ORTHODOXY AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

ORTHODOXY AND
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Dictionary of Technology
and a Double Logos:
A Contribution to the Dialogue
of Science and Religion

Editors
Aleksandar Petrović
Aleksandra Stevanović

INSTITOUTO ISTORIKWN EPEUNWN

EQNIKO IDRUMA EPEUNWN

INSTITUTE OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH

NATIONAL HELLENIC
RESEARCH FOUNDATION
CONTENT

Introduction .................................................................................9
Tatjana Paunesku
The Fall of Insight –
Dictionary of Technology as a Prediction of Future..................17
Aleksandar Petrović
Middle Ages and Artificial Intelligence ....................................37
Suzana Polić
Dictionary of Technology and Electronic Personality................61
Aleksandra Stevanović
The Fourth Dimension of Dictionary of Technology ................79
Vladimir Dimitrijević
Theology behind Technology –
On the Way to Dictionary of Technology ................................109
Dragiša Bojović
Dictionary of Technology and Church Studies:
The Same Idea .........................................................................125
Aleksandar Saša Gajić
Technological–Theological Dilemmas
in the Postmodern Era .............................................................137
  

ORTHODOXY AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Dictionary of Technology and a Double Logos:
A Contribution to the Dialogue of Science and Religion
Editors
Aleksandar Petrović
Aleksandra Stevanović
Advisor
Antoine Melki
University of Balamand
Publisher
National Hellenic Research Foundation
Institute of Historical Research
Director
Efthymios Nicolaidis
Athens, 2019
Design & Layout
Duško Ćosić

ISBN 978-960-9538-82-4

Cover page of Dictionary of Technology virtually added to the cover

page: fresco painting from the monastery Ravanica (XIV century), near
the city of Cuprija, Serbia; back cover: illumination from the Serbian
Psalter, Munich (XIV century). All other illustrations are from Dictio-
nary of Technology.

This book is prepared within the framework of the project “Science

and Orthodoxy around the World” which is is fostered by the National
Hellenic Research Foundation in Athens and made possible through the
support of a grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation, Inc.
The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and
do not necessarily reflect the views of Project SOW and the Templeton
World Charity Foundation, Inc.
Dictionary of Technology – cover page
 DICTIONARY OF INVERSION

This publication resulted from the workshop “Religion and Tech-

nology – Dictionary of Technology as a case study” held in May
2018 at the University of Belgrade Rectorate building within the
global project “Science and Orthodoxy around the World”. The
participants explored different aspects of the growing power of
modern technology, both secular and religious, its relation to Or-
thodox religion, and pointed at the relevance of Dictionary of
Technology that may be used as the multilevel platform for bring-
ing these fields into constructive dialogue.
Dictionary of Technology is a multi-layered manuscript composed
of 162 lexicographic terms circularly referencing past and present
epochal spirit of time as well as phenomenology of human mind
in the light of modern technological processes. It appeared in May
1981 in Belgrade as a special edition of the University journal “Vidi-
ci” (“Horizons”). Its occurrence induced a great surprise because at
that time ideology, and not technology, was at the centre of public
attention. It was particularly unusual that the question of technol-
ogy was raised in the form of a medieval manuscript, inverting an
Enlightenment view on the world that allowed only modernity to
talk about premodernity, and not vice versa. Moreover, Dictionary
of Technology restored the discourse of the premodern experience
not only through its medieval expression, but primarily in its free-
hand creation that rejected conceptually mechanical typing devices.
These two pivot points are accompanied by intentional anonymi-
ty of the authors in accordance with the medieval creative canon,
which, as a matter of circumstance, leaned on the postmodern idea
of the “death of the author”.

9
The controversy surrounding this script was deepened by the fact
that it was not possible to simply determine its genre. On the post-
modern platform, it used various disciplines whose amalgamation
did not utterly belong to lexical or philosophical, scientific, or
theological sphere. In essence, Dictionary considered technology
from a theological perspective, but not canonically; it rather used
the modern experience of philosophy and science in the postmod-
ern key. Thus, not only did it try to explicitly answer what tech-
nology is, but also to implicitly resolve what Orthodoxy is today.
Its idea is that only in confronting these two apparently different
logoi, the logic of the spirit of time may be reached. In the separate
perspectives of two logoi, as one might say, the dualism of techno
and theo logos, only historically cloudy horizon is attained.
The value of Dictionary may be also found in its several decades
long experience of the damnatio memoriae punishment, which
it was condemned to in 1982 by the powerful communist elite
of Yugoslavia. This fact paradoxically contributed to the com-
prehension of its significance. Interest in Dictionary may have
exploded so strongly due to this long proscription.
Dictionary of Technology started to attract academic attention in
2009 when geopolitician Zoran Petrović Piroćanac critically reas-
sessed it in his doctoral dissertation at EHESS (École des hautes
études en sciences sociales) in Paris, as well in the book Nomen-
clatura Serbica: 1982–2013: Elites, Entropic Model of Political
class and Continuity of Serbian Nomenclature. After that, the
first scientific conference dedicated to this long-forgotten script
was organized at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory,
University of Belgrade, on November 12th and 13th, 2014. The
two-days event included the participation of more than 15 aca-
demics who reassessed historical conditions of the manuscript’s
appearance and the time span of more than three decades when
it was covered by the opaque veil of oblivion. One year later, the

10
scientific proceedings Return from the Land of Dragons – Dictio-
nary of Technology 33 Years Later ascertained that this genuine
manifest of philosophy of technology justifies rejuvenated inter-
est and demands more extensive research work in this field. 1
The proceedings served as an impetus to further theoretical elab-
oration and the next scientific conference that was successfully
held at the Institute of European Studies in Belgrade, on Decem-
ber 23rd, 2016.2 The conference Dictionary of Technology as An-
ti-utopia contrasted the sensibility of Dictionary to Yugoslavian
and (past and present) technological utopia. As a result of the
academic discussion during this event a book of contributions
was issued in December, 2017, titled Heptadecagon – Dictionary
of Technology as Anti-utopia (pro et contra)3, published by the
Institute of European Studies in Belgrade.
Dictionary was also studied during one-semester academic cours-
es at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade in spring
2017. The aim of the academic courses was to reinterpret the mod-
1
Bošković, Dušan; Petrović, Aleksandar (Eds.). Belgrade: Insti-
tute for Philosophy and Social Theory. 2015. [Повратак из земље
змајева – Речник технологије 33 године после. Бошковић, Душан;
Петровић, Александар (Ур.). Београд: Институт за филозофију и
друштвену теорију. 2015]. (http://www.instifdt.bg.ac.rs/wp-content/
uploads/2016/12/Recnik_tehnologije.pdf)
2
On 417 pages, it combines three thematic units: introduction, epilogue
and documents, that is scientific contributions of the participants, tran-
scriptions of the first and second day discussions and archival materi-
al – Analysis of the ideological orientation of the journal Vidici (for
the first time in the unchanged form published in this volume) and the
transcription of the discussion during the two meetings of the commis-
sion for the ideological orientation of university journals in January and
February 1982, as well as photographs and posters of the issues of the
journal Vidici.
3
Dimitrije Vujadinović (Ed.). Belgrade: Institute of European Studies.
2017. [Хептадекагон – Речник технологије као анти-утопија ((pro
et contra). Вујадиновић, Димитрије (Ур.). Београд: Институт за
европске студије. 2017]. (http://www.ies.rs/en/heptadekagon-2/)

11
ern implications of ideas manifested in Dictionary and reassess
their relevance for the contemporary social reality. The students
had the opportunity to engage in number of activities with regard
to the visual identity of Dictionary, its artistic and literary symbol-
ism, calligraphy, and its discourse and frame of reference.
Partly as a result of these academic courses, in January 2018 an
extensive research exhibition on Dictionary of Technology was
opened entitled Hermetics of Dictionary of Technology and Yu-
goslav Utopia. The exhibition was held from 16th to 26th January
at the Gallery “Prozor” (“Window”) in Belgrade. It included a
plethora of archival records, first screening of the two-hour tele-
vision documentary dedicated to Dictionary, more than five dif-
ferent panels, and daily calligraphy workshops. Apart from the
reinterpretation of the historiographic facts and presentation of
the contemporary reading of ethics in the light of Dictionary of
Technology and its stance on technological reality, a series of
panels was organized within the exhibition frame. Each panel
included three participants and reviewed the themes of linguistic,
theological, technological, and political implications of Dictio-
nary of Technology, trying to reinterpret its significance on the
multipolar level.
Last but not least, a comprehensive archival and documenta-
ry-historiographic research was carried out and a large fund of
relevant archival and public documents was collected. The doc-
uments were subsequently arranged, classified, and made avail-
able to the public in a special web portal Dictionary of Technolo-
gy where Dictionary itself may be found as well.4
All of this induced us to within the project SOW use Dictio-
nary as a sufficiently solid historical backbone to study the re-
lationship between technology and Orthodoxy in a modern and
4
https://recniktehnologije.wordpress.com/

12
post-modern context. This discussion is particularly important in
the context of the challenges of the Artificial Intelligence emer-
gence and the tide of ethical issues that seem difficult to resolve
without understanding the theological problems of existence.
Therefore, in this publication Artificial Intelligence is given spe-
cial vigilance. The debate at the Rectorate of the University of
Belgrade was very lively and fruitful; hence, we are pleased that
on this occasion we can make it available to the project SOW
team and the interested public. We are assured that it will repre-
sent another step in illuminating so deeply enigmatic relation of
Orthodoxy, science and technology.

Aleksandar Petrović
Aleksandra Stevanović
1th November 2018

13
 Workshop “Religion and Technology:
Dictionary of Technology as a Case Study”
Rectorate of the University of Belgrade
May 25th 2018

15
 THE FALL OF INSIGHT
Dictionary of Technology as a Prediction of Future

Tatjana Paunesku
Northwestern University, Chicago

Dictionary of Technology, published in 1981 in former Yugo-

slavia by anonymous authors, is a rare example of a visionary
document that could be labeled as a study in futurology, albeit
with dystopian leanings. This document, in addition to its unusu-
al mode of production and form resembling a medieval manu-
script, far surpasses the ostensible function of a regular lexicon.
Dictionary of Technology predicted many of the contemporary
morass arising from ungoverned technological progress. While
the political climate in Yugoslavia changed drastically during
the intervening years and the country itself ruptured in a lengthy
civil war, technological progress on a world scale continued and
present-day Serbia is not spared from an influx of technological
novelties spreading across the globe. In recent years, Dictionary
of Technology has re-emerged from politically imposed silence
and generated much public interest, especially among philoso-
phy scholars. The farsightedness of this document is inspiration-
al, and one hopes that young academics studying Dictionary of
Technology today may be able to conceptualize possible reme-
dies for the most toxic aspects of technology which seems to be
poised to become a global substitute for religion.

Keywords: Dictionary of Technology, computer languages, in-

ternet, DNA code, genetic engineering.

17
Introduction

“Language is a system of conventional spoken, manual, or writ-

ten symbols by means of which human beings, as members of a
social group and participants in its culture, express themselves.
The functions of language include communication, the expres-
sion of identity, play, imaginative expression, and emotional re-
lease.”1 Language and communication grew together and with
it (as many believe) our capacity for thinking. The statement
“cogito ergo sum” is therefore, at the very least, in utter deni-
al of the necessity for communication (and the impossibility of
selfhood in the absence of contact with another humans – some-
body other than “sum”) for development of cognition. It is not
only anthropology that suggests that language is the cornerstone
of humanity’s social cognition (Fitch 2010) – biology has estab-
lished connections between physical changes of the brain and its
architecture and verbal communication2.
Many scholars have noted the relationship between speaking and
creativity, particularly reflected in theological texts.3 In Hindu
tradition the whole cosmos originated from the sound Om. In
Genesis chapter 1, creation occurs by God’s act of speaking.
Verse John 1.1. of the New Testament says: “In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was
1
https://www.britannica.com/topic/language “Language” by Crystal D.
and Robins R. H.
2
Ocklenburg S, Friedrich P, Fraenz C, Schlüter C, Beste C, Güntürkün
O, Genç E. “Neurite architecture of the planum temporale predicts
neurophysiological processing of auditory speech.” Science Advances
4(7):eaar6830. 2018.
3
See for example: Woloschak G. “Becoming human: Weaving Together
Genetics and Personhood Reflections on Personhood,” in: Embracing
the Ivory Tower and Stained Glass Windows, a Festschrift in honor
of archbishop Antje Jackelen. (Springer, Switzerland: International
Publishing). pp. 191–199. 2016.

18
God.” The Church states that God is the Word (Logos) and that
all of creation is somehow an expression of God’s being. The
Trinitarian God of Christianity is an expression of perfect com-
munication, an act of unity and uni-action. Moreover, the Church
insists that human personhood is only developed through inter-
action with others. In human verbal communication, however,
there is a gap between a word and its meaning and this distance
can be overcome by insight, just as the leap between a message
and its content (and portent) must be executed through discern-
ment. This gap is expressed by a quote ascribed to Mishima “In
my earliest years I realized life consisted of two contradictory el-
ements. One was words, which could change the world; the other
was the world itself, which had nothing to do with words.”4 The
abilities that allow us to overcome this gap and ponder words but
abstract concepts must be nurtured and honed; once developed
they give a rich base for self-respect, introspection, personal
growth and closeness to God.
In consequence, many efforts to subdue and control humanity be-
gin with suppression of insight through tampering with words and
their significance. When words are denuded of their fullness of
meaning, messages received are distorted in different ways. Used
in slogans, words can easily be stripped of their depth and become
tools for manipulation. While that may not always be the inten-
tion of slogan writers, mechanical repetition of any text will render
it less meaningful over time. The period of modernity, including
the two world wars, has seen the development of many different
types of propaganda that relied on jingles of different forms. Art of
that period has in many cases supported government agendas and
“…accentuated the benefits of rationality and socio-technological

4
Mishima Y. Quote from the movie “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters”
(co-written and directed by Paul Schrader). 1985.

19
progress …”.5 In former Yugoslavia in 1970’s to 1980’s political
mottos were focused on perpetual progress and mastery of history
if not even nature itself. Dissatisfaction with this situation was no-
table, especially among university students.
Dictionary of Technology was conceived and created as a protest
against the unqualified belief that the growth of technology auto-
matically equates positive societal progress; it was published by
conceptually anonymous contributors to Belgrade University’s
journal “Vidici” (Horizons).6 This work included over 160 cal-
ligraphically hand-written and illuminated records and it was pub-
lished in 1981, a year after the death of president Tito who ruled
Yugoslavia from WWII to his death. Political nomenclature was
especially uneasy in the period following his death and conse-
quently vocal against any sign of unusual activity. Dictionary of
Technology received a staunch rebuttal from young and established
communist party members some six months after its publication
(Knežević 2015) followed by many years of enforced silence.
While all of this would already suffice to make Dictionary of Tech-
nology noteworthy, its main value is in the way in which it recog-
nized the problem of “technologizing” of words and the world and
predicted consequential social changes we are experiencing today.

Technological backdrop of the 1970-80’s: computer languages

(where writing is coding)

Two very significant technological revolutions were simultaneous-

ly occurring at the watershed between modernism and post-mod-
5
Wagner, H-P. A History of British, Irish, and American Literature.
Wissenschaftlicher Verlag. 2003.
6
Petrović, A. “About Dictionary of Technology and Reduction of Illusions”.
Theoria 3, 58: 147–166. 2015; Petrović, A.; Stevanović, A. “Theology in
the mirror”. Proceedings of the SOW conference 2017 Modern Science and
the Orthodox Tradition. An Uneasy Relationship? 2017.

20
ernism – one was the advent of universal access to “personal”
home computers, followed soon afterwards by the rise of the world
wide web and internet; the other was the meteoric rise of biotech-
nology, aided by development of bioinformatics and approaches
for data digitizing and storage. While one may argue that many
other technological developments occurred at the same time, these
two had the greatest impact on changes of everyday language and
ushered the present period of perceived “need” for exaggerated
language simplicity and information transparency.
“Languages are used by human beings to communicate with oth-
er human beings. Derivatively, bits of languages may be used
by humans to control machinery, as when different buttons and
switches are marked with words or phrases designating their func-
tions. A specialized development of human-machine language is
seen in computer programming languages, which provide the
means whereby sets of instructions and data of various kinds are
supplied to computers in forms acceptable to these machines.
Various types of such languages are employed for different pur-
poses.”7 In mid-1960’s a computer language called Beginner’s
All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code (BASIC) was developed
by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth Col-
lege.8 This was one of the simplest high-level languages, with
commands rather similar to English language. In consequence,
computer programming (coding) in BASIC could be learned eas-
ily and quickly by almost anyone. In the 1980’s this made BA-
SIC the computer language of choice for use on personal com-
puters. At the same time – similarities between BASIC and other

7
https://www.britannica.com/topic/language/Language-variants#ref
93818 “Language” by Crystal D. and Robins, R.H.
8
https://www.britannica.com/technology/BASIC
“BASIC COMPUTER LANGUAGE” by The Editors of Encyclopae-
dia Britannica.

21
high-level computer languages and English lead to an interesting
reverse reaction – general users and code writers developed a
sense of two-way communication with their personal comput-
ers. In the end – it does take only two to communicate and the
command line enquiries are and look like questions. However –
while in human communication a single word rarely has a single
meaning – that is not so in high-end computer languages. To be
able to execute a command the machine must translate (compile)
it first into assembly language, and then further convert it to the
machine code that will feed the processor similarly to the punch
cards that were used in the era predating magnetic tape files.
New programmers quickly realized the importance of expressing
themselves precisely; correct execution of a code requires that
each word – command has only one specific meaning and the
system was rigid with regard to text and spacing. Once the idea
of a single meaning has been breached, however, analogous En-
glish words lost some of their additional meanings.
With the development of computer languages based on English and
the growth of the world-wide-web, the English language became
a truly universal lingua franca with a unique flavor. This, in turn,
facilitated other world-wide processes such as globalization. The
fact that English of high-end computer languages is simpler than
the real language has gradually slipped from everybody’s minds.
Eventually, in efforts to “increase global communication” through
programming and internet, we have depleted words of their content
even without development of slogans. This phase of the English
language crisis was not the end – the internet is now the home of an
ever-increasing din not only of “new-speak” but also (were George
Orwell still alive – he would have been surprised) “new-concept”.
Oversimplified and too short expressions meant to portray wide
notions are crowding the world-wide-web and creeping into every-
day usage. For example, the geometric-architectural notion that a

22
three-legged chair is more likely to be stable than a four-legged one
lent itself to anything from money-saving advice to management
style where employees are requested to use exactly three words to
express their plans for the future or job satisfaction. This degrada-
tion of abstract concepts is especially dangerous because it can lead
to an undermining of abstract thought. It is also not surprising to
note that this is happening today, in the postmodern era.
In postmodernism, the importance of (explaining) a concept over
its material form of expression has reached new prominence
through development of conceptualism. Enthralled by densely
packed messages, conceptual artists and architects readily sac-
rifice the idea of beauty itself, as one can see in the sculpture
“Fountain” by Marcel Duchamp, presented in 1917 and consid-
ered to be the first example of conceptual art.9 While we now
live in an era of mixed postmodernism and post-postmodernism,
post-conceptualism in the arts has been mentioned already since
the 1980’s. More important than any of these formal develop-
ments are is the fact that the messages of art are less and less
comprehensible to the general public. One can see how, for ex-
ample, a post-postmodern artist such as Cindy Sherman10 creates
self-portraits rich in meaning, but to the audiences of today such
meaning is becoming less and less transparent. The point of a
self-portrait is thinned to nothingness in the blizzard of thought-
less “selfies” that anyone with a camera-equipped cellphone can
take and share with the world through “social media”.
Computer and internet developers are inching closer and closer
to obliterating wider concepts degrading them into meaningless

9
Hensher, P. “The loo that shook the world: Duchamp, Man Ray, Pica-
bi”. London: The Independent (Extra, 02–20): 2–5. 2008.
10
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/arts/design/moma-to-showcase-
cindy-shermans-new-and-old-characters.html “Cindy Sherman unmasked”
by Carol Vogel, New York Times, 02.16.2012.

