can suggest the need for collective vigilance over systems that shape public attention and knowledge. Such vigilance must extend beyond personal restraint to public debate, educational institutions, and meaningful participation in technological governance.

Stiegler’s idea of a contributory economy offers a practical direction. Rather than treating people primarily as consumers whose attention is monetized, it seeks to support their participation in producing and sharing knowledge. Digital tools could then strengthen collective intelligence instead of deepening dependency.

Conclusion: From Poison to Care

Stiegler’s philosophy provides a way to think beyond both technological pessimism and uncritical enthusiasm. The pharmakon names technology’s ambivalence: it can weaken attention and autonomy, yet also support memory, learning, and collective creation.

The Persian dāru va zahr expresses this tension, while the proposed Arabic sequence of ʿaqqār, dawāʾ, and therapeia distinguishes technical power, remedial potential, and the practice of care. Negentropy provides the broader horizon: sustaining knowledge, differentiation, individuation, and the capacity to create new possibilities.

These concepts do not establish a ready-made equivalence across Greek, Persian, Arabic, and French traditions. Instead, they open a shared inquiry into how technology might serve life rather than merely capture attention.

In Iran, this inquiry speaks to the tensions between institutional authority, cultural continuity, and a digitally connected generation seeking room to think and act. Globally, it raises the same fundamental challenge: how can societies transform technological power into a resource for collective intelligence?

The remedy is neither a particular device nor a single policy. It is an ongoing social and political practice: organizing technology so that it supports care, autonomy, and the renewal of knowledge. The poison cannot simply be removed from the pharmakon. The task is to cultivate the collective capacities through which its power can be redirected towards life.