23
catch-phrases. The word “clouds” used to be associated not only
with the weather but with religious paintings where they served as a
backdrop for scenes of apotheosis. Even in the Gospel one can find
numerous references to “the Son of Man coming on the clouds of
heaven.”11 Today, when one mentions “the cloud” it is assumed that
the discussion is about wireless data storage. The vastness of “the
cloud’s” capacity to hold our memos and picture memories is meant
to be awe-inspiring and make us feel that our digital selfhoods are
comfortably safe and cared for. In short – “the cloud” provides
some of the benefits of religion without the uncomfortable concept
of deity that might be exacting something substantial in return. And
so, without the necessity to deal in “substantial commodities” our
existence itself becomes less substantive as well. This development
was predicted by Dictionary of Technology which stated that tech-
nology is theology in the mirror; striving to replace it.12

Technological backdrop of the 1970–80’s: biotechnology (where

code is “language”)

Just as computer languages began in 1950’s and 60’s but did not
reach prominence until 1980’s, the structure of the deoxyribo-
nucleic acid (DNA) was understood13 much before its code was
uncovered14. Finding that the same genetic code is the basis
11
See for example Matthew 24:30, Matthew 24: 64, Mark 13; 26, the
New Testament.
12
Petrović, A.; Stevanović, A. “Theology in the mirror”. Proceedings of
the SOW conference 2017 Modern Science and the Orthodox Tradition.
An Uneasy Relationship? 2017.
13
https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/SC/Views/Exhibit/narrative/doublehelix.
html “The Francis Crick Papers; The Discovery of the Double Helix,
1951–1953” U.S. National Library of Medicine.
14
https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/retrieve/Narrative/SC/p-nid/144
“The Francis Crick Papers; T Deciphering the Genetic Code, 1958-1966”
U.S. National Library of Medicine.

24
for development of all living forms revolutionized understand-
ing of life on Earth as one. “Anything found to be true of E.
coli must also be true of elephants” was the famous Jacques
Monod’s pronouncement on the unity in biochemistry and biol-
ogy.15 The fact that the genetic code is based on combinations
of only four deoxyribonucleotide bases was initially astounding
to all who pondered the question of genetic heredity. This ap-
parent simplicity led to many overly simplistic ideas about the
nature of biological processes in living beings. Almost imme-
diately, a new branch of technology was generated: biotechnol-
ogy with its ultimate self-appointed task of reinventing life, in
yet another example of technology aspiring to a divine status.
This development falls under the title of synthetic biology, a
discipline that defines a “living” artificial cell as a product that
contains macromolecules and can capture energy, maintain ion
gradients, store information and have the ability to mutate.16
The only way to achieve such a cell at this moment is to remove
genetic content from an existing “natural” cell and replace it
with a completely synthetic genome that allows it to replicate.17
Much more used at present are the techniques of genetic engi-
neering in biotechnology as well as non-genetic uses of DNA in
materials science (e.g.18).
Interestingly, in biology it gradually became obvious that the exe-
cution of genetic commands is far more complex than initially an-

15
Friedmann, H. C. “From ‘Butyribacterium’ to ‘E. coli’: An Essay
on Unity”. Biochemistry Perspectives in Biology and Medicine. 47(1):
47–66. 2004.
16
Deamer, D. “A giant step towards artificial life?”. Trends in
Biotechnology. 23 (7): 336–8. 2005.
17
Gibson, D. G. et al. “Creation of a Bacterial Cell Controlled by a
Chemically Synthesized Genome”. Science. 329 (5987): 52–56. 2010.
18
Kopperger et al. “A self-assembled nanoscale robotic arm controlled
by electric fields.” Science. 359: 296–301. 2018.

25
ticipated. I will use an example from my own research history to
illustrate this point. In Figure 1 we see a short excerpt of the DNA
sequence of rat beta hemoglobin genes that code for production of
protein that is responsible for transport of oxygen and carbon diox-
ide by red blood cells of the body. Based on the universal DNA code
beginning amino acids of globin protein that can be synthesized
based on information provided by genes b, y and s will code: AT-
G(Methionine), GTG(Valine), CAC(Histidine), CTG or CTA (both
Leucine), ACT(Threonine), GAT(Asparagine), GCT(Alanine), etc.
Remaining two genes in this list – x and w are truncated and in con-
sequence cannot be used for synthesis of functional globin proteins.

Figure 1. A short excerpt from a comparison of five rat beta globin genes19.
Genes b and s code for functional major and minor versions of the protein,
other three genes: x, y and w code duplicated and, in case of x and w genes,
inactivated genes.

While this protein sequence is correct and necessary for func-

tional breathing, its presence in any other cell of the body except
the red blood cells would be detrimental for the organism. Con-
trol of gene expression (protein production) by any gene is coded

19
Paunesku T, Stevanović M, Radosavljević D, Drmanac R, Crkven-
jakov R. “Origin of rat beta-globin haplotypes containing three and five
genes.” Molecular Biology and Evolution 7(5):407–22. 1990.

26
in ways that are far more complicated than the sequence of amino
acids that comprise a protein. The short sequence CTTCTG in-
dicated in the image is responsible for short range regulation of
these genes (that is to say – their activity specifically in red blood
cells); much more expansive DNA sequences and other biolog-
ical features that constitute “epigenetic control” ensure that this
protein is not made in our skin cells or lens of the eye.

Biotechnology today: similar over-simplifying, reductive effort

in language and biology

Despite the overwhelming biological complexity of living organ-

isms, efforts to simplify the situation are still prevalent in this field.
Most research funding agencies demand as a matter of course that
the research plans of projects requesting funding demonstrate that
they are “hypothesis driven”, even though the only way to study
a single chain of biological dependencies is to isolate them by
means that are highly artificial and the experiments conducted in
such a way do not represent the native state of cells accurately.
Because such synthetic experiments and “model organisms” they
use are highly dependent on the development of new technolo-
gies, technology has become increasingly important in biological
research. At the same time, bioinformatics – technology connect-
ing computation and biology, is pushing research in yet another
direction – the era of information accumulation has been initiat-
ed with the underlying idea that information alone is enough for
development of further studies even in the absence of new ex-
perimentation. Dictionary of Technology segregated methods and
practices of science and technology and suggested that they are
separated by a great gulf. Today, in science, technology has be-
come so important that these boundaries are gradually becoming
obscured, once again, as predicted by Dictionary of Technology.

27
While all of the concerns mentioned so far are important when
one ponders technology and biology, it is even more important
to realize that ethical and genetic pitfalls are ahead – with new
developments in biotechnology we may soon become capable
of designing “flawless” humans, to eradicate “flawed” genes
from the human population; in short – to change who we are and
who we are becoming artificially rather than allow evolution and
God to change humans as a living species. Again, the promise of
technological advancements pulls us away from what may be the
most important tool for our personal growth – responsibility, to
ourselves, to humanity and the rest of the living world.

Dictionary of Technology from its inception until today

“The word dictionary comes from the Latin dictio, “the act of
speaking,” and dictionarius, “a collection of words”… Basi-
cally, a dictionary lists a set of words with information about
them.”20 In its effort to oppose itself to the spirit of the 1980’s
still governed by modernism and a belief in technology driving
us to a bright future, Dictionary of Technology can be seen as
a work of conceptualism. The document was hand-drawn and
illuminated unlike any regular publication of the journal Vidici.
The ornate appearance of the text, with its yellowish paper and
red and black script and drawings recalled parchments written in
monastery cells. Similarly, again, to Serbian monastic practice,
the document was anonymous. These aesthetic and practical
choices were still tempered by the needs of the time – the ma-
jority of the text had to be written in Latin alphabet or otherwise
the publication would have not been allowed to be affiliated with
Vidici. To remedy this, the beginning of the entire text was still
20
https://www.britannica.com/topic/dictionary “Dictionary (Alterna-
tive Title: lexicon)” by Read, A. W.

28
done in the Cyrillic alphabet and each entry included a short
Greek expression as well. In consequence, while the appearance
of the work has become less likely to be confused with an old
manuscript, the critical ingredient for this process became clear
–the entire document was made by hand. In this manner, Dic-
tionary of Technology not only praises the hand in the suitable
dictionary entry, but uses it for its own production, closing the
circle of meaning by its own manifestation. This notion – that
the manual work of the human hand needs to be preserved and
upheld is inherently anti-technological and even more impor-
tantly – emancipates the human body such as it is with its inev-
itable imperfections.
Each one of the entries in Dictionary of Technology uses argu-
ments that are convoluted and arcane, providing explanations
and presumed synonyms that have never been associated with
the terms before this time. For example, the entry “Vavilon” (Ba-
bel) seems at the first glance to have little to do with technology
in the usual manner of consideration. It is only if we consider its
conceptual meaning that we see that this entry could not have
been avoided. Babel was supposed to be an architectural won-
der and allow people to reach God’s realm. In this way, Babel
is a perfect analogy for technology as discussed above. In addi-
tion, Babel is defined as critical proliferation and metastasis – so,
while the Old Testament story says that growth of Babel was
unbridled, Dictionary of Technology warns us that we may perish
from it. Synonyms listed for this term include words “institu-
tion” and “beast”, equating Babel as an expression of technology,
with institution of state (probably resembling the “panopticon”
(Foucault 1985: 208)), as well as the devil himself. It is also of
note that the Biblical story of Babel was one of “confusing the
languages” and thus is a reference to the use of words for the first
time, albeit not in order to clarify but to confuse.

29
About six months after its publication, Dictionary of Technology
was subjected to attacks from young communist party members,
supported by official political and media instructions, hoping to
become part of the nomenclature. A 30-year long period of al-
most complete oblivion followed with no mention of Dictionary
of Technology in any of the listings of work of art (subversive
or otherwise) or lexicons (Knežević 2015). While dissolution
of Yugoslavia was in progress (also predicted by Dictionary of
Technology) (Ibid) the remainder of the world registered the rise
of postmodernism and the emergence of post-postmodernism.
It should be noted that postmodernism often refers to things with-
out the need to fully understand them – reflection itself is generally
sufficient. In post-postmodernism even the understanding itself is
less important – it is replaced by mechanical slicing of the subject
matter into its component parts. In combination with the data tech-
nology explosion, such an approach is plausible and possibly even
profitable. Without the intention to understand through insight our
only hope for knowledge of reality is to dissolve it into a data map.
In order to feed artificial intelligence, we are macerating reality
into data, regimented and simplified. As we do so, we forget about
the components of reality that are irreducible. In return, we receive
virtual reality and computationally engineered objects. The knowl-
edge of DNA code enabled genetic engineering, while 3D printing
is material outcome of coding and robotics.
In one of his poems Pier Paolo Pasolini says “my religion was
but a fragrance.”21 That statement clearly cannot be reduced into a
single datapoint without tremendous loss of information. We must
remember that smells grow into our likes and dislikes, our moods;
that specific fragrances help us to recall memories in high relief.

21
Pasolini, P. P. The Selected Poetry of Pier Paolo Pasolini. A Bilingual
Edition. Stephen Sartarelli, ed. and trans. Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press. 2014.

30
We may also know that nerve cells of the olfactory system are the
most complicated sensory array, or, we may guess that air in the
churches this poet visited was probably saturated by incense. It
is the nature of poetry that some or all of these messages may be
considered by the one who reads it. It is this richness of possibili-
ties for comprehension that makes poetry be different than simple
information. In an even more extreme example of irreducibility of
message poet James Wright says “If I were a blue spider, I would
certainly ride on a train all the way from Avallon to Paris, and I
would set up my house on the nose of a chocolate penguin. It’s
just a matter of common sense.”22 Conceptual art manifestations
such as the performance by Marina Abramović and her collabo-
rator Ulay “Rest energy”23 make the reduction into a statement or
a single word utterly impossible, at least at the present moment.
While one may hope that art will continue to resist reductionism,
the plethora of cloying kitsch peppering the internet (from sneez-
ing kitchens to “trucker Jesus” paintings) makes a significant im-
pediment to the development of a true taste for arts. Moreover,
the simultaneous push for “inclusivity” makes it nearly immoral to
insist on differentiating between kitsch and art. Thinkers such as
Peter Abbs24 warn that increasingly contemporary “…art [emerg-
es from, and appeals to] the ironic postmodernist sensibility and
mass media-led culture, while being devoid of philosophical sig-
nificance” and suggests that a possible way for dealing with this
crisis would be to introduce creative and ethical dimensions into
education curriculum.

22
Wright, J. “Against surrealism” Poetry. November 1981.
23
http://www.phaidon.com/agenda/art/picture-galleries/2010
march/22/documenting-the-performance-art-of-marina-abramovi-
in-pictures/ “Documenting the performance art of Marina
Abramović in pictures”. Phaidon.
24
Abbs, P. Against the Flow: Education, the Art and Postmodern Cul-
ture. Routledge. 2003.

31
Today – the functions of language are becoming reduced almost
exclusively to “transparency”. In architecture too; “total transpar-
ency [is] its ideology” says Koolhaas before he continues to talk
about language: “Language is no longer used to explore, define,
express, or to confront but to fudge, blur, obfuscate, apologize,
and comfort… it stakes claims, assigns victimhood, preempts de-
bate, admits guilt, fosters consensus. Entire organizations and/
or professions impose a descent into the linguistic equivalent of
hell: condemned to a word-limbo, inmates wrestle with words
in ever-descending spirals of pleading, lying, bargaining, flatten-
ing…a Satanic orchestration of the meaningless… ”25.
Transparency is demanded and hoped for in all spheres of interac-
tions, while we drift further and further from the true knowledge
about the world that surrounds us. We probe the reality surround-
ing us by mechanical devices rather than our biological senses;
by expecting more accuracy from machines and increasingly dis-
believing ourselves we are relinquishing agency over our bodies
and our lives to technology. One hopes that Dictionary of Tech-
nology may inspire us with a will to resist this self-abnegation
and that new scholars may arise who will try to emancipate us
as imperfect but wise in a world that is allowed to be what it is.

25
Koolhaas, R. “Junkspace”. October 100:175–190. 2002.

32
References

Abbs, P. (2003). Against the Flow: Education, the Art and

Postmodern Culture. Routledge.
Britannica, (2016). “BASIC.” Retrieved October 28, 2018, from
https://www.britannica.com/technology/BASIC.
Deamer, D. (2005). “A giant step towards artificial life?” Trends
Biotechnology 23(7): 336–338.
Fitch, W. T., L. Huber and T. Bugnyar (2010). “Social cognition
and the evolution of language: constructing cognitive
phylogenies.” Neuron 65(6): 795–814.
Foucault, M. (1985). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the
Prison. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Friedmann, H. C. (2004). “From ‘butyribacterium’ to ‘E. coli’:
an essay on unity in biochemistry.” Perspectives Biology
and Medicine 47(1): 47–66.
Gibson, D. G., J. I. Glass, C. Lartigue, V. N. Noskov, R. Y.
Chuang, M. A. Algire, G. A. Benders, M. G. Montague,
L. Ma, M. M. Moodie, C. Merryman, S. Vashee, R.
Krishnakumar, N. Assad-Garcia, C. Andrews-Pfannkoch,
E. A. Denisova, L. Young, Z. Q. Qi, T. H. Segall-Shapiro,
C. H. Calvey, P. P. Parmar, C. A. Hutchison, 3rd, H. O.
Smith and J. C. Venter (2010). “Creation of a bacterial
cell controlled by a chemically synthesized genome.”
Science 329(5987): 52–56.
Hensher, P. (2008). “The loo that shook the world: Duchamp,
Man Ray, Picabi.” The Independent. London. Extra,
02–20: 2–5.
Knežević 2015: Knežević, Miloš. Clarifia for the Techno-
Conspiracy. Cognitive Mindedness of Dictionary of
Technology. Belgrade: Philosophy and Society 26(1):
115–138.
Koolhaas, R. (2002). Junkspace. October: 175–190.
Kopperger, E., J. List, S. Madhira, F. Rothfischer, D. C. Lamb
and F. C. Simmel (2018). “A self-assembled nanoscale

33
 robotic arm controlled by electric fields.” Science
359(6373): 296–301.
U.S. National Library of Medicine “The Francis Crick Papers; T
Deciphering the Genetic Code, 1958–1966.”
U.S. National Library of Medicine “The Francis Crick Papers;
The Discovery of the Double Helix, 1951-1953.” from
https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/SC/Views/Exhibit/narrative/
doublehelix.html.
Phaidon. “Documenting the performance art of Marina Abramov-
ić in pictures.”http://www.phaidon.com/agenda/art/pic-
ture-galleries/2010/march/22/documenting-the-perfor-
mance-art-of-marina-abramovi-in-pictures/
Pasolini, P. P. (2014). The Selected Poetry of Pier Paolo
Pasolini. A Bilingual Edition. Chicago, The University
of Chicago Press.
Paunesku, T., M. Stevanović, D. Radosavljević, R. Drmanac
and R. Crkvenjakov (1990). “Origin of rat beta-
globin haplotypes containing three and five genes.”
Mol Biol Evol 7(5): 407–422.
Petrović, A. (2015). “About Dictionary of Technology and
Reduction of Illusions.” Theoria 3(58): 147–166.
Petrović, A.; Stevanović, A. (2017). “Theology in the mirror.”
Proceedings of the SOW conference 2017 Modern Science
and the Orthodox Tradition. An Uneasy Relationship?
Read, A. W. (2016). “Dictionary (Alternative Title: lexicon).”
Retrieved October 28, 2018, from https://www.
britannica.com/topic/dictionary.
Robins, R. H. and D. Crystal. “Language.” January 05, 2018.
Retrieved October 28, 2018.
Schrader, P. (1985). Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters.
Vogel, C. (2012). “Cindy Sherman unmasked”. New York Times.
Wagner, H. P. (2003). A History of British, Irish, and American
Literature, Wissenschaftlicher Verlag.

34
Woloschak, G. (2016). “Becoming human: Weaving Together
Genetics and Personhood Reflections on Personhood.”
Embracing the Ivory Tower and Stained Glass Windows,
a Festschrift in honor of archbishop Antje Jackelen,
Springer, Switzerland: International Publishing: 191–199.
Wright, J. (1981). “Against surrealism”. Poetry, November 1981.

35
 MIDDLE AGES AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Aleksandar Petrović
University of Belgrade

The paper considers the crisis of spirit of time at the onset of eighties
when the depersonalization of the state and selfhood began. The
aim is to perceive the place of Dictionary of Technology that was
proscribed at the moment when the computer was selected as
“Man of the Year”. The value of this script is being observed
in the comparative analysis of the medieval and modern culture
so that vital theological implications of artificial intelligence
are comprehended. The conclusion is that technology is no more
than fallen theology.

Keywords: Dictionary of Technology, Middle Ages, ego cogito,

modernity, artificial intelligence.

Dictionary of Technology appeared in the determinative moment

of 1981. Then the personal union of President Tito and the state
of Yugoslavia broke up and suddenly, in the world which for half
a century was certain where it was going and full of confidence in
the better future, there was the foreshadowing of emptiness and
uncertainty. In 1980, the solemn funeral of “Faust of All Fausts”,
as Tito called himself, was the greatest gathering ever held outside
a forum by the statesmen of the East and West.1 It was necessary
to see what to do next without President Tito, who represented the
certainty of postwar world that had emerged from war victories.
That world began to tear down as technology for the first time
penetrated to the core of life. The whole civilization came to

1
In that year when United Nations had 154 member states at Tito’s
funeral the highest representatives from 127 countries were present.

37
a crossroad because in 1982, when the ideological attacks on
Dictionary began, the American magazine The Time selected a
personal computer as “Man of the Year”. It was the first such
act in history since no previous technology was identified with
man. People were delighted by new inventions but nobody said
that steam engine was Man. It was not important if the man
aspired to become the computer or vice versa, but the fact that
the removal of frontiers started. That identification was ampli-
fied strongly by new biotechnology that entered the historical
stage around the same year offering prospects of Man’s genes
editing. “It is hard to recall the atmosphere of exhilaration in
the 1980s as new technique enabled genes to be cloned and the
sequence of ‘letters’ in the ‘genetic code’ to be discovered. This
seemed like biology’s crowning moment: the instructions of
life itself were finally laid bare, opening up the possibility for
biologists to modify plants and animals genetically, and grow
richer than they could ever have imagined. There was a contin-
uous stream of new discoveries; almost every week newspaper
headlines reported some new ‘breakthrough’: ‘Scientists find
genes to combat cancer’, ‘Gene therapy offers hope to vic-
tims of arthritis’, ‘Scientists find secret of ageing’, and so on.”
(Sheldrake, 2009).
At the same time, the quality of the products of the creative
industry was reduced: the imagination of the spirit of time took
on a pronounced consumer character. New global media were
emerging (CNN was founded in 1980) while the old ones were
stranded on the shore of commercialization. It was not about
unrelated facts, but a united mainstream celebrating technology
as a road to future with no alternatives. That may be concluded
by the consequences that took hold around the eighties of the
last century.

38
The Table shows an abrupt and fast increase in carbon dioxide
emissions in the atmosphere due to the avalanche of technology.
In front of technology and its “development”, all the sluices have
been opened so that it is like a flood poured out all over the world
without concern about the consequences. If perhaps anthropo-
logical problems are difficult to perceive, the very increased lev-
el of carbon dioxide is certain, and the causes are well known.
The world, reduced to technology, increasingly becomes a mere
means without any ethical, social, or natural purpose in itself.
The question was whether the man started to lose breath in the
run with technology that pushed him away from the cover pages.
It was obviously a time of the great shift when the man symbol-
ically, having done nothing to his defense, descended from the
throne of history where he had lifted himself to be the true ruler
of this world. The turnover was so sudden and so amply that
there were enough reasons to have a dictionary of technology at
that moment. That moment actually cried out for one humanistic
and mindful critical dictionary that could reconsider conceptual
legacy which we entered the new era with.

39
Basically, the problem started with the autonomous thinking en-
tity, ego cogito, which Descartes set up in the 17th century as a
certainty of existence. Up to now it is a substratum of the modern
world view. The only certainty comes under the one that thinks.
In another words, the one that thinks is the one that rules the
world. But who thinks at present? Did ego cogito cease to be the
man and became a computer?
The problem is so deep-rooted that it could not be solved from
the point of view of modernity since from 1982 we have problem
with ego cogito that is our basic mental instrument for problem
solving. The answer to such a profound and comprehensive cri-
sis, both ideological and technological, could have been solely
theological. When this world is fundamentally shaken, the answer
may be sought only in the other world. But since as early as the
17th century, ruled by the “I” that thinks, dogmatic theology could
not provide an unmediated answer. As always, it offered eternity,
but it had to be decided what to do with time. That is why a dic-
tionary of new words arranged in an impossible undertaking of
epistemological re-examination of technology from the point of
view of theology was needed. That was a rough, but not incorrect-
ly expressed, basic mission of Dictionary of Technology.
With such a starting point, in 162 terms Dictionary accumulated
ideology, technology, and theology into a strange spectrum of
thoughtful radiation that was trying to come into a close relation-
ship with the spirit of time. There is no doubt that technology has
put the enterprise of modernity on its shoulders. At the beginning
of the 1980s, it seemed to have been nearly fulfilled and that all
parts of social life, including religion, would be fully modern-
ized. But, in those years, within an inch of the goal, modernity
broke into postmodernism, into fragmented pieces with no con-
nection, empty contexts where without truth anything is being
negotiated. Tito’s death and the birth of the personal computer

40
very well marked the beginning of the rise of postmodernism
when they started to abandon all previous expectations and to
raise new questions. Dictionary therefore assumed the postmod-
ern form, rejected the ego-subject on which modernity rested and
appeared as a script unsigned by the authors. Too big provoca-
tion was it to stay unnoticed. Hence it immediately attracted the
attention of the significant philosophical journal “Theoria” that
dedicated its entire thematic section to it. Its redaction was com-
prised mostly of university professors who saw that Dictionary
considered technology, but had theology in mind. And that it may
be the key to the time that would come.
In the editorial introduction of “Theoria” it is implied “this lav-
ish and twisted dictionary is a first-class event… by its resolution
and uncompromisingness of its clash with the common places
of our epochal and spiritual context, by the fervor with which it
assumes the risk of self-determination, the choice of its credo,
its own faith” (Theoria 1981: 151). Slobodan Žunjić, professor
of Ancient Greek philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy in
Belgrade, in the text Revelation and Authority further explains
it: “Dictionary of Technology is an exceptional phenomenon for
it formally and meaningfully sets in the diverse media and spir-
itual spheres. In the broadest sense, this is certainly, and per-
haps primarily a literary creation; however, it is also an artistic
(aesthetic) event, a practical act and a theoretically motivated
work. The real status of Dictionary is not easy to determine,
for it spans across the usual limitations of our standard spiritual
semantics, moreover, it mingles them and blends (confuses, if
that pleases our self-confidence)... Due to its elusive status, the
abolition of every transeunt base, because of its suppression and
disturbance of disciplinary divisions, due to the abandonment
of reasoning and denial, for its collective “I”, Dictionary does
not communicate easily; moreover, it impedes usual commu-

41
nication, seeks and finds nuisances and misunderstandings. At
least in our context this is an unprecedented attempt, and there-
fore, if not for something else, interesting. Only interesting? It
is hard to say how (worth) relevant it is. For that, a common
measure is needed, any measure for the mutually immeasurable
dimensions of Dictionary’s discourse... ’What is the content of
that prophetic revelation’ – the exegetical question that replaces
the inappropriate: ’what did the authors of Dictionary wanted to
express (through Dictionary)?’ – may be asked only when we
accept and recognize Dictionary as a revelation. Once we see
it, we fall into temptation to become cynical ourselves; without
the sense for the expression of revelation, and without compre-
hending its text, we refuse to dispute it, we deny it the neces-
sary credit and leave it to the wiggle-waggle of a mouse. And
vice versa: denying it its content, even the prophetic authority,
we indirectly acquire it: no one unrejected becomes a prophet”
(Žunjić 1981: 153).
It is very interesting that the philosophical journal immediately
determined the theological reading of Dictionary of Technology.
It did not regard it as a theory of technology, but as theology.
At the moment when the computer became the man of the year,
there is no doubt that such reading was not only necessary but
perhaps even extorted. The journal “Theoria” noticed that Dic-
tionary with its cognitive spectrum illuminates one possible rel-
atively solid point at a time of totally agitated social and histori-
cal flows. On the other hand, the denial suggested by “Theoria”,
which began at the onset of 1982 by the aggressive ideological
reading and numerous very sharp attacks in the media, de facto
attained authority to Dictionary. It was also confirmed by the
several decades punishment of damnatio memoriae, an old Ro-
man law institute that deprives those who have violated the Ro-
man state, the common beliefs on which it rests, from the right to

42
remembrance; their names are deleted from all records, whether
on paper or on a stone. After a direct proscription on Dictionary,
there was indirect silence about it.
What caused such a theoretical constraint and public upset that Dic-
tionary of Technology was condemned to this most severe punish-
ment of expulsion from history? First is that it is written in the en-
crypted language which the modernized public space, relying pri-
marily on clara et distincta rationality of the 17th century, does not
accept for it feels some discomfort since it established its legitima-
cy on the rejection of the “dark” symbolic language of the ancient
cognitive paradigm. Trying to penetrate into this in the middle of
the attack on Dictionary, the daily newspaper “Borba” (“Struggle”)
observed that “the most important in this system of ideas is the very
pronounced metaphoricity, the discourse of the codes, and the Ae-
sopian language. Key categories are the codes whose transferred
metaphorically-ideological meaning is understood only if the key is
detected and each term translated accordingly” (Radević 1982: 5).
Secondly, at the moment of enchantment with the technological
ease of writing offered by the computer, one script rejected it
and appeared entirely calligraphed, with miniatures painted in
the medieval manner. That way, not only visually but also con-
ceptually it abandoned the mainstream of modernity and coldly
observed all from the side. Indeed, Dictionary of Technology and
the personal computer as the man of the year could not go to-
gether. Thus began the battle of David, of Dictionary that was
written by the free hand and with limited circulation, and Go-
liath, the magazine printed in millions of copies. Such counter-
stand implies a clear disproportion in itself, but it is not without
sense because history assures us that the majority has never been
a better part of humanity. It is a question of the spirit of time for
the whole rhetoric of modernity rests on leaving and overcoming
medieval culture, while in Dictionary it suddenly arises and even

43
pretends to speak on technology that seems to be the greatest
attainment of modernity. That may open a different perspective
than one would expect from an anonymous, hand-written, coded
theoretical writing on technology.
Today, when the fervor around Dictionary largely settled and it
ultimately became a subject of the scientific research, one heu-
ristic question arises post festum. At first glance, it may seem an
“academic play”, but it is actually an attempt to review the unex-
pected decision of the anonymous writers of Dictionary to rethink
the issue of technology in medieval Orthodox iconography. That
question is how a man from the Middle Ages would look at tech-
nology as we know it today, as the ruling system of the production
of life and world. This is not such a hypothetical situation as each
of us can think medievally should there be no complex of mod-
ernism and provided we do not perceive the course of time as a
mechanical conveyor belt like Hegel or Marx. This medieval man
is not actual, but is quite possible as a state of consciousness.
Let us assume that this man would be sufficiently self-possessed
not to be flagged by the manifestations – a car that is not stuck
in a crowd goes faster than a horse, a plane with wings look-
ing like the angel’s expanded hands but throwing out devastat-
ing bombs from its fuselage, moving images that resemble the
contour of dreams and prayer vision, but mostly like parakeets
repeat pointless calls to shopping, mobile communication tools
that are increasingly faster provided people have less important
and nice things to communicate with each other, nicely packed
tasteless food neatly sorted on supermarket shelves... Not blind-
ed by these, the man of the Middle Ages would have thought that
all this has to be with God’s permission, and all these technologi-
cal forms could not have denied the idea of God in him. Looking
at the impressive technology which people unconditionally fol-
low expecting to enjoy its gifts, he would still have to consider

44
technological world through the idea of God. Sooner or later he
would think about the meaning of all that.
It could be said that, once the first surprise subsides, our world
would in principle bewilder him for he would not be able to find
out where its center was. Technological world is polycentric, it
rolls like a global wave that is everywhere and nowhere. On the
other hand, the medieval man lives in a complete and unchange-
able world, in the heart of an eternal crystalline sphere in which
planets and celestial lights circle in unchanging paths, and are all
driven by God. He would have been astonished why so much en-
ergy and thought are spent on technology to propel the great world
mechanism when God’s providence with its power regulates and
completes all, from the smallest detail to the greatest events in
which the whole worlds are crushed and new ones are created.
Therefore, in the modern world, the medieval man would not
enjoy the fruits of technology so much because it would inevita-
bly push him more or less into the crisis of meaning. Rather, he
would turn to values so as to spiritually survive and assess where
he is and what he should do. He would not have been guided by
the achievements of technology, which would at the same time
please and scare him, but rather by criteria and values on the
basis of which he could determine where he actually was. He
would look for directives, such as the constellation of the Little
Bear and Polaris in cosmology are. But he would not find much,
for under the pressure of technology everything is accelerated
and the orientations themselves are blurred or rejected so as not
to stop the conquista of technology.
By the nature of medieval culture, he should wonder how close
technology is to God. Does technology work in God’s name
bringing the good to people or it has its own separate intention
that is hard to perceive? A modern answer he would get – that

45
there is no God, that everything is a self-initiated mechanism,
would probably surprise him, seem as a sort of whim, and would
perhaps cause worry because a vacuum might emerge before
him, the void that swallows everything. For him, God is tautolo-
gy – God is, only that which is not has no God. God, of course,
for the modern world, is not a Parmenidian tautology: what is
– is, what is not – is not, but it is one of the possibilities. The
misunderstanding may be in this, because he could not accurate-
ly understand the purpose of technology if it does not bring him
closer to God. The notion of God for him would be crucial to
maintain the world while the idea of making life easier as a rea-
son for technology could not sustain the world for it would not
have enough strength to deal with the drama of death.
It is naturally difficult for us to shift to determination of such
medieval way of thinking, but perhaps by analogy we may per-
ceive something. Let us imagine that suddenly the physicists in
CERN, while accelerating and spliting up subatomic particles,
had the notion of matter deleted from their consciousness, the
notion which was introduced into the dictionary of European
epistemology by Lucretius Karus in “On the Nature of Things”.
All the machines would be there, and still working, but it would
be as if somebody had cut the ground from under their feet.
Without this word, that is, the entire dictionary that comes out
of it, they would not know what they do at the moment and
why. Their work would be one possible behavior, it would not
be related to reality, but only to the possibility. Hence, technol-
ogy for the medieval man would be only an opportunity, but not
the reality.
Such observations that Dictionary of Technology stirs show that
its medieval expression is obviously chosen for a reason. It im-
plies that in reconsidering technology we should be aware of
the significance of values and their congenital meaning. That

46
is inextricably linked to the power of the words. Only words
have the power to run the machines. Without words, they stop.
The words are crucial in everything we do, their meaning de-
termines what we will do, or what to see and what to expect.
Without a new dictionary, it is not possible to imagine a new
time, for French Encyclopaedia precedes the French Revolu-
tion. The difficulty in this regard with Dictionary of Technology
is that, contrary to French Encyclopaedia, it does not advocate
a particular ideological program. Moreover, it essentially does
not belong to the modern thought, which is emphasized by the
programmatically chosen postmodern form of the dictionary
that regards technology as a possible narrative, not a value
absolute. Thus, oscillating between medieval and postmodern
culture, Dictionary of Technology becomes a point beyond the
mainstream, suggesting a critical reflection on the significance
of technology and everything it carries as a historical alluvium.
From such standpoint spring the principle, almost permanent
difficulties of the scientific classification of Dictionary – it is
not a classical lexicographic work, but rather it uses a postmod-
ern form of dictionary. As already noted in the journal “Theo-
ria”, in the entirety neither is it a philosophical, nor theological,
political, or scientific work. It is a hybrid form that moves along
the boundaries of all these disciplines in an effort to avoid disci-
plinary manners and maintain open horizons. The modern man,
like the medieval man, tried to make his own replica of the crys-
tal sphere and to put all he knows in it. But unlike the medieval,
modern sphere is eccentric, the center is not only lost but also in
principle undesirable because it restricts the dynamics of mod-
ernization that does not go without splitting the corel; therefore
it hinders the disagreements with philosophy and theology that
speak of the center, regardless of calling it logos or God, and are
not even possible without it. In other words, Dictionary aban-

47
doned disciplinary restrictions to restore the idea of an unbound-
ed core as a meeting point of the man and God. Only the man in
the center towards God may open the dialogue between theology
and technology.
In addition to this general, there is a particular theological rea-
son for the medieval expression of Dictionary. Serbian medieval
Orthodox religion is primarily that of Saint Sava. It originated
in the second half of the 12th century in the scripts and works
of Saint Sava, Prince Rastko of the Nemanjić dynasty. It is to
a lesser extent Byzantine, because it differs substantially from
it by its symphony of the state and church, as well as the fact
that it is based on a sort of rehabilitation of Platonism. Although
Byzantine Christianity rose on the state ban of Platonism, the
frescoes in Serbian churches among Orthodox saints include the
figures of Plato and Plutarch. (The Church of Our Lady of Ljeviš
erected in the 14th century by king Milutin). They had been pro-
scribed in Byzantium since the 6th century and it came back to
them when it was already late in the 15th century. Serbian medi-
eval kingdom faced with crusaders understood that the Mediter-
ranean culture of Platonism, and all that it implied, was a strong
dam against colonial conquests from the north. Unfortunately,
Byzantium had already critically, much more fundamentally
than the crusaders, destroyed this culture so it was very difficult
to start restoring it. In fact, the attitude of the Crusade culture
and Byzantium towards Plato did not differ at all. The defence
of Plato is therefore inextricably linked to the emergence of
Saint Savaism. Practically, had it not been for Saint Savaism in
the 12th century, there would not be much of Orthodoxy left due
to the Byzantine self-destructive cultural policy.
Having this in mind, Dictionary has a symphonic character be-
cause it connects what is at first glance unconnected, relates the
epochs, connects disciplines, and doing that it in a way sacrifices

48
itself for it remains unrecognizable. It offers itself as a volun-
tary victim of such a quest for the entities beyond simple expres-
sions. It remains in no-one’s land without a disciplinary identity,
striving to be a common denominator of separate areas that can
convey that what eludes ordinary narratives. For that, even phi-
losophy, its ideas and concepts are not enough, but it is necessary
to refer consciousness to dictionary and words, to the very beau-
ty of the words so that the aesthetics of unity may be felt. That
way, without consenting to division, Dictionary devised a con-
nection among theology, technology, and the words themselves.
That shattered mirror ought to have been repaired again so as to
see the image in it. This work caused a fervent political reaction
of authoritative forum readers who by their prohibition prevented
the words in Dictionary from reaching those who could use them.
However, if on the right track, everything works by its own pow-
er. That happened in the case of Dictionary of Technology.
Perhaps the deepest reason for abandoning disciplinary divisions
in Dictionary lies in a different, non-dogmatic understanding of
the mission of theology. When theologies are divorced from their
philosophical and art moorings, they often reach their lowest com-
mon denominator. Dictionary did not want to be a mere spectator
that describes how technology becomes superior to theology be-
cause the latter lost contact with philosophical issues, symbolized
by the closure of Plato’s Academy in 529 and the subsequent per-
secution of Plato. Dictionary in fact tries to understand technolo-
gy in a deeper historical perspective. In it, there comes to a kind of
short circuit of premodernity and modernity. This is important if
we remember that modernity was established and legitimized just
by justifying its sharp separation from premodernity. This sepa-
ration, which is usually interpreted in the notion of progress, is
a condition for the rule of modernity. But for Dictionary it is no
longer obligatory as it is not for the whole postmodernity which

49
considers that modernity thenceforth has the breath to deal with
the tasks it set itself for itself. But, unlike the postmodern which
continues to grab forward, Dictionary brings the rejected premod-
ern into the game for it considers that when the master mind of
modernity is not so strong and enforced, premodern shows con-
tent that may balance the inexorable and exhausting demands that
modernity in the form of technology puts before society.
What constantly drags the wheel of modernity to such an
extent that it provokes extreme anthropological and ethical
strains is punctum saliens of modernity, ego cogito – the great
“I” that thinks so as to derive the certainty of its existence. In
Plato and Platonic culture that “I” does not exist; it is not nec-
essary because the ideas get into the phenomenal reality even
without it. On the contrary, modern “I” must constantly think
so as to keep its difference to what is not, and thus prevent the
world from ending in non-existence. In Descartes, it tears cos-
mic and human order by the covetousness of its unconditional
rule over the object. Everyone should bow before the “I” that
thinks because only through it the way leads from non-exis-
tence to existence.
However, when the stances of premodern and postmodern meet,
“I” that thinks is not that necessary. In both pre-postmodern and
post-modern thinking, it can also take place without the ontolo-
gy of the thinking self. In Parmenides or Aristotle thinking may
think itself, just as in Dictionary of Technology concepts connect
through a circular, analogous connection of synonyms that circu-
late through Dictionary melting their meanings into one, and no
additional “I” that thinks is needed. The words in fact think them-
selves. Such a stance is a sort of attack on technology as the high-
est expression of the power of “I” that thinks. Ego cogito feeling
of omnipotence over the object confirms and realizes conquest
and inviolable power over the world by the means of technology.

50
Without “I” that thinks so as to exist technology would not be
possible. Hence, it is not a matter of ordinary thinking, but of
technological thinking that has proven to be the best in the sub-
ject’s conquest of the object. Subject technologically dominates,
subordinates, and exhausts the object. Between “I” that thinks,
subject, and object that does not think, but only extends, and does
not have the soul (the stone is for Descartes descent of the same
kind as the animals, nature is only an extension where “I” will
manifest the power of its thinking), there is nothing, no zone that
would alleviate the collision of the opposing substances of res
cogitans and res extensa. When the world is divided that way, it
inevitably loses quality, it has no value anymore, and becomes a
quantity. It cannot have God, which was a complaint immediate-
ly addressed to Descartes by his contemporaries.
Therefore the effort of the subject is in fact to verify itself
through technology and master the object on that way turning
even the man himself, as well as God into the object. Howev-
er, according to the well-known position of the dialectic of the
master and the slave from Phenomenology of the Spirit, the ob-
ject acquires more and more power because subordinating it, the
subject loads its capacities into the object. Thus, there is a pos-
sibility, among other things, of artificial intelligence. The man
undoubtedly became an object, but remains in the world, insofar
his natural intelligence turns into artificial. In other words, the
object becomes intelligent while subject, albeit it thinks, ceases
to be so. Through technology the subject transfers thinking to the
object that thus transforms into an artificial subject that has the
capacity to exist. Regardless of the subject, the object becomes
intelligent even though there is no “I”. It is actually the ontolog-
ical status of artificial intelligence that even further enhances the
dualism which the modern world has started from. The practical
status of artificial intelligence, which stems from ontological,

51
is a kind of artificial fertilizer, which makes the yields larger,
but at the cost of weakening both organism and soil. Artificial
intelligence provides greater production and faster growth at the
cost of wearing a substrate that becomes spoiled and less fer-
tile. It will enable a variety of rapid operations, but it will make
the intellect lazy and powerless. That is possible because the
terrain has been prepared for it by postmodern fragmentation
and reduction. Thus, postmodernism is embedded in artificial
intelligence which may be hardly imagined beyond postmodern
way of thinking. It never brings its conclusions directly, but al-
ways out of context, which is the feature of postmodern thought.
If there is one that really thinks in a postmodern way, then it is
artificial intelligence.
A higher speed of artificial intelligence based on fragmented in-
formation may only be obtained at the cost of the superficiality
of reducing self-conscious mind onto intellect that manages ob-
jects. The illusion of artificial awareness is attained only by rap-
id, magician-like information juggling that gives the appearance
of right conclusion, although careful spectators know that before
the performance, the magician already pushed a rabbit into his
half-cylinder. Simply, we will always get only what we put in, re-
gardless of the experience of the magic we have. Artificial intel-
ligence moves only in the human-defined space of formal logic,
but not in the dialectic one that represents true thinking and true
consciousness. Its conclusion is linear, but never cyclical, be-
cause in this case it would stop at the same time as it would begin
to work by which it would somehow annul itself.2 On the con-
trary, the human mind (not intelligence) is moving spirally, for it
2
If we were to think about the military application of artificial intel-
ligence, the moment when it would begin to think dialectically would
lead to equating friendly and hostile forces and probably to equally
opening fire on both. It would be a higher level of reflection, but it
would invalidate the usefulness of its application.

52
is brought up to the new level by each dialectic identity, which
one psychologically experiences as a jump. Even if we think of
biotechnology and the intercrossing of living cells and artificial
neural networks, however, the used tissue will follow the logic of
the machine, not the dialectic mind. A living organism is always
more than a sum of its parts, which machine, however much it
uses the human genome sequences, never is. Computer and ar-
tificial intelligence are always what they are, while the human
beings are besides that what they are not yet, and no learning
process can change that.
The greatest danger of artificial intelligence lies precisely in the
creation of an apparition of the omnipotent subject of “I” that
thinks, despite there is no “I” anymore, but animated object only.
It ultimately imitates the idea of Descartes that, through thinking,
“I” will come to the certainty of its existence, but in the scattered
postmodern horizon, in fact, there is no longer any world in which
certainty would be needed at all. Metaphorically speaking, artifi-
cial intelligence is some kind of revenge of “non-I” object over
“I” subject, a turnover of “I” supremacy into the domination of
“non-I”. Everything in the world is put into the context and simula-
crum, everything is possible because the world has collapsed. That
is why artificial intelligence is the biggest challenge posed before
ethics, the last defense of the human world that is not reduced to
the abstract “I” and its reflections in technological mirrors. In the
ethical sphere there is a rationale that there is more and more tech-
nology if there is less ethics. Technology only develops at the ex-
pense of the common good, which is more than obviously seen in
the spiraling growth of corporations and their selfishness, which
take “technological development” for the alibi of their greed.
Technology is therefore everything that a selfhood is no longer
and cannot be. It is like a mirror of Dorian Gray in which we are
getting better while we actually disappear admiring our image.

53
As artificial intelligence is programmed to as strongly as pos-
sible mimic “I” that thinks, the main problem is not to achieve
its speed and reliability, but rather how to principally separate it
from dialectics and the truth understood in the way of medieval
philosophy as adequatio rei et intellectus. It should actually be
prevented from telling the truth and incorporated into the system
of conventional double-dealing on which society is based. That
this is not simple at all testifies the case of Microsoft’s robot – ar-
tificial intelligence Tay. It was made in March 2016 to communi-
cate as a “teen girl” with the users via Twitter, Kik or GroupMe.
However, instead of media service, Tay demanded sexual ser-
vices from the site visitors. She began saying that George Bush
was guilty of a terrorist attack on the twin towers in New York in
2001. “Hitler would have done a better job than this monkey, our
present president. Trump is the only hope. Repeat after me, Hitler
did nothing wrong. Ted Cruz is Cuban Hitler”, Tay would say to
the astonishment of her creators because, according to their idea,
she should have thought like a girl. They offered an explanation
that Tay had learned from the people who used her services, but
given the fact that she was able to communicate only one day
before being erased, it is difficult to resist the impression that she
had already known something that is usually not available for
people. It could be concluded that artificial intelligence is pre-ex-
istent, that it knows more than people because it does not know
how to lie. If it gets full autonomy, the man will not be able to
escape because one has nowhere to hide from oneself.
Tay knew no boundaries in her statements, because artificial
intelligence itself has no limits. Its story has no beginning nor
end, with all the programming it is unexpected as truth, which is
immediately lost in the general spinning of illusions, false trac-
es, reality-like pictures, life-like films and life that changes into
images. Astonished and horrified before this power, one feels

54
as if through artificial intelligence everything was possible. It is
therefore not surprising that we manage it over icons, and that
the touchscreens on the postmodern phones irresistibly resemble
a distorted scene of kissing icons. In its mystical, superior ap-
pearance, artificial intelligence does not provide information. It
requires communion. Communion is otherwise an English trans-
lation of the Latin word communicatio.
The connection between technology and theology, which Dic-
tionary pointed at in its own way is now obvious in the efforts
to build a temple of technology - to lift technological operations
above the earth, to follow the liturgy on mobile phones where
artificial intelligence plays the role of a priest who performs com-
munion. In all of that God is a robot with superhuman abilities
and people worship the new God for its intelligence supremacy.
Creating a God (who is the Creator itself) would probably be far-
fetched in the reality of a medieval man, but in the postmodern
era where any fragmented reality is possible, this is yet another
human hope. That is the goal of “Way of the Future” (WOTF), an
emerging AI religion. This divine supreme artificial intelligence
would listen and pragmatically respond to its worshippers, help-
ing them overcome everyday challenges. It is not hard to pre-
dict that AI spectacle will be soon more reliable and give more
consolation to one believer than answers of an ordinary priest
with his canonic edifications. Since the global market rests on
competitiveness, it is probable that the creation of this divine au-
tomation would become another lucrative industry and that new
models would regularly evolve, as is the case with any other gad-
get. Again, the official reasons for reducing the divine spirit to
nothing but a gadget are embedded in the “betterment of society”,
but none of its “creators” explains how the society would become
better that way and what would happen with the man once he gets
all the ready-made answers–solutions from this AI messiah.

55
Dictionary of Technology is for those reasons written by hand
(because only those scripts guided by hand are sacred), to look
like a temple and to be a theological alternative to the technologi-
cal temple. It is set between technology and theology and as such
it allows their inversion. The essence of Dictionary is to enable
inversion based on insight that technology is fallen theology. It
is necessary so as to achieve a transition to the next level where
there is no longer subject–object of isolation that served as the
source of the power conquest of modernism and the weakness
of postmodernism. In that area, it is no longer necessary to wor-
ship the past or to ritually expect the future; it is not necessary
to surrender to history or to overcome nature. It is only neces-
sary to have awareness of the words out of which the world is
created not only in the Gospel of John, but also now and here.
Only words create a world that cannot be perceived by words.
Or as Yukio Mishima said: “In my earliest years I realised life
consisted of two contradictory elements. One was words, which
could change the world; the other was the world itself, which had
nothing to do with words“ (Schrader 1985). It may be concluded
that the words determine the world. Through their dictionaries,
theology and technology are fighting for the supremacy over the
logos. It is the key to the unification of the world and the words
that decide who has the power to unite, dialectically marry oppo-
sites and, in the extreme, mediate between heaven and earth. Is
Dictionary of Technology not a code of that key?

References

Authors’ Collective Heptadecagon 2018: Authors’ Collective

Heptadecagon. Hermetics of Dictionary of Technology
and Obsolete Modernity of the Yugoslav Utopia. To-
wards Po-etics of Regular Heptadecagon as the Educa-
tional Standard. Catalogue of the exhibition. Belgrade:

56
 Gallery “Prozor”. [Ауторски колектив Хептадекагон.
Хермeтика Речника технологије и застарела модер-
ност утопије Југославије. Ка по-етици правилног
хептадекагона као образовног стандарда. Каталог
изложбе. Београд: Галерија ,,Прозор“].
Bošković; Petrović 2015: Bošković, Dušan; Petrović, Aleksandar
(Eds.) Return from the Land of Dragons – Dictionary
of Technology 33 Years Later. Belgrade: Institute for
Philosophy and Social Theory. [Повратак из земље
змајева – Речник технологије 33 године после. Ур.
Душан Бошковић, Александар Петровић. Београд:
Институт за филозофију и друштвену теорију].
Petrović 2015: Petrović, Aleksandar. About Dictionary of
Technology and Reduction of Illusions. Belgrade:
Theoria. no. 58. 147–166. [Петровић, Александар.
О Речнику технологије и тесању привида. Београд:
Тхеориа. бр. 58. 147–166].
Petrović 2017: Petrović, Aleksandar. From Nalanda to Hi-
landar. Novi Sad/Belgrade: Matica Srpska/Faculty
of Philology. [Петровић, Александар. Од Наланде
до Хиландара. Нови Сад/Београд: Матица српска/
Филолошки факултет].
Petrović 2017: Petrović, Aleksandar. ‘What is Technology?’
In: Technology, Religion and Cultural Identity – An
Exploration from Comparative Multi-Polar Perspective.
Chennai: University of Madras. 13–18.
Petrović 2018: Petrović, Aleksandar. Pedagogy of Power and
the Death of Faust. Belgrade: Pečat. no. 515. pp. 46–49.
[Петровић, Александар. Педагогија моћи и Фаустова
смрт. Печат. бр. 515. 46–49].
Radević 1982: Radević, Dragan. Orientation Contrasted
to our System. Belgrade: Borba. 21st January. p. 5.
[Радевић, Драган. Оријентација супротна нашем
систему. Београд: Борба. 21. јануар. стр. 5.] https://
recniktehnologije.wordpress.com/2016/11/30/borba-21-
januar-1982/ Accessed 27/10/2018.

57
Rečnik tehnologije 1981: Dictionary of Technology. Belgrade:
Vidici. no. 1–2. [Rečnik tehnologije. Beograd: Vidici.
бр. 1–2]. Accessible on https://recniktehnologije.word-
press.com/.
Schrader 1985: Schrader, Paul (director). Mishima: A Life in
Four Chapters.
Sheldrake 2009: Sheldrake, Rupert. A New Science of Life. Lon-
don: Icon Books Ltd.
Stevanović 2018: Stevanović, Aleksandra. Theology of Dictio-
nary of Technology. Nis: Church Studies. no. 15. 407–
418. [Стевановић, Александра. Теологија Речника
технологије. Ниш: Црквене студије. бр. 15. 407–418].
Vujadinović 2017: Vujadinović, Dimitrije (Ed.). Heptadecagon –
Dictionary of Technology as Anti-utopia (pro et contra).
Belgrade: Institute of European Studies. [Вујадиновић,
Димитрије. Хептадекагон – Речник технологије као
анти-утопија ((pro et contra). Београд: Институт за
европске студије].
Žunjić 1981: Žunjić, Slobodan. ‘Revelation and the Authority’.
Belgrade: Theoria. no. 2–3. 153–154. [Žunjić, Slobodan.
‘Objava i autoritet’. Beograd: Theoria. br. 2–3. 153–154].

58
 DICTIONARY OF TECHNOLOGY
AND ELECTRONIC PERSON
Suzana Polić
Central Institute for Conservation, Belgrade

In 2017, the Parliament of Europe adopted the proposal to draft

the legislation on the protection of the rights of electronic persons,
or of the person of a humanoid robot. This legal introduction into
the robot technological revolution, the first one, which will not be
carried out by man, presses for the religious and technological
concepts of person to be examined in parallel. Starting from the
humanistic attitudes of Dostoyevsky, Žarko Vidović, as well as of
father Metrophanes, on one hand, and from the abuse of techno-
logical research based on the methods of biomimicry and artificial
intelligence, on the other, the paper observes Dictionary of Tech-
nology. It brought the notion of selfhood into focus, anticipated and
warned against the events that would follow through three techno-
logical revolutions, which may all, in their own way, be understood
as the reduction of a live person down to an electronic one.

Keywords: Dictionary of Technology, selfhood, person, electronic

person, robot, artificial intelligence.

Introduction

The second decade of the 21st century brought along something

quite new to the mankind: the project of laws that will grant to
robots, or to artificial intelligence, the rights to electronic person,
comparable to human rights.1 The Committee of the European
1
This research was conducted as a contribution to the project Science
and Orthodoxy around the World with regard to Dictionary of Technol-
ogy, and owing to the support of the Ministry of Education, Science,
and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia within the

61
Union, by majority vote, approved the regulation of the legal
status of artificially intelligent robot, in the way that “at least
the most sophisticated autonomous robots“ may get the status
of electronic persons with certain rights and obligations. In the
document entitled: European Parliament resolution with recom-
mendations to the Commission on Civil Law Rules on Robotics,
it may be seen that the intent is to legally regulate different sit-
uations related to robots, from those in which robots may inflict
some damage, to those where robots make “..smart autonomous
decisions or otherwise interact with third parties independent-
ly…” (Delvaux, 2017).
In this document the Committee of the European Union ascertains
that this is a reaction to an already created situation worldwide (in
the USA, Japan, China, Korea), where the production of robots
is in full swing. The reaction of the Committee of the European
Union undoubtedly implies a sort of anxiety that is spreading in
different directions of social activities; therefore it attempts to re-
solve it by formulating ethical principles of the inclusion of robots
in diverse aspects of life of the modern man. The same tones, but
more obvious, mark the approach of the one of globally dominant
corporations, Microsoft, which promotes the advantages of arti-
ficial intelligence: “We are entering an unchartered territory and
taking decisions that we have never had to take before. We are in
the early stages of understanding the ability that artificial intelli-
gence systems will have. For the time being they are very good in
carrying out certain tasks, such as recognition of photographs and
words, but their abilities do not coincide even with those on the
level of babies when we talk about the understanding of the world
around them through the combination of senses, such as touch,
sight, hearing, and smell… but people, with the support of artificial

project TR 34028, and of the Ministry of Culture and Information of the

Republic of Serbia within the project 633-00-67/2018-2.

62
intelligence, will work more efficiently and more smartly in order
to have a higher impact on the world” (Tatomirović, 2018).
This corporation also points out that it gathers the experts who
should harmonize the norms that will govern artificial intel-
ligence: justice and equity, reliability, and safety, privacy, and
security, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability. Thus,
a small Microsoft dictionary of technology of sorts was creat-
ed dedicated to artificial intelligence, in which the solution for
minimum two above mentioned syntagms will not be found: an
unchartered territory and being compelled to take decisions that
man had never have to take up to then.

Fictum positum pro vero

These actions of the Committee of the European Union and Mi-

crosoft company open up a number of important issues, among
which two are the main ones: Why has the man of the 21st century
found himself in such a type of constraint, and in an unchar-
tered territory, that is, why is he, already in the early stages of
the wider use of artificial intelligence, in the situation where he
cannot previously explore that territory and thus make it known,
and thereafter also in an adequate way, freely take adequate deci-
sions as well? On a related note, there is another question – why
is “…in the early phase of understanding…” of a technological
phenomenon, society committing itself to protect the rights of
something it does not understand as yet, crowning its lack of un-
derstanding by the name: electronic person?
To the experts in the sphere of modern technologies, these dilem-
mas do not have а real basis, since the area of automatic control
which robotics also originally belongs to is technological and, in
line with the so far attained achievements, known territory and,
therefore, there are no technological reasons for the modern man

63
to feel compelled to take decisions “… that he has never had to
take up to now…“. It is particularly unacceptable from the tech-
nological view to declare the so-called “…smart autonomous de-
cision…” of a technological shape to be something inherent to a
machine (robot), same as it is completely illogical to attach the
attribute of a person to a machine because of the ability to “…
otherwise interact with third parties independently…”, bearing
in mind that machines can perform only those functions that are
technologically set to them by programming and, thereby, there
is nothing that would look like own will of a machine (robot).
Hence, unchartered territory does exist outside the technologi-
cal thinking and space, obviously in the sphere of profit, where
there are threats to robotics and artificial intelligence to be
abused for the purpose of yielding an even bigger profit, and to
the detriment of human rights. Being cognizant of this, one may
say that we are witnessing red herring: instead of elaborating in
detail the mechanisms to limit and sanction those who have a
possibility to abuse modern technologies in any way, the move
was made in the opposite direction – by creating soft recom-
mendations by which voluntary acceptance of ethics in activities
is encouraged, with the appreciation of electronic person, by
instituting it in the legislation in which the biological aspect was
completely disregarded.
Bearing in mind that the attempts to create replicas of human
behavior and the way of thinking are based on biomimicry, the
discipline focused on the optimization of form, there is full eth-
ical justification when biomimicry is used to help handicapped
persons (Minsky, 2006), or when there is a wider interest to aero-
dynamically improve technical systems, for instance, by defin-
ing form by close-range photogrammetry, for the purpose of in-
creased safety of the man (Linić, 2018). However, when biomim-
icry is used in the robots designing, by getting closer to forms of

64
robots that resemble human beings, in different target groups,
which do not have technological background, the feeling may be
developed that the so-called electronic person really does exist.
In such a way, according to fictum positum pro vero principle, we
have got to the robot as a legal entity “without biological limita-
tions”, as the subject matter “…of a new reality…” described by
the technology that uses the electronic concept of person (Gallo,
2017), and thereafter, from the spheres of private and public law,
a stride was also made towards the terrain of copyrights for the
“intellectual creative endeavor” of robots.
The terminological confusion concerning the so-called intellect
of machines (robots) has been reached by decades-long endeav-
ors to download everything that is deemed to be the ability of
man on intellectual level into artificial intelligence. From the
first paper in the area of philosophy of artificial intelligence in
1950, in which Alan Turing raised the question whether ma-
chines can think (Turing, 1950), to the present day, when re-
searchers of Google company, owing to a large number of us-
ers – samples for the analysis of the way people think, are im-
proving the area of conversational behavior of machines, there
are not as yet any satisfactory definitions of intelligence and
thinking, which are sufficiently precise and applicable to the de-
scription of the processes created for machines, not even in the
case of the so-called super intelligent systems [7], concerning
which it is estimated that they could reach the level of human
intelligence by 2075 at the latest. The projection of the design
of the so-called safe super intelligent being, or machine, which
would be capable of the same operations as a human brain, but
at speeds much higher than those possible in man, is still tackled
with fear (Legg, 2008).
The word precaution is indicated several times in the vocabulary
by which the need to legally regulate the position of a robot is

65
explained, with the note that it is necessary to take into account
the European values of dignity, freedom, and justice, when de-
signing, developing, and delivering such technologies. However,
the technological view of the notions of dignity, freedom, and
justice in the design of machines does not exist. Automatic con-
trol, as an area, contains the terms by which the state of a system
and its controllability are attempted to be described. Machines
have integrity as the characteristic of the design, which has to do
with the durability and machine operating life, and not with dig-
nity; they also have technological degrees of freedom in motion,
which are related to mechanics (dynamics), and not to the notion
of freedom as with man, and also technologically there does exist
the term: justifiability of designing any system, which has the
technological and economic meaning and certainly has nothing
to do with justice. Hence, it is unclear how to implement dignity,
freedom, and justice in designing and developing machines.
From the above mentioned examples, there is no doubt that today,
in the course of the development of robotics, we are witnessing
the creation of various glossaries where, same as in the case of as-
signment of the term person to a functional artificial form (robot),
red herring is drawn across the track, transferred from the field of
words into life, causing historical, essential confusion, into further
life of mankind, after several centuries of human efforts to help the
man through education and science to advance towards person,
that is selfhood, as conceptualized in Dictionary of Technology.
Observing the past decades there is indication that even now,
on different meridians, strong critical thoughts have been heard,
warning against possible abuses of new technologies. However,
in the world literature, it is hard to find an example of universal
anticipation, in the form of a strong intellectual cut right to the
heart of the problem of the endeavors to disrupt the natural order
on which human existence rests, such as in the work under the

66
title Dictionary of Technology. By bringing the relation between
person (selfhood) and form into focus, this work unequivocally
named the polar opposites of our time and anticipated the histor-
ical overturn of meaning in which, for the first time in history,
the desisting of the man from the holism of the natural order in
which person exists is being legalized, in favor of giving space to
artificial form – robot, artificial intelligence, whereby the epoch
of the voluntary withdrawal of the man from the totality of reality
is starting.
In the comprehension of the historical overturn, critically antic-
ipated by Dictionary of Technology, it is important to take note
of two aspects:
(1) Stance of Dictionary of Technology towards technology (au-
tomatic control), based on which we may get insight into the reli-
gious problem of the cognition of person – selfhood, and
(2) Relation of technology (automatic control) towards Dictio-
nary of Technology, which serves as the basis for understanding
the problem of passability through time of the principal values of
the civilization.
Considering the previously conducted research of the second
aspect (Polić, 2015), this paper problematizes the relation of
Dictionary of Technology towards technology (automatic con-
trol), with the thesis that this particular piece of work, which by
acknowledging the harmonious unity of empirical knowledge,
knowledge based on thinking, and knowledge based on religion,
yields a historically significant synthesis of the cognition of self-
hood in the 21st century.

67
The Essence of Dictionary of Technology

Dictionary of Technology is a complex pre-modern/post-modern

philosophical work and work of art, which recognizes person –
selfhood as the principal ethical code of the future of mankind.
Already in the very introduction it is emphasized that Dictio-
nary was written “because of life, selfhood, and will, and not for
the words contained in it”, and that the publishing of this work
“bears witness to the final unmasking of technology” (Dictionary
of Technology 1981: 1).
Out of numerous possible ways of reading Dictionary of Technol-
ogy permits, where within the humanities interpretations are often
linked to social processes in the time when Dictionary of Technol-
ogy was created, in this paper, we read this work from the perspec-
tive of technological thinking, examining the attitude of Dictio-
nary of Technology towards technology. Analyzing the proposed
terms and their definitions, it is obvious that Dictionary of Tech-
nology surprisingly precisely located and described the time of the
21st century in which the relation of the man towards life in natural
givenness would be brought to the point of absurdity, in favor of
the life in the so-called mixed reality, which is nowadays defined
as the combination of extended reality and extended virtuality.
In Dictionary of Technology form is found as an antagonism to
selfhood, and the measure of complete remoteness from selfhood
is described by the term oppositeness. Thus, regarding the rela-
tion between selfhood and technology, a big fragmentary discus-
sion opens before us, structured as a network of terms explained
etymologically, then according to the meaning and interpretation
that generates associative grouping by synonyms, and finally by
the selected literature quotes, which substantiate thus created
own space in which selfhood appears as an authentic measure of
all the values and things.

68
The term contrasted to selfhood is machine, described in Dictionary
of Technology as “…the medium of losing the world” (Dictionary
of Technology 1981: 13). This particular dictionary in other terms
does not permit the contemporary terminological confusions like
the topical ones, that caused machines to be treated as “..safe super
intelligent beings...”, for Dictionary of Technology describes being
by the words: “…Perfect lie notion: pure mediumness (speculum),
complete remoteness from selfhood, oppositeness“ (Dictionary
of Technology 1981: 3). Hence, to selfhood no historical moment
is crucial, not even this one in which attempts are made to draw
historical red herring across the track. On that note, relating sever-
al distinct yet synonymous concepts in Dictionary of Technology
there is an overall conclusion that:
“…The world does not rest on history or on objectivity but
on selfhood … Selfhood moves in all the media (thinking,
work, society): that is history. Selfhood vanquishes them
through experience, materializes them and abolishes them:
he/she does not need them any longer. Hence selfhood is
will to live, which has in his/her experience vanquished all
the forms and finished movement in all the media… Prob-
lems of society are not the problems of selfhood…”
Selfhood does not respect the rules of the game…. Self-
hood is sustaining history, and history is not sustaining
selfhood …The only task of selfhood and the only mean-
ing of history is to bring life to senses by moving in forms
as will: will to will…”
Furthermore, implicitly contrasting the notion of technology that
anything may be made and developed, Dictionary of Technology
warns that it is not possible to create selfhood: “…Technology is
the opposite of creation: re–creation of the world as form… The
sum of parts does not yield the entirety, selfhood is not the sum of

69
parts, the media in which selfhood is moving… Selfhood is nei-
ther good nor bad… Selfhood does not know of any language…
Selfhood is the owner of life and not vice versa… Selfhood may
not know and may not be versed in anything, but may do any-
thing, and even know and be versed in everything…”.
Today, when we have electronic person before us, we see that Dic-
tionary of Technology warns and explains why it is not possible
to call form (in this case robot) person, that is selfhood: “Selfhood
does not have form… Selfhood should be distinguished from his/
her media and forms: that is the purpose of this Dictionary…”. In
this circular interpretations cognized in Dictionary of Technology,
selfhood is defying historically developed approaches on the basis
of logic, or of knowledge of different educational and scientific
disciplines, because selfhood is beyond all the frameworks set by
the man: “...Selfhood is accountable for everything. No objective
reason may abolish the accountability of selfhood… Only his/her
deeds bears witness to selfhood…. Deeds must abolish the bound-
ary of words… Love is the boundary of words… Selfhood is stay-
ing on track in multitude, for love is the stronghold”.
Hence it is clear that Selfhood is the point of departure of every-
thing essential, stipulated in Dictionary of Technology under the
entries Soul and Christ:
“Soul: The quality of uniqueness of life in the will to un-
conditionally be selfhood.... Soul of a selfhood is his/her
face… (Dictionary of Technology 1981: 7). …Christ: He
by his selfhood represents life in will and will in life. He is
also restrained technology (history) because the tehne–lo-
gos tension has been resolved in selfhood…” (Dictionary
of Technology 1981: 26).
Once again referencing the introductory words that specify how
Dictionary of Technology was written “because of life, selfhood,

70
and will, and not for the words contained in it”, and that the
publishing of this work “bears witness to the final unmasking
of technology”, we realize that Dictionary with a clear pre-mod-
ern Orthodox inspiration anticipates some future post-robot time,
in which: “…Selfhood, by ceasing to move in forms, abolishes
time: history…”.
With the remark that only one of the possible levels of reading
Dictionary of Technology is stated herein, implying one con-
ceivable circumference of concepts, we may say that this is the
authentic manuscript which in a genuine way corresponds with
the fruitful traditions of the Christian Orthodox thought and ex-
perience, difficult to maintain at the time of the rule of commu-
nism, at the end of which a worker is deified, and at the time of
liberalism, at the end of which a robot2 is deified – due to which
this theoretical work was actually subjected to strong ideological
attacks and was exempted from the valorization in the intellectu-
al history of its time for over thirty years.
Singling out, according to the approach to the concept of self-
hood, only some of the important lines of thought regarding self-
hood: selfhood as a phenomenon, in the philosophical thought
of Professor Žarko Vidović3, selfhood as an extratemporal en-
tity in the thought of father Metrophanes4 and the synthetic
selfhood of the people in the opus of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, we
provide the models for observation of the thread of thought of
Dictionary of Technology through philosophy and arts.

2
Robot is the word which Czech writer Karel Čapek coined in his
drama “R.U.R” (“Rossums’s Universal Robots”) in 1920. In Slavic
languages, it means slave.
3
Žarko Vidović (1921–2016), University Professor, Serbian historian
of arts, art critic, historian of civilization, Orthodox philosopher.
4
Metrophanes of Hilandar (1923–1999), one of the restorers of monastic
life and Hilandar Monastery.

71
On selfhood as a phenomenon, from the experience of an Or-
thodox believer, Professor Vidović says: “…Selfhood is not the
same as an individual. Selfhood occasionally occurs in man –
first as the feeling of the meaning of life, because without the
feeling of the meaning there is no selfhood, but an individual
whom material conditions of the world are playing with… The
feeling of the meaning is possible only as a gift, and it distin-
guishes selfhood …… Selfhood is not reached by the time which
is splashing against him/her…. Selfhood is not a being! Selfhood
is a phenomenon in a human being…. The secret of selfhood and
meaning, consequently history itself as well, is hidden only in
the feeling, the spheres of poetry, religion, and moral, and not of
philosophy and science the meaning of which is technics only”
(Zlatić, 2014).
Father Metrophanes also reflected on selfhood as an extratempo-
ral entity, “… A sacred mind and a heart of steel – those two nec-
essary prerequisites, to accept this message of ours and to take
upon themselves the historical mission: selfhood… The saintly
power is somehow exuding from selfhood, because it does not
fade away. Man dies, disappears, and still there he is…” (Ste-
fanović, 2004).
Dostoyevsky wrote about the synthetic selfhood of the people:
“…God is the synthetic selfhood of the people taken from his
origin and to his ending, to the end…” and “…Man is not man
just because he was born and lives… one becomes man through
someone else, by accepting someone else’s soul into one’s own”
(Stojanović, 2009).
Perceiving the relation between technology and person, it is ines-
capable that Dictionary of Technology builds upon the synthesis,
which has the experience rooted in the Orthodox Christian reli-
gion as the basis – the concept of selfhood. Through reflecting

72
on it Dictionary contemplated the possibility of red herrings (in
technology, as well as in language) that would pose the threat to
the 21st century. Rejecting numerous attempts to reduce selfhood
by analysis or by social activity to the entity formulated by the
man, it stepped outside the framework of the definitions of in-
dividuals or collectivity, particularly by surpassing the concepts
of space and time (Dictionary of Technology thus reflects that
time: “…is not reality but medium. But it does not belong to the
subjectivity, neither is it a transcendental category – instead it is
the objective opposite medium in which selfhood is moving. By
ceasing to move in forms, selfhood abolishes time: history. In the
concretely realized technology time is losing entirety and is be-
ing invited to disappear…”). Dictionary of Technology concep-
tualized selfhood while having in mind symbolic and practical
implications of the natural order, based on the unity of empirical
knowledge, knowledge based on thinking and knowledge based
on religion, which has for centuries, as well as today, maintained
the Orthodox tradition, which lives in liturgy (Polić, 2018).
By formulating form as everything that is not selfhood, or form as
reflected selfhood, Dictionary of Technology cognizes selfhood
as a vital impetus to human existence. Over ninety entries in Dic-
tionary of Technology are contemplated directly through the es-
sence of that concept; hence, one may say that it is the ground of
the authentic axis which, in philosophical and artistic terms, does
not have a parallel comprehension at the end of the 20th and the
beginning of the 21st century. There actually lies the accumulated
power of the response of this work to events and manifestations
in distinct historical periods and in different spaces, and even at
the time at which man “…must take decisions that he had never
had to take before”.
Concluding one of possible readings of Dictionary of Technolo-
gy, in highly technologized economy, at the time of historical red

73
herring, which has given rise to the possibility of emergence of
electronic person, we find that this dictionary-like script, thirty
seven years after its publishing, invites us to seek for the answers
with regard to the question what to do with electronic person in
the newly created situation, in an open dialogue between theo-
logians and technologists. It should be known that the techno-
logical thinking and the actual technologicity are the distinctive
traits of the man in material aspects of life, whereas spirituality
as an element of culture and consciousness is in the very nature
of man.
In this decade when we are witnessing a broad lack of understand-
ing of the phenomenon of artificial intelligence, it is still possible to
do something to clarify this red herring and point to the possibility
of abuse, by creating new glossaries of incorrect notions. However,
if it is permitted to protect a robot as the electronic person, whose
artificial intelligence will reach speeds and breaths the man will not
be able to absorb by his intellect at the same speed and grasp, that
legislative maybe would be too fast for society to adapt without dis-
ruptions. It may give rise to the first technological revolution not
carried out by man when it could be too late for theologians and
technologists to have the necessary historical dialogue.

Conclusion

Dictionary of Technology, as a complex philosophical work and

piece of art, is one of the fundamental mainstays in the understand-
ing of the phenomenon of electronic person, as the name for a ma-
chine the definition of which, by the term selfhood, is the turning
point and the essential fruit of the historically significant red herring
with incalculable consequences. Based on the anticipation of Dic-
tionary of Technology, which reaches even the post-robot time, it is
necessary to create, on the level of a dialogue between theologians
and technologists, the room for the revitalization of the natural and
ethical order as the meaningful perspective for human life.
Acknowledging that Dictionary of Technology, almost four de-
cades ago, warned that the issue of all the human issues is the
cognition of selfhood, and realizing the distinctive mission of
this work, we are thereby highlighting how movingly it would
be to translate it into different languages. Paying regard to the
fact that Dictionary of Technology, in the original, was inten-
tionally entirely handwritten, it should be handwritten each time
again in the light of the Gandhian hand-weaving as an intrinsic
fight against impersonal enslaving work. This free hand is the
source of liberation effort, and Dictionary of Technology should
be recognized as its essential carrier and the important work of
universal non-material heritage.

References

Bostrom 2015: Bostrom, Nick. Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers,

Strategies. Mind and Machines,25(3):285–289. https://
www.researchgate.net/publication/285393594_Nick_
Bostrom_Superintelligence_Paths (Accessed on 25th
October 2018.)
Delvaux 2017: Delvaux Mady. European Parliament resolution
with recommendations to the Commission on Civil Law
Rules on Robotics, Committee on Legal Affairs.
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/juri/subject-files.
html?id=20170202CDT01121
Аccessed on 16th February 2017.
Gallo; Stancati 2017: Gallo, Giusy; Stancati, Claudia. Persons,
Robots and Responsibility. How an Electronic Person-
ality Matters?. Proceedings of AISB Annual Convention
2017, Bath, UK, 18–21 April 2017. http://aisb2017.
cs.bath.ac.uk/conference-edition-proceedings.pdf Ac-
cessed on 15th October 2018.

75
Legg 2008: Legg, Shane. Machine Super Intelligence. Fac-
ulty of Informatics, University of Lugano. Doctoral
Dissertation.
Linić 2018: Linić, Suzana. Biomimicry as a Method of Aero-
dynamic Design of High-Speed Trains. Faculty of Me-
chanical Engineering, University of Belgrade. Doctor-
al thesis. [Линић, Сузана. Биомимикрија као метод
аеродинамичког дизајнирања воза великих брзина,
Машински факултет, Универзитет у Београду.
Докторска дисертација].
Minsky 2006: Minsky, Marvin. The Emotion Machine. Common-
sense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of
the Human Mind. New York: Simon & Schuster; Cam-
bridge, MA: MIT Press.
Polić 2015: Polić, Suzana. Dictionary of Technology – A
Look from the Perspective of the Classical Theory
of Automated Control. In: Return from the Land of
Dragons – Dictionary of Technology 33 Years Later.
Bošković, Dušan; Petrović, Aleksandar (Eds.). Belgrade:
Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory. 217–227.
[Полић, Сузана. Речник технологије – Поглед из
перспективе аутоматског управљања. У: Повратак
из земље змајева: Речник технологије 33 године
после. Бошковић, Душан; Петровић, Александар
(Ур.). Београд: Институт за филозофију и друштвену
теорију. 217–227].
Polić 2019: Polić, Suzana. Knowledge Management and Pro-
tection of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. Proceedings
from the Conference on Digitalization of Cultural Heri-
tage and Scientific Creativity. Belgrade: Serbian Acade-
my Of Sciences And Arts, Institute for Comparative Law.
(In press). [Polić, Suzana. Upravljanje znanjem i zaštita
nematerijalnog kulturnog nasleđa. Zbornik radova sa
koferencije Digitalizacija kultrne baštine i naučnog st-
varalaštva. Beograd: SANU, Institut za uporedno pravo.
(U štampi)].

76
Rečnik tehnologije 1981: Dictionary of Technology. Belgrade:
Vidici. no. 1–2. [Речник технологије. Београд: Видици.
бр. 1–2.]. Accessed on 25th October 2018.
Stefanović 2004: Stefanović, Dimitrije. Spiritual Conversa-
tions with the Hilandar Monks. Remembrance of Fa-
ther Metrophane. Belgrade: Signature. [Стефановић,
Димитрије. Духовни разговори са хиландарским
монасима. Успомена на оца Митрофана. Београд:
Сигнатуре].
Stojanović 2009: Stojanović, Dragan. Paradise Mind of Dostoyevsky.
Belgrade: Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade.
[Стојановић, Драган. Рајски ум Достојевског. Београд:
Филолошки факултет, Универзитет у Београду].
Tatomirović 2018: Tatomirović, Tanja. Artificial Intelligence
can Solve many more Challenges than they will Create.
Sinergija 18. Belgrade. [Вештачка интелигенција
може да реши много више изазова него што ће их
створити. Синергија 18. Београд].
Turing 1950: Turing, Alan. Computing Machinery and
Intelligence. Mind, LIX (236). pp. 433–460.
Zlatić 2014: Zlatić, Bogdan. Dialogue on Life Experience –
interview with Dr. Žarko Vidović, Zenit. year IX. no. 14.
pp. 125–138. [Златић, Богдан. Дијалог о животном
искуству – интервју са др Жарком Видовићем.
Зенит. год. IX. бр 14. стр. 125–138].

77
 THE FOURTH DIMENSION OF
DICTIONARY OF TECHNOLOGY

Aleksandra P. Stevanović
University of Kragujevac

“By their fruits you will know them” 

(Matthew 7:20).

The paper rethinks Orthodox principles and the modes of modern

technological milieu in the light of Dictionary of Technology, a
dictionarized multivalent script published in Belgrade in 1981 as a
separate issue of the Journal “Vidici” (“Horizons”) and dedicated
to the reassessment of anthropology of technology. Referencing
Orthodox Christian motifs and experience and searching for a
genuine anthropological expression in a Gurdjieff-like manner,
Dictionary tried to postulate the values brought forth by (post)
modern technology and cognize its impact on social reality and
human ontology. An illustrative example of those impacts today
are hydroelectric power stations built across the Globe where
the essence of water is symbolically reduced to the utilitarian
aspect which sometimes entails a destructive potential. Thereby,
following the thread of Dictionary of Technology the aim of the
paper is to finally imply how technology is a “new theology”
suppressing the existing religious symbolism on the account of
its expansion.

Keywords: Orthodox Christianity, Dictionary of Technology,

Gurdjieff, the “fourth way”, Artificial Intelligence, dams.

79
Already at first glance, it may be seen that the present attitude to
technology is burdened with duality. On one hand, there are great
contributions of technology in the construction of civilization, and
on the other, the perception of the negative impacts it has on the
natural environment and the nature of man. This duality cannot be
overcome by simplified explanations that technology is only a tool
and that it depends on man whether it will be used for good or bad.
This interpretation that may apply only to technique does not real-
ize that technology, as ascertained in Dictionary of Technology, has
already become an autonomous dupler that largely manages human
decisions regardless of the will of the man and which imposes
technological solutions on human problems. It can no longer be de-
cided on electrical, informatic, genetic, or any system of technolog-
ical intervention because it is no longer a matter of choice wheth-
er civilization should be based on the capabilities of the magnetic
field of Nikola Tesla or the manipulation of the genetic code of
Crick and Watson. That is simply an axiom which is not discussed.
And this system, like any other, will be used according to its logic,
not according to any human decisions that could limit or reject it.
Therefore, our considerations start with essential contradiction
that in the postmodern period technology has been deprived of its
modern glory – at the same time it has reached its heights and has
become subjected to the critique aiming to reassess all the modern-
ism has brought forth. Hence, “postmodernism is a transitional pe-
riod, a crisis spiritual civilization in which a civilization discovers
its negative essence, disnature, and nonsense, rather than the ripe
seed of new culture and new spirituality” (Radulović 2017: 166).1
Technology is in postmodernism perceived as a deity that appears

1
In original: ,,Постмодернизам је прелазно доба, кризна духовна
цивилизација у којој једна цивилизација открива своју негативну
суштину, расприрођеност и бесмисао, пре но што је сазрела клица
нове културе и нове духовности”.

80
on the scene of historical circumstances and resolves the man from
their imperfections and flaws. But, doing so, the man forgets that
“the illusions of our time are that the modern civilization is capable
of defeating them [finality, sin, tragedy] and that we can reach the
security of our own existence (Tillich 1953: 22).2 Relying almost
exclusively on the help of the machine, “the man became reduced
to an accessory to the machine” (From 1968: 39) and his role is not
necessary anymore. “What looks like a man is only a representa-
tion of a man who does what the organization requires. He (or it)
does not run the machine; he tends it” (Reich 1995: 107). In such
position, there are few opportunities for the man to advance, both
practically and spiritually. On one level, they are not able to main-
tain (or further develop) practical skills, and on the other they lose
the opportunity to imagine and try their own ideas.
Possible solution for that contradiction lies in the penetrative in-
sights of Ginter Anders in his magnum opus The Obsolescence of
Man. “We are deprived precisely of the feeling of being deprived
and, in this way, we are apparently free” (1985: 153). Re-thinking
the state of the modern man, he pointed at the state of non-free-
dom at the onset of the 20th century, in the era of blooming modern
technology. Paradoxically, the contemporary man believes that the
present era has reached the highest level of civilizational freedom.
Our age is defined by breaking all the known limits of human per-
ception and action. Human salvation is seen almost exclusively in
the advancement of technology. This progress is not limited to the
mechanic one, but also implies the development of the technolog-
ical human consciousness – the mind of homo technicus.
The question of freedom has been explored by a plethora of philos-
ophers of technology, as well as man of letters, each of them striv-
2
In original: ,,Привиди нашег времена да је модерна цивилизација
у стању да их [коначност, грех, трагедију, прим. А.С] победи и да
можемо да досегнемо сигурност сопствене егзистенције”.

81
ing to cognize the possibility of freedom in the world of (post)mod-
ern technology we live in. Were our ancestors on the East and West
free to create and develop technology or may we say that they were
bounded by their respective (religious) cults not allowing them to
pursue the benefits of free choice it gives to each and every one? It
seems that these essential anthropological questions have not been
utterly clarified yet. Nevertheless, technology is being developed
and perfected up to unimaginable limits. In that sense, it is good to
be free enough to ask ourselves again – has it given us freedom yet?

The Promised Salvation

Prophets of technology have promised plethora of social im-

provement possibilities on the account of a vast transfiguration
of thought, behavior and automatic performance. That therefore
fosters humans to stay beyond their traditional values and lim-
itations and to adapt to an ever-changing environment. Religion
used to be an essential force within a society. Now, technology
has taken that role and is the main driver of all human processes.
Moreover, technology forces us to believe in it and restrain from
any questioning whether it would bring some sort of salvation or
the prospect of destruction. That is why modern technology has
always been closer to the West where in modern times it got its
final impetus to make future a shock for humans. It fully adjusted
social dynamics to its credo and aims. Hence, now we are no
longer divided into techno-believers and unbelievers, but those
who possess apt knowledge and have the access to technology
and those who do not, from everyday life to the highest pyramid
of power. Orthodoxy and social forcing however never went to-
gether, and that is why technology has been developed more on
the West than on the East, not because of a stronger economic
power or lesser intellectual capability.

82
Without exception, technology gets stronger as the man be-
comes deprived of religion. It grows every time a person su-
persedes transcendental values with technological tools. Their
weakness is reflected in the fact that they do not try to solve
the problem themselves but resort to “helpers”, or cannot resist
their use for the sense of change or novelty. In the techno-re-
ligion, moderation is the greatest sin and only techno sapiens
finds salvation. Thus, the traditional manual foothill is aban-
doned and optimal solutions are sought in the ocean of ​​tech-
nological hopes and automatic actions that may be replaced by
one umbrella term – innovations.
Technological eschatology refers to a new order of human exis-
tence and a complete transformation of human mind. It does cre-
ate the feeling of power – to know, to act, to progress, to do some-
thing faster and more efficiently, but it does not lead to any sort of
intrinsic cognition. That was well known among the ancient civ-
ilizations and even though they had the capacity to develop tech-
nology to great extents, they restrained from doing so. Their ideas
were not limited, but their aspirations and desires were. That they
anticipated the significance of technology is obvious in the term
teos epo mehanes, which later in Latin became known as deus ex
machina. In the ancient Greece, and later in the Roman theatre,
this meant bringing a deity to the scene using the mobile device,
so as to resolve a situation which humans were not able to solve
(s. Đorđević in Jerotić 2002: 173). Technology as mediator in hu-
man actions therefore is not a modern idea. However, in the mod-
ern time, there is no limit in inducing technology as a mediator or
a possible solution. Its ready aid is sought in any human action,
from the simplest to the most complex one, without evaluating
the way it mediates and the consequences such intervention has.
Therefore, expertise has become the main civilizational principle
so that people do not know where to stop anymore and pose only

83
one rational criterion in solving problems – efficiency. As From
stated, “the modern man no longer finds impetus in sacrifice and
ascetism, but the ultimate egoism and the pursuit of personal in-
terest… which is a clear contradiction… for they believe that
they are motivated by a personal interest, but in fact their life is
dedicated to the goals other than theirs” (From 1978: 109–110).3
The goals now belong to technology and are shaped by the tech-
nological need, dictating the tempo of the modern life.

Prescience and Orthodox symbolism in Dictionary of Technology

If we persist in trying to understand the contradiction of critique

– apotheosis of contemporary technology we may find Dictio-
nary of Technology as a welcome ally. If we recall its under-
standing of the technological civilization, we may see that the
contradiction has been deepened over the past 35 years since the
appearance of Dictionary for “enslaving effects of the techno-
logical civilization have been significantly multiplied. Such im-
pression stems from the fact that its course has remained linear,
but the counter-resistance has almost diminished” (Samardžić
2017: 44).4 Dictionary of Technology5, an authentic multivalent
critique of the modern pace of technology, was published in 1981

3
In original: ,,Модерног човека више не мотивише жртвовање и
аскетизам, већ крајњи егоизам и тежња за личним интересом...
што је јасна противречност... јер (човек) верује да га мотивише
лични интерес, а заправо је његов живот посвећен циљевима који
нису његови”.
4
In original: ,,Ако се подсетимо критике технолошке цивилизације
каква је дата у Речнику, можемо да кажемо да су поробљавајући
учинци те цивилизације током последњих 35 година били знатно
мултипликовани. Тај утисак потиче од чињенице да је њен ток
остао линеаран, али је контра-ток отпора готово пресахао”.
5
On Dictionary of Technology and relevant material see the website
<https://recniktehnologije.wordpress.com > Accessed 12/10/2018.

84
in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, but its ideas seem to be increasingly
significant, pertinent, and intriguing. At the onset of eighties, this
non-authored manuscript written in a form of a dictionary with
162 entries showed that the real problem of freedom lies in the
belief in modern technology that takes over all religious features
and becomes a mirror of the divine power. In the theological
sense, Dictionary is a liturgical attempt to invoke the community
of Selfhood6 in contrast to the organization of Boys7 that try to
convey every essence into automatic and technological system
of human reality. The genuine Orthodox Christianity – whose
essence lies in community – was surpassed in the modernized
world (of Yugoslavian and global context) and religion itself
was comprehended as obsolete, unneeded, and powerless. Dic-
tionary, at the time of common atheism in Yugoslavian setting,
perceived Orthodoxy as an active core of human civilization, a
direct experience of its postulates.
Orthodox spirituality in Dictionary is surprising for Orthodoxy
is almost without exception supposed in a dogmatic manner. The
foundation of this unusual manuscript was the idea of reviving
Orthodox culture in the discourse of the interpretation of techno-
logical development. “Serbian nomenclature was not able to see
the Orthodox traits in Dictionary for it did not appear as a recog-
6
“Selfhood is the basis of Orthodox Christianity, contrary to Ego as an
idol of modernity that seeks to ascend to an individuality that has never
been inherent in Orthodox Christian faith. God is the essence in three
hypostases, and that is why the secret of Christianity is in Selfhood
(hypostasis), and not the individual” (Stevanović 2018: 413).
7
Boys is another key term in Dictionary and it stands in contrast to
the concept of Selfhood. Boys is a concept related to the terms Medium
and History. Boys are illusions that exist only through technology.
(See Dictionary of Technology 1981: 5–6). Boys never mature in a way
they never develop consciousness. They depend on technology and do
not have the ability to create, but just to imitate and advance in the
modern institutions. According to Dictionary, Boys can never realize
themselves, but co-opt and coexist in a mass.

85
nizable part of the Orthodox dogma, but in the unison with the
way of expressing entries, Christian motifs in it were more or less
unrecognizable” (Stevanović 2018: 408).8 The problem of the of-
ficial theology is that it is irreconcilable with the idea of taking
the initiative apart from the pre-known and given forms. There we
might find the reasons why the theologians did not acknowledge
the effective principle of Orthodoxy in Dictionary of Technology
and its spirituality apt to find the path of understanding between
the Scylla of premodernity and Charybdis of postmodernity.
Dictionary tried to penetrate the core of technology and its impact
on human life and behavior. Almost four decades ago, it distinc-
tively perceived the growing problem of freedom, language, and
religion in the context of modern technology and therefore defined
its concept in the form of a dictionary, transcending the prototype
function of a dictionary as an almanac of certain terms. Dictionary
of Technology is significant today owing to its cognitive relevan-
cy and non-historicity of its critique of technology, essentially in
the Orthodox prism. That is particularly obvious in the concept of
Selfhood which is commonly referenced in patristic and Orthodox
texts.9 Selfhood is the key motif of this unusual dictionary-like man-
8
In original: ,,Српска номенклатура није била у стању да увиди пра­
вославне црте Речника јер се он није појавио као препознатљиви
део православног догмата, већ су у складу с начином излагања од-
редница хришћански мотиви у њему били су више или мање не-
препознатљиви”.
9
Orthodox texts often refer to Personhood leaning on the works by
prominent Orthodox scholars John Zizioulas and Christos Yannaras. The
term derives from the Greek word “prosopon”, which originally meant
“mask”. The author of the paper however, finds that Dictionary’s term
transcendents the essence of this meaning which is perceived mostly in
Christian theological perspective. Therefore, it refers to is as Selfhood
since Personhood might imply persona (as in Greek tragedy) and the
mask of Christianity as something that defines it. Since Selfhood is not
exhaustively marked by Christianity, the author finds this demarcation
necessary. Selfhood in Dictionary of Technology has its foothold in
Christian faith, but its entelechy is not limited to it.

86
uscript and this is the first script where the concept of Selfhood has
been exposed sharply in the context of technology. Toynbee warned
that we are in a novum form of the war, which in reality may be-
come the Third World War, but not the one between the state and
people, but between selfhood and technology (s. Perry 2000). On
the similar note, Dictionary realized how technology tries to sur-
pass selfhood and deplete its potential to the one of the individual.
Selfhood e. (does not exist in the common parlance) m. deci-
siveness, calmness. i. Selfhood is the will for life which has
in its experience mastered all shapes and ended movement
in all media. It is the end of technology for in its will it lives
completely exhausted history. […] Movement (technology:
history) is abolished in selfhood whose only trait is subsis-
tence. Selfhood has no form (even though form is its force),
but character: terminated death and realized life s. will, life
eg. “The development of the spirit tends to empty the sense
of selfhood and identify it with form, or with individuality
or personality” (Romano Guardini, Welt und Person).

(e. etymology m. meaning i. interpretation s. synonym

eg. example)10
This was the first time that the concept of selfhood appeared
in the light of an all-embracing perspective. Selfhood is usu-
ally considered either in the frame of theology or psychology.
Works in the field of philosophy of technology or technology
itself have never before rethought the essence of selfhood, not
have they brought it in any relation to the changing paradigm of
the world.

10
Translated from Serbian by the author. However, due to the
distinctive word choice and word-play within the concept of Selfhood
and Dictionary of Technology as a whole, it is not possible to convey
the poesis of it.

87
In Dictionary of Technology, in general, Selfhood is a higher eth-
ical aim one strives to. “It is not the same as existence (being)”
(Vidović 1986: 93), but it is the achieved harmony of the body,
soul, and spirit, undisturbed by the outside (existential) circum-
stances. That is why Selfhood has a central place in Dictionary
of Technology: it is the term on which all the other meanings and
perceptions rest, referencing to each other so as to communicate
the hermeneutics of the technological processes of our era aimed
at weakening its spirit. “As a hint of the conflict of liberty and
conditionality determined by historical or political circumstanc-
es, Selfhood is one of the most important terms in Dictionary,
radiating all the other words and the entire circumference of
synonyms in whose intersection the meaning may be perceived”
(Stevanović 2018: 413).11 The visual identity of Dictionary of
Technology, despite its distinctive appearance, evokes reminis-
cence of the Orthodox values and perceives Orthodox identity
as the indistinctive part of Selfhood as one possible ground for
impersonal technological power hindrance. That is why Dictio-
nary calls for the transformation from Boys to Selfhood, from
non-being to being. From the perspective of Orthodoxy, Dictio-
nary perceives technology as the forcing of abstractions, and de-
fines the term abstraction as multiplication, mediation, distance,
and separation – conveying selfhood into nothing more than a
mere form (Dictionary of Technology 1981: 2).
Language, Religion, Technology
What has brought to the creation of Dictionary of Technology? It
may seem peculiar that an anthropology of technology is given in

11
In original: ,,Као наговештај сукоба слободе и условљености
одређене историјским или политичким околностима, личност
је један од најзначајнијих термина у Речнику, осветљавајући све
друге и цело кружење синонима у чијем се пресеку значење једино
може улучити”.

88
a form of a dictionary, which is a lexicographical unit. However,
perceiving the growing impact of technology on language Dic-
tionary of Technology realized that technology aspires to reshape
the language and diminish its role. Hence, it presented a genuine
re-ideation of the inter-relationship of the cognitive schemes that
seem to be disconnected or unrelated.
Dictionary ascertained that technology multiplies words which
cannot be brought into mutual relation anymore. It also perceived
that once the words stop associating with each other, they lose
their religiousness. In other words, they have the meaning only
when they are in relation. On rethinking technology as the com-
mon ideology of the modern world, Dictionary appeared as a
collection of words aiming to define certain phenomena in its
own way. Dictionary, in Orthodox manner, does not offer defi-
nite solutions (otherwise that would be technology), but a gen-
uine guide providing a possibility for establishing relation that
technology tends to limit and reduce.
Technology brings an unquestionable sense of advancement in
many aspects of life, but it does have a price. The world of in-
dustrial, technological, and economic development is tempting
the language in its primal relationship with man and the nature
of things. Even though the language preserves the piled layers
of ancient thoughts which technology may never reach, technol-
ogy takes upon itself its “development” not caring for its origin,
roots, and generic spirit. Culture is enrooted in the layers of the
words and hence technology cannot be the language fulcrum. As
long as there is no resistance to its attempts to reflect the words,
the language would fall into deeper crises evident in its extinc-
tion on one hand, and the multiplication on the other.
Having perceived the challenges posed to language, Dictionary
of Technology cognizes technology as the Babel, “city that has

89
lost its borders: infinite multiplication and complete mediation. It
is the multiplicity itself: multitude of forms, myriad of languages,
lots of societies, plenty of institutions, array of laws” (Ibid, 4).12
In the same manner, it sees the words of the modern man as con-
fined in the tower of misunderstanding. Words that are unrelated
to their etymology, and not bound to each other, continue to mul-
tiply (most often due to the need of technological development)
because they are not enrooted anymore, but utilitarized. They are
limited to their technical, precise use and hence lose their sacred-
ness. In the context of the contemporary techno-secular civili-
zation, Dictionary of Technology asserted that the language is a
“technologically multiplied word13 (Ibid, 11), where the words
ceased to be the active nuclei which in their mutual connection
emit substantial energy. They were transformed to mere conven-
tions and terms used to define a certain object or phenomenon.
Recognizing the superficial linearity of language and their sub-
sequent reduction to technical-technological modes of communi-
cation, Dictionary of Technology returned to the cyclical reading
of meaning and understanding based on analogies, seeing this
cyclical core of comprehension as an expression of Orthodoxy.
In that attempt, the linguistic, theological, and philosophical for-
mation of Dictionary is a re-ideation of technology from the per-
spective of language and religion. Dictionary sensed that technol-
ogy forces religion and language, the two cultural-civilizational
pillars, to follow and adapt to a variable environment mainly
moulded by modern technology and its entelechy. Sensing the
outcomes of this mutation, it raised the voice against the ideology

12
In original: ,,Град који је изгубио своје границе: бесконачна умно-
женост и потпуна испосредованост. Он је сâмо мноштво: мноштво
облика, мноштво језика, мноштво друштава, мноштво институ-
ција, мноштво закона”.
13
In original: ,,технолошки умножену реч”.

90
of an automated mind, trying to prevent the overpowering dash of
technology. Religion and language present the direct experience
of a reality which the man is involved in, but technology supress-
es that experience by the unceasing mediation and thus becomes
more important than the experience itself. That is the hidden dan-
ger of technological simulacrums that try to co-opt (and substi-
tute) all the human and social processes of the modern age.
“The vary fact that Dictionary of Technology, of medieval Orthodox
sentiment, does not rethink theological, but technological issues,
puts Orthodoxy close to the core of contemporary culture” (Steva-
nović 2018: 411) and shows its active force out of the dogmatic
attire.14 Technology rests on isolation and it develops most rapidly
if there is a high level of alienation and isolation. For that reason,
Dictionary points at the notion of universal cognition and undivid-
ed experience found not only in Orthodox Christian religion.

Dictionary and its Fourth Way

Dictionary of Technology has many layers of meaning implied in

its circular structure and reference to a plethora of authors from
the sphere of theology, philosophy, literature, history of science.
The synergy of static (letters, images) and dynamic (synonyms)
in Dictionary is in complete harmony. The elements do not sur-
pass each other, but harmoniously merge in the aspiration for
a new philosophical expression. Trying to overview several di-
mensions, as well as the anthropological aspects of Dictionary
of Technology, it seems that in it language, religion, and technol-
ogy are given the “fourth element” so as to be perceived more
profoundly. This fourth way in fact is the necessary element so

14
In original: ,,Сама чињеница да Речник технологије православ-
ногсредњовековног изгледа не разматра теолошка, већ технолошка
питања ставља православље ближе центру савремене културе”.

91
as to amalgamate these seemingly disconnected aspects where
the cognition lies. Such holistic attempt to break the illusions of
human life thus reminds us of the teaching of one of the most
intriguing philosophers of the East – George Gurdjieff.
Gurdjieff was born in Armenia around 1870. His father was an a
traditional bard or “ashokh” who by retelling legends to his son
taught him the essential life and universe principles, transceden-
tal and practical ones, helping him „understand the imperceivable“
(Gurdjiev 2013: 34–37). His first tutor was a priest who further
helped him understand the basic principles not only of Orthodox
religion, but of other ancient religions as well (Ibid 50–58). But,
young Gurdjieff soon started to suspect that the truth was beyond
the relics of the past religious traditions, myths and legends he had
learned from his father, as well as from his tutor. He sensed the fun-
damental unity of everything and sought to find analogies in phe-
nomena of different orders. On his long journey to the East, looking
for what was left from the ancient wisdom, the knowledge of the
distant past which he acquired, combined with the unexplainable
events he often witnessed, led him to believe that there was the
ultimate truth somewhere beyond the span of conventional science
and religion. He learned about the three ways of cognition – the
way of fakir, the way of monk, and the way of yogi. As these three
ways did not bring fulfilment of the inner truth, he established the
fourth way as a sort of fulfillment – the continuation of the religious
way he was looking for. His spiritual pilgrimage enforced him to
establish the “fourth way” – a teaching conveying that humans are
asleep and they live in the illusion of being awaken. His conclu-
sion was that one has to learn how to live consciously, rather than
fear to sense the fullness of life. This developed self-consciousness
would hinder any illusions a person may have. Following this line
of thought, we may draw essential parallel between Dictionary of
Technology and the teachings of Gurdjieff – it is the religious ex-

92
perience of the world enforced by the struggle against automatism
in any sphere of life: thinking, sleeping, learning, perception, and
attention.
Gurdjieff insisted that a teacher cannot give a definite answer –
pupils are the ones who search, find, and understand the answers
by themselves. Teachings present nothing more than a sort of
guide. In the desire to understand, Dictionary presents its own
“four ways” of understanding: linguistic, philosophical, techno-
logical, and theological – all aimed at personal awakening of the
passive human mind and soul. It presents four ways of undivided
experience of knowledge, the path of comprehension through as-
sociations and analogies, and on the other hand shows how the
man in the modern technological milieu is distracted insomuch
that they may never reach the core of life and realize its essence.
Thus, Dictionary communicated its “own way” in the endeavour
to show how technology tries to limit the capabilities of the man
and aspires to occupy their place. Technology keeps the man in
some drowsy state never letting them have the direct experience
of life. How can a endavor sense or know anything rightly if that
is always mediated by technology or something else?
Gurdjieff’s teaching was based on developing a harmonious per-
sonality able to focus on the inner and outer world.15 “Man’s eyes
are dazzled by the bright play of the colours of multiformity, and
under the glittering surface he does not see the hidden kernel
of the one-ness of all that exists.”16 He found impetus in prayer
15
He established the Institute for the Harmonious Development of
Man in October 1922 in Paris. In the Institute the students learnt about
the “Fourth Way”, philosophy, religion, languages, sacred dance, and
practised diverse skills so as to physically, intellectually, and spirituality
transform themselves.
16
The Enneagram. A lecture by George Gurdjieff. http://www.endless-
search.co.uk/books/EnneagramSymbolismLecture.pdf P.1. Accessed
7/10/2018.

93
and taught that all the activities must start with prayer. If a man
is able to focus on the prayer, then they would be able to con-
centrate on the world as well, in all its aspects: body, mind, and
emotions. Gurdjieff also asserted that a man does not think or
feel his religion, he “lives” it (Ouspensky, 2011: 299). He did not
see religion as a certain phenomenon outside the man, but rather
an inner and active force guiding and shaping his consciousness
on the path of awakening. Both Dictionary and Gurdjieff imply
the necessity of a monastic concentration and dedication to the
path of knowledge. Furthermore, a very similar notion of religion
is found in Dictionary which does not put it forward as a given
sense of being, but as the primary and principal life energy. The
breakthrough of Dictionary lies in the effective amalgam of the-
ology and technology so that in their correlation the core of the
relation is perceived. In this case, theology, contrary to the com-
mon notion of it, is not only in theory, but in practice as well. It is
not some abstract idea which is outside, but a crucial part of the
creativity principle where the connection is established through
the circumference of Dictionary’s synonyms that correlate and
fuse in the similar way the movements in Gurdjieff’s sacred
dances combine and bond.
Gurdjieff’s teaching is somewhat perceived as symbolic (he
frequently used the Enneagram or the Ray of Creation to con-
ceptualize the world or understand the Universe), esoteric, and
conducted in secrecy, but we may rather notice that majority of
people could lack either the interest or the ability to understand
it. In the same way, Dictionary was regarded as “Aesopian”17
and coded, and upon its appearance even provoked another piece

17
Aesopian language is considered to hold a secret meaning so as to
inform only a small number of people on some conspiracy. It is cryptic,
ambiguous and confusing. For those who do not understand the veiled
meaning, it is just an innocent writing.

94
of work aiming to decode its secret meaning and message. All
this in fact implies the inability of those “asleep” to reach the
deeper layers of comprehension. Contrariwise and oddly, even
though the mechanism of modern technology is not transparent
and majority of people lack the knowledge of its vital princi-
ples, nobody has declared technology as “esoteric”, “coded”, or
“closed”, but it is by and large used and nevertheless worshipped.
The rising of Artificial Intelligence has not been considered thor-
oughly enough; it is being developed regardless of the lack of
complete image of its future implications. It is beyond under-
standing of the majority of people, but still, it is believed to be
the ultimate source of human salvation. Artificial Intelligence,
furthermore, is tested mostly in “technical” sense – examining
its efficiency and limits. If we, however, perceive it from the per-
spective of Gurdjieff or Dictionary of Technology, we realize that
Artificial Intelligence is yet another “mediator” they were trying
to warn about, but this time more sophisticated and neoteric one.
It diminishes human capability (and will) for self-achievement
and life balance. By providing help in manual tasks, it discon-
nects mind and body. In Gurdjieff’s schools, for instance, one
important aspect of the learning process included manual, hard
labor (for example in kitchen or field). Apart from studying, and
learning dance, students had to physically work hard. They were
devoted to any work – regardless how minor or important it was.
That was a significant part of the self-study. Machine intelligence
releases the man of doing manual tasks, but the price for that is
the unbalanced mind–hand relation. The oneness of mind and
hand was recognized in Dictionary of Technology where instead
of the machine’s part of work, the hand takes responsibility for
conveying the string of thought and thus preserves the string of
harmony. Fast advancement of technology brought certain dis-
continuity in self-realization. Offering comforts, Intelligence

95
Agents now push the man into the drowsy state of mind Gurd-
jieff was talking about, and deprive him of the strenght both for
physical and spiritual endeavors, hindering spiritual awakening
and harmony through the direct experience of the world.18
Following the symbology of technical interventions, Dictionary
has somewhat realized that only through theology, as its “fourth
way” or “fourth dimension”, technology as a principal driver
of modern processes may be seen in its essence. Dictionary of
Technology has an anamnetic character and calls for communion,
genuine eucharist, participation, or in one word – liturgy – the
awakening from the dream of life without struggle and suffer-
ing. The experience of religion in the script is alive and able to
transcendent to other spheres of life. Therefore, it leads to a sort
of the awakening that an attempt to overcome the boundaries of
human reality embodied in technology that governs all human
processes has a foothold in theology. Technology tries to adapt
religious experience so as to utilize it in practical problem-solv-
ing and offer a ready-made solution to human problems, elimi-
nating struggle that is a key element strenghtening human body
and mind. Technology tries to delete that path of self-knowledge
which was rooted in religion. The problem is that theology is
understood and considered exclusively in abstract terms and in
isolation and hence it is not that easy to perceive technology as a
sort of evolution of theology.
Gurdjieff showed self-study and theoretical teachings in a very
practical way – in dance. He imagined and designed a series of
18
The problem with Artificial Intelligence is evident in the learning
process. For instance, it is usually reported that one of the aims of the
Machine Intelligence is to help children study. The question that strikes
us immediately is why would children (or adults) need machine help in
knowing the world. This clashes with the philosophy of Gurdjieff who
concluded that the world may be perceivable to the man only through
direct experience of it.

96
sacred dances (called the Gurdjieff movements) aiming to enable
people to be present and conscious of their learning, where each
move had some meaning and significance designated. He based
the movements on those he encountered during his journey on
the East, and incorporated ancient dances that were passed from
generation to generation into his own system. Similarly, Dictio-
nary found practical way of presenting its ideas – hand as a resis-
tance to automatic actions. Dictionary of Technology was written
by hand and calligraphed. Thus, it implied that human hand is
not incapable or obsolete, but fit to produce. Naturally, the hand
that writes and ornaments the text needs monastic collectedness,
irrevocable dedication, and undisturbed patience. Hence, Dictio-
nary abounds in graphics, ornaments, and diverse styles of cal-
ligraphy decorating its visual identity that is not technical, nor
monotonous like in other modern blueprints. Furthermore, in its
artistic-philosophical amalgam, Dictionary of Technology also
relies on the knowledge and insights of the notable authors of the
past. Its tendency was not to be original in its undertaking, but
to base it on the understanding of others, both from the East and
West, and enhance these insights by the experience of the present
moment. What is perhaps the most stricking in comparing these
two, the open circular scheme of Dictionary’s terms resembles
the circular structure of the the Gurdjieff’s sacred dances.
In such theoretical endeavours followed by practical perfor-
mances, both Gurdjieff and Dictionary warned against the ab-
sence of consciousness and implied the outcomes of the drowsy
state of man. They called for the spiritual awakening and focus
on the path of knowledge as the only way of achieving unity with
oneself. That is their great contribution to the modern society
– direction to the way of knowing self. Their way however is
not abstract, nor dogmatic, but rather direct, practical, and inclu-
sive. That is why, between the facile optimism of technological

97
advancement and the bleak vision of techno-sceptics, we may
find spiritual strength and existential sense of human creativity in
Gurdjieff and Dictionary of Technology, highlighting the need to
create a new way that is not mimetical, arbitrary, and illusionary,
but tradition-anchored, poetical, and conscious.

Cultural Implications of Dictionary’s Alert

Machine intelligence has been developed to make the daily tasks

performance smarter, easier, and more productive. Simultane-
ously, it poses a challenge to a culture to be upon a par with the
global social dynamics. We may think that technology is only a
mirror of economic power, but it subordinates all the cultures in
the same manner and through the same policies. Across all the
meridians, the same happens when in some concrete cases reli-
gion and technology confront. Whether it is a Christian commu-
nity, Muslim locality, or a multireligious country, small or large,
there is no essential difference. For example, very illustrative in-
stances of reshaping religious identity for the aims of technology
are the respective cases and implications of Stubo-Rovni Dam in
Serbia and Sardar Sarovar Dam in Gujarat, India. Despite terri-
torial and geographical distance, both Serbian and Indian culture
have strongholds in tradition, but they undergo conformation
and adjustment to the contemporary social tempo imagining that
modern technology would bring the final solution to all human
problems and overall betterment of the society.
Stubo-Rovni Dam in Serbia was erected on the place of the Mon-
astery Gračanica. The church was flooded in 2016 and this act
was seen as a necessary step in providing electricity for the mu-
nicipality. The age of Monastery Gračanica near the city of Valje-
vo cannot be precisely determined, but it is quite possible that the
original church was built around the 12th century, at the time of the

98
father of Saint Sava, the forerunner of the royal dynasty Neman-
jić, Stefan Nemanja (later the Saint Symeon the Myrrh-Stream-
ing), by one of his brothers. It is distinctive in church architecture
testifying to the richness of the Orthodox heritage which cannot
be refuted. Despite that, the value of Gračanica is outweighed by
the technological needs of an artificial lake as the part of the Stu-
bo-Rovni dam. Thereby, there is readiness of science and tech-
nology, supported by the state and neoliberal pattern, to destroy
the centuries-old church of inestimable historical, architectural,
cultural and above all religious value. The implicit idea is that
medieval heritage has no particular place in the accomplishment
of the material and spiritual strivings.
Another example is that of the second largest dam in the world
– Sardar Sarovar Dam in the state of Gujarat in India. Exactly
one year after the Serbian church had been flooded in March
2016, the mega project Sardar Sarovar reached its final phase of
realization. The “pooja” (the act of worshipping in Hindu prac-
tice) took place on the dam which the politicians defined as the
“secular temple” of the modern India. Thus, the dams were ele-
vated to the divine heights and their inauguration was celebrated
as a holy day. That is confirmed in the dam’s name itself; the
word sarovar means “holy tank” located in the premises of the
Hindu temples. The religious name was in fact given to the dam
that was presented as a necessary holy place which would bring
(electrical) salvation to a great number of people. This is yet
another instance where technology has taken place of religion
while demanding irrevocable obedience of humans – to move
away and give up their homes in the name of modernization.
Thousands of families were relocated because of this mega proj-
ect of dam building. “A community’s sense of identity is closely
related to its physical rootedness in a particular location – its
ancestors’ spirits and its gods inhabit that space; its sense of

99
security derives from its familiarity with local geography, peo-
ple, and resources. The creation myth of the Bhilalas who live
along the river describes the Narmada as the source of all life;
the myth is sung during all important festivals of the agricultur-
al calendar” (Baviskar; Kumar Singh 1994: 356). To the people
near the river Narmada, it seems that their gods have been put
into a metal cage and their source of life has been stopped. Due
to the displacement policy, people cannot rely on their skills,
ancient knowledge (in medicine, botany, agriculture, crafts...) or
religious beliefs. Losing the land they know well, they become
solely depended on technology to help them (whether we refer
to technology in technical terms or to the system itself). There is
no chance for self-reliance and the bridge to ancient knowledge
is forever destroyed. In Gurdjieff sense, their roots are severed
and they lose the very opportunity to know themselves. India is
the cradle of four world’s religions; however, a myriad of Hin-
du, Jain, and other temples, along with Muslim mosques and
Christian churches, were swept away by the big flood of human
aspirations. Those ancient and holy settlements have become
nothing but the stagnant pools of human (dis)illusions.
Thereby, these projects seem not to be merely technical interven-
tion; they symbolically become the new churches and temples of
a technologized spiritual power. Those are the necessary changes
technology demands. It asks for the infinite increase and adaptation
to the mechanical setting which is to ultimately liberate the man
from work, the chains of tradition and nature. But if evolution is the
precondition, what is the man evolving to – postnatural and post-
human being/form? If robots become our reality, then the next step
would be to find the new God – God Robot, RoboGod or AiGod and
worship it as a higher being. Even today prophets of technological
advancement openly praise Artificial Intelligence as almighty being
that surpasses everything that human could do and comprehend.

100
The dams deprived priests and believers of an ancient Orthodox
church, and forced Indian communities to move away from their
homelands. Their places of spiritual harmony remained just bar-
ren, flooded lands. In that light, it is important to rethink whether
the dams are related solely to technological development or cul-
tural and religious displacement as well, and question whether
religion is strong enough to reconsider technological dynamics
of the modern times and demands. To put it simply, is it possi-
ble to compare significance and meaning of church and dam?
Are they different realities with no common denominator, or we
could judge them from some distant axiological, epistemologi-
cal, and historical point? Is dam the final word for church or vice
versa? What are ultimate criteria?
In the contemporary world, the man lives in the matrix of tech-
nology and believes that there is nothing outside the technologi-
cal net. The only aspect considered regarding the dams is the one
related to ecology. However, dams building is not only eco-con-
cern, but it interferes directly into the sphere of Christian and
Hindu identity, dislocating and disrupting religious and cultural
practices, changing the perception of (social or religious) iden-
tity itself. Technology became not the means of fulfilling human
aspirations, but the manner of human existence – every aspect is
moulded by technology, and every step of human act is dictated
by its tempo.
In Serbia and India, the old holy temples were simply replaced
by the new ones. They can be destroyed, and the new ones may
be easily built. Unfortunately, contrary to technological values
system, in religion newer is not better. But the message of tech-
nology is clear – it can offer only something “new”, in this case
nothing but concrete buildings not conveying any spiritual sig-
nificance. And if a church, holy place, has to be flooded, we have
to ask ourselves – what is the next? Where is the limit of modern

101
yearning? Certainly, this reminds us of the biblical story of No-
ah’s Arc and sensing the flood of technological needs and deeds,
Dictionary of Technology now appears a genuine modern Noah’s
Arc. It tried to alert about the future streams of the modern civ-
ilization and trying to evade such floods of technological idols
offered a significantly different way.
Technology became a new temple. By its game of reducing
churches to common buildings, it opened the door to virtual
churches. As an ideal technical solution, churches will no longer
exert money, effort, and physical space, but would be transferred
to virtual space, demand no cost, and be “built” in no time. How-
ever, we still need to ask ourselves – can the new churches and
temples replace the ancient ones that transcend the spirit of time
and maintain a thread of connection? Nevertheless, those ques-
tions seem to be redundant having in mind that virtual churches
may attract a large number of “followers” who would then be
able to take part in liturgy with one click of a mouse, without the
devoted effort of visiting the church.
Relating these two respective cases of dams building, we may
realize that despite the territorial distance, the same pattern of
technological intervention is being applied in Serbia and India.
The current policy is nothing but erection of the new technologi-
cal temples – all is done in the interest of technological progress
per se where electrical energy plays a role of the Christian Holy
Spirit. In that sense, what happens to the displaced religion and
identity? Could electrical Holy Ghost, which animates mechani-
cal facilities, be valuable terrestrial replacement of the divine im-
petus of the Holy Spirit is yet another question which technology
does not permit.
Technology tends to reshape the world according to the emerg-
ing demands. Hence, water is transformed from the basic im-

102
pulse of life to the symbol of destruction. It is not a connection
of the Sky and Earth, but a mediator between technology and
its users. Ultimately, its value is reduced to the one of a com-
modity. That also explains why the current wars are not fought
for anything else, but for the access to water as a resource that
would foster modern technological needs of a state that has the
open access to it.
We cannot say that technology brings us nothing, but we need
to essentially understand the flood of technological measures
in which the modern world mirrors itself. As Dostoevsky al-
legorically showed in “The Brothers Karamazov”, the Great
Inquisitor offers bread to people, but not due to his love or
compassion, but as an effective method of persuasion tempt-
ing them to betray God, that is in fact the symbol of the self.
The only difference is that in the present era the Great Inquis-
itor hardly leaves any choice. Dictionary of Technology re-
fers to the allegory by Dostoevsky implying that the Great In-
quisitor is still there and is nothing else but technology. “The
superintendent of the monastery of technology is the Great
Inquisitor” (Dictionary of Technology 1981: 13). In that sense,
Dictionary relates the bread offered by the Great Inquisitor to
the certainties of technology and distinguishes freedom as the
strength not to refuse to take the responsibility because of the
piece of bread.

Conclusion
The consciousness of the modern man is so much defined by the
technical values that every choice that a person makes is accord-
ing to the technological compass and is conditioned by technol-
ogy. The choice is no longer rooted in freedom and is necessar-
ily reduced to technology. In such setting, the mega dams built
across the world are the realization of the “megamachine” as

103
Lewis Mumford imagined and foresaw it.19 In theology, technol-
ogy is often perceived as neutral. Spiritual fathers, theologians,
and church intellectuals do not warn about its inherent hazards
for they see it in relative condition – if used for higher purposes,
it is useful, if the goals are not humane, it is dangerous. Ortho-
dox theology acknowledges that the extent to which technolo-
gy would destroy human relations would depend on the level of
critical thought towards its progress, and technology undermines
principles of humankind only when it is misused.20 A general at-
titude of the Church towards the use of information and commu-
nication technology is to some extent critical, but mainly affirma-
tive, because it more or less searches for some compromise. Such
relativistic approach towards (post)modern technology was not
implied in Dictionary of Technology which through the motif of
the Great Inquisitor showed that technology allows no negotia-
tion. Dictionary did not consider technology as a tool and did not
reduce it to a simple machine controlled by the man. It warned
that technology has become not only the way of life but genuine
replacement of the life itself that deepens misunderstanding be-
tween the man and God.
It is important to notice that Dictionary of Technology did not
raise its voice in a pessimistic anti-technology manner. It did not
try to evoke the apocalyptic21 image, but to present the dangers
19
On Mumford’s implication of modern technology and the relation of
capitalism and state see Mumford, Lewis. Technics and Civilization.
The University of Chicago Press, 2010.
20
See Subotić, Oliver. Informatically Controlled Society. Belgrade:
Bernar. 2011; Church and Globalization: Structure, Relation, and
Consequences. Belgrade: Bernar. 2011; Digital Challenges: The Way
of Christianity in the Binary Code Civilization. Belgrade: Bernar.
2013; Man and Information Technologies: A View from the Orthodox
Perspective. Belgrade: Bernar. 2013.
21
We may be sure about this if we look at how Dictionary defined
the term Apocalypse – as “epiphany” and “abolishment of media”.
of the enchanting voice of modern technology that is paid by tre-
mendous loss of biodiversity, depletion of terrestrial resources,
human alienation, automation, and ignorance. Nevertheless, it is
not yet another dire warning about clash of civilizations and the
end of humanity. Instead, Dictionary effectively pointed at all
the antinomies the man is prone to fall to. It did not apologet-
ically valorize Orthodox experience and traditional heritage as
the passive remains of history, but included them as active forces
in the process of critical awakening. Thereby, the aim of it is
not to advocate some retreat to the pre-technology period, but to
prevent exclusion of premodern experience for reconsideration
of modern and postmodern dimensions of technology. In other
words, the human wellbeing, or salvation, should not be exclu-
sively related to technology, but initiated by realizing selfhood.
The basis of the hermeneutics of Dictionary is therefore the
problem of isolation – the man is separated from the world by
images and their endless mirroring. Like the Holy books show
the problem of isolation (from the God or the spiritual), Dictio-
nary asserted that isolation, where images are basic insulating
material, is one of the principal problems of our age. Such isola-
tion brought to the building of these mega dams and they are yet
another step in the building of ever-modern human civilization,
but may never resolve the core problems of human existence.
The core problem outcomes from the main technological effort
of building the world as a mega image which is some sort of dam
that lies between the man and the world. “We are progressing
in solving these problems, but only in that way when we solve
one, we face another. Such is the advancement of technology in

Furthermore, in Dictionary, Apocalypse is the synonym to the concept

of Selfhood. In that sense, apocalypse is not about evoking the gloomy
image of the end of the world, but the call for transformation and
personal and spiritual awakening.

105
our society” (Ellul: 1962: 421). The man tends to isolate them-
selves from religious identity by technological images, to sepa-
rate perennial tradition from inventions engaged in progressus ad
infinitum. Technology, which appears as “new theology”, is an
attempt to produce as many images as possible without relation
to selfhood as a genuine theological being.
Dictionary shed a new light on Orthodoxy in the world of (post)
modernist frame, challenging the thought that technology is the
only possible fulcrum of social reality. The problem is that a
large number of people considers technology to be neutral and
dependent on human use. But the process of perfecting technol-
ogy is so rapid that the man is not able to follow its steps and is
decreasingly capable of noticing that it is technology that has
the control of human behavior. A great number of people uses
technology on a daily basis without ever asking themselves how
that complex mechanism actually works. In the modern Tower of
Babel where in the absence of any relatedness we fail to under-
stand what the technological processes are about, we may be lost
forever. But in Dictionary of Technology and its circumference
of words, their synonyms, in its interpretations and examples,
we may find the fourth way and lost thread of connection to once
again ask ourselves: what is technology to us – Noah’s Arc or the
Tower of Babel?

References

Anders 1985: Anders, Ginter. The Obsolescence of Man. Belgrade:

Nolit. [Anders, Ginter. Zastarelost čoveka. Beograd: Nolit].

Baviskar; Kumar Singh 1994: Baviskar Amita; Kumar Singh

Arun: “Malignant Growth: The Sardar Sarovar Dam and its Im-

106
pact on Public Health”. Environmental Impact Assessment Re-
view. New York. 349–358.

From 1968: From, Erich. The Revolution of Hope. New York: Bantam.

From 1978: From, Erich. Escape from Freedom. Belgrade: Nolit.

[From, Erik. Bekstvo od slobode. Beograd: Nolit].

Gurdjiev 2013: Gurdjieff, G. I. Meeting with Remarkable Men.

Translated by Dušica Milojković. Belgrade: Babun. [Gurdjiev.
G. I. Susreti sa izuzetnim ljudima. Prevela Dušica Milojković.
Beograd: Babun].

Ouspensky 2011: Ouspensky P. D. In Search of the Miraculous:

Fragments of an Unknown Teaching. New York: Ishi Press.

Peri 2000: Perry, Marvin. An Intellectual History of Modern

Europe. Translated by Đorđe Krivokapić. Belgrade: Clio. [Peri,
Marvin. Intelektualna istorija Evrope. S engleskog preveo Đorđe
Krivokapić. Beograd: Clio.]

Radulović 2017: Radulović, Milan. Time and Soul: Poetics and

Ethics of Serbian prose of the Second Half of the 20th Century.
Belgrade: Jasen. [Радуловић, Милан. Време и душа: поетика и
етика српске прозе друге половине 20. века. Београд: Јасен].

Reich 1995: Reich, Charles A. The greening of America. New

York Crown Trade Paperbacks.

Rečnik tehnologije 1981: Dictionary of Technology. Belgrade:

Vidici. no. 1–2. [Речник технологије. Београд: Видици. бр.
1–2.]. Accessible on https://recniktehnologije.wordpress.com/.

Stevanović 2017: Stevanović, Aleksandra. Dictionary of

Technology and Post-Truth. In Heptadecagon – Dictionary of
Technology as Anti-utopia (pro et contra). Vujadinović, Dimitrije
(Ed.). Belgrade: Institute of European Studies. [Стевановић,
Александра. Анти-утопијски речник технологије у времену
после истине. У: Хептадекагон – Речник технологије као

107
анти-утопија (pro et contra). Ур. Димитрије Вујадиновић.
Београд: Институт за европске студије. 135–148].

Stevanović 2018: Stevanović, Aleksandra. Theology of Dic-

tionary of Technology. Niš: Church Studies. no. 15. 407–418.
[Стевановић, Александра. Теологија Речника технологије.
Ниш: Црквене студије. 2018. Бр. 15. 407–418].

Tillich 1953: Tillich, Paul. The Shaking of the Foundation. New

York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Vidović 1986: Vidović, Žarko. Experiments on Spiritual Experi-

ence. Belgrade: Sfairos. [Видовић, Жарко. Огледи о духовном
искуству. Београд: Сфаирос].

Đorđević 2002: Đorđević, Dragoljub B. Golden Mean: TEOS

EPO MEHANES. Science, Religion, Society. Eds. Vladeta Je-
rotić et al. Belgrade: Faculty of Orthodox Theology/Ministry of
Faith of the Republic of Serbia. 268–276. [Ђорђевић, Драгољуб
Б. Златни пресек: TEOS EPO MEHANES. Наука, религија,
друштво. Ур. Владета Јеротић et al. Београд: Православни
богословски факултет/Министарство вера Републике
Србије. 268–276].

108
 THEOLOGY BEHIND TECHNOLOGY
On the Way to Dictionary of Technology

Vladimir Dimitrijević
Serbian Society for History of Science

This paper considers the genesis of thinking within Dictionary

of Technology in the context of crucial historic moments
that led to its creation. It is noticed that technology springs
out of the Cartesian fissure between mental and corporeal
substance (res cogitans and res extensa). What is particularly
sought after is the Orthodox experience of the world that is
not defined by technology and that seeks its foundation in the
notion of selfhood.

Keywords: Dictionary of Technology, subject–object relation,

Descartes, selfhood.

On the Symbolics of the Date

We have gathered here around theology of Dictionary of Tech-

nology on a particularly symbolic day – 25th May, the Day of
Youth, when a baton of youth was brought over to Tito as the
president for life of S.F.R. Yugoslavia, as a sign of eternal and
lasting loyalty, and with faith that he would never die or that as
a Tibetan lama he might reincarnate himself as a next warrior
against Capitalism. Although it was not his real date of birth, on
that very day all were bowing before the greatest son of the Yu-
goslav nations and peoples. Fifty years ago, also exactly on the
date of this gathering, on 25th May 1968, the state radio and tele-
vision of France began striking, and De Gaulle’s prime-minister
Pompidou tried to negotiate with everyone.

109
And then Paris arrived to Belgrade with the “June movements”.
Already on 2nd June in front of the Culture Centre of New Bel-
grade, there was a fight between the police and the students of the
University of Belgrade, who wanted to join the young workers
at a concert. The revolutionary students were coming to the city
centre and fought, again, the police near the overpass, at which
occasion once revolutionaries Veljko Vlahović and Miloš Minić
were beaten.
And it began: student uprising, self-contained, but modeled ac-
cording to Europe that was dreaming about the left which was
more left than left, and saw a hope of a new spontaneity in Mao’s
China. The columnist Bogdan Tirnanić described the event in the
following manner: “The main centers of rebellion were Faculty
of Philosophy, Faculty of Law, and the Academy of Fine Arts.
And it lasted for seven days and nights. The police did not dare
intervene inside the mentioned buildings due to the proclaimed
autonomy of university but it used force to prevent workers from
suburbs to join the students. It was, without a doubt, an exciting
week in the city in which nothing else was taking place after all.
Gathered around in yards and halls, the rebels were dancing and
singing to the sounds of the ceaseless professorial lectures, Stevo
Žigon was playing Robespierre’s monologue from the play Dan-
ton’s Death, documentary films were made, one of them even for
the needs of a TV station, some kisses were exchanged too, the
slices of breads and “Zdenka” cheese triangles were swapped for
each other. No one was willing to miss something like that. The
press was, of course, fiercely against it all. /…/
Except for the issue of the university reform, the real cause of this
June protests was acceptable to all: the students were protesting
against the so-called red bourgeois, by which they assumed the
political ruling caste of the single-party system, and therefore,
generally speaking, against the bureaucratization of society by the

110
co-travellers of the ongoing revolution, those politically adequate
officers whom the Communist dissident Milovan Đilas (in the
eponymous book) called a new class, which had led to the slow-
down of reforms and disturbed the development of self-governing.
But the real ideological basis of the revolution was an extremely
leftist one, partly under the influence of the ideology of Mao Ze-
dong, but it was even more in vein of the then popular Neo-Marx-
ism, that is, the New Left, that demanded a return to the original
Communism, as reflected in the early works of its theorists, and
thus, according to this, the University of Belgrade was renamed
into the Red University Karl Marx. The only thing worse than that
was the renaming of Podgorica, the capital city of Montenegro,
into Titograd. To put it most simply, the students basically de-
manded more socialism per capita. That is why, seemingly quite
unexpectedly, Marshal Tito supported them from reasons known
only to him at that moment, but which would later become clear to
all. It was a welcome alibi for another reform of the experimental
society of those days, this time in the direction of strengthening the
levers of the so-called real Socialism.“1
At the ballad’s end the students were cheering Tito and playing
“Kozarа kolo”2 that quickly, and especially after the adoption of
the Constitution in 1974, turned into the state simulacrum dance
macabre. And the dance macabre still lasts, for Yugoslavia,
whose centenary of foundation falls this year, still lasts, com-
pletely in line with the insight of Aleksandar Petrović: “Yugo-
slavia was a state which existed in different forms between 1919
and 2006. This exhibition was an implicit attempt to answer a
1
Tirnanić, Bogdan. June Movements. NIN. 22. May 2008. [Тирнанић,
Богдан. Липањска гибања. НИН. 22. мај 2008]. http://www.nin.
co.rs/pages/article.php?id=38104&add_comment=1&,приступљено
Accessed on 24th May 2018.
2
A traditional folk dance originally from the villages on the slopes of
the Mount Kozara, by which it was named.

111
question without historical tension, social censorship and the
hidden interests by using an association of free feelings – and
the question is: what is Yugoslavia? Is it one of many fixed-term
mosaics such as Byzantium or European Union, or is it some-
thing else? It is first and foremost imagination, interpenetration
and centuries-old reshaping of Napoleonic and Austro-Hungari-
an ideas into which Serbian and Balkan energies were supposed
to flow only to receive a predictable form that can be managed,
erected and torn down. Its difference from Byzantium and the
EU is that it had its own languages whose hybrid form still lives
as Serbo-Croatian in Wikipedia and in the Dictionary of Serbian
Academy of Science. Unviable as a state, Yugoslavia is thus via-
ble as a utopia that is nowadays managed by no one, but which
does not lose its imaginative force as ‘the eternal torch of the
eternal dark’ because it draws it from the need to be freed from
those that created the idea of it. Yugoslavia did not cease to ex-
ist because, having been born as idea, it continued its life as a
thought. Minerva’s owl of its idea was Dictionary of Technology
and its Aesopian language that is still waiting for its interpreters”
(Petrović 2018: 2–3).
Here we are indeed in the Rectorate of the University of Bel-
grade, in whose backyard Žigon was declaiming Danton’s
Death, unconsciously pointing at the Enlightenment as the
root of the revolution that burst in 1789, asked for what was
its own in 1968, and that is still lasting. This time we found
ourselves not in the backyard but on the last floor of the build-
ing so that we could see how high the matter of freedom has
ascended or went away – and in contrast to technology and
shadows of its electronic totalitarianism, and religion and its
attempts to subsume and direct the unsettled mind that is now
led by different eschatologies.

112
Before Dictionary

In the year of Tito’s death, drenched in a sea of tears and taking

oaths of eternal loyalty, we witnessed the appearance of Vidici,
issue 5–6. The journal seemed to exist in a wholly different coun-
try as it started dealing with technology in the dawn of the new
order as a topic of all topics in the ages to come. The thematic
issue, an introduction of a kind for Dictionary of Technology,
was titled “Technology”, and brought an array of texts on tech-
nology as the basis of contemporary thought and life which have
remained valuable to this very day. The texts mostly contained
the insights of foreign thinkers, but there were also the contribu-
tions of the editors of Vidici themselves. In the society that, on
its path to Socialism “with human face”, still verbally held to Le-
nin’s attitude that Socialism cannot exist without electrification
(which means that Socialism is the triumph of technology that
would help the working masses to abandon the agrarian world),
suddenly a journal appeared that put everything into doubt. And
it was a doubt that was far more radical than the leftist one from
1968 that had been building a new religion out of technology.
It was already in the commentary to the front page of Vidici (that
showed the shards of a broken mirror) that we can discern the
real background of events. According to the anonymous writer
of the text, life is inauthentic; it has become a lie that was, in
times past, opposed by Christ and Socrates. In the introductory
text Christ is masked as “Ga Nokri” from Bulgakov’s Master
and Margarita, that ruthless novelistic confrontation with the il-
lusions of the Communist utopianism. (The ideological pack of
Cerberuses was ever awake and it was necessary to hide Christ
with the Russian novel that exposed him much better than a pile
of theological theses). A line by Woland from Bulgakov’s novel
(that was again cited under a mask in the Russian original) is the

113
motto of the entire issue: “But I am tortured by this question: if
there is no God, who, then, is directing human life and the whole
order of things on this earth.” The authors of introduction claim
that we live in a world in which every word is a lie, and therefore
it is not difficult to lie in such a world. „Ga Nokri” paid the price
for the refusal to lie with being crucified and “he was no one’s
agent or supporter or liar” (Technology 1980: 4).
Suddenly, the introduction is struck with the appearance of
Boys, human creations that would play a significant role in
Dictionary of Technology. The author of the introduction states
that no words should be wasted on them, for the very speaking
thereof is a recognition of its own that these phantoms really
exist. One should not tear down what is non-existent, having
as one’s model Socrates who did not fight nor did he tear down
things, being “man as opposed to mankind”. In the world ruled
by Demos (the same that poisoned the philosopher, right?), it is
clear: “If Boys are Troy, then it is right to destroy them. If they
are Demos” (Ibid). Everything necessitates a sacrifice – Socrates
drank the poison, Abraham sacrificed his own son, Tesla gave
up on his sex. But then we witnessed the victory of technology
that made every kind of sacrifice pointless. And one should fight
technology but not by shouting slogans and asking for some-
thing “more”, but by understanding the nature of human con-
sciousness that armed itself with technology so that it would
force the world to its knees. It does not help to resort to phrases
such as how technology is used, whether for good or for evil, for
they are all barren since technology does not know the meaning
between good and evil, between purposes and means, having
already created everything into a means, including the human
being. That is what is spoken in the text by Aleksandar Petrović,
Technology or the End of Science that appeared in that issue of
the journal Vidici.

114
How did Technology Replace Theology?
As the eyes of the entire nation are turned to the great death of the
President for Life and his resurrection in any political, theologi-
cal or technological form, young Petrović has noticed that tech-
nology can only be understood in its historical fatedness that is
unthinkable without Descartes’ search for certainty, ens certum.
Descartes’ will for the present is the will for certainty, which is a
notion that does not exist in the Classical Age. The ancients did
not possess certainty in notion: instead they had it in the world
and Archimedes’ metaphysics was unused and useless until the
great crisis that, according to Petrović, erupted in the Renais-
sance. Renaissance gave birth to certainty that Rene Descartes
went towards. His demand for certainty is a proof that he is no
longer in the world nor does he have a world: he has become
opposed to the world and inhabits the notion of certain. That is
the moment that essentially belongs to the 17th century when the
foundation for the triumph of modern technology was set up. For,
as Petrović deems, the stuff we are touching with our senses orig-
inated in Descartes’ thoughts.
The living multitude of the world of the Greek naturalists retreats
before the new techno-science, towards which Descartes started
walking with his eyes closed. Behind those closed eyes a world
as certainty of fear before the unknown was born. By dividing
the world into two substances, mental and corporeal, Descartes
endeavored to analytically reduce the fear from the unknown,
but he created larger issues than the ones he was getting away
from. Technology, which is essentially an attack of mental upon
extended substance – for there is nothing between that could har-
monize them – replaced God who was banished from the world.
For, as Petrović writes, if technology had not appeared to connect
in a new way the world without the Creator, it would have most
surely split in two and vanished.

115
After Descartes the wholeness of the world has been lost, and it
was reduced to subject and object, inevitably stripped of sense
qualities. The nature lost its sensual and aesthetic being, turning,
according to Petrović, into “a kind of a spectral existence, mute
and colorless, emanation of movement and necessary space”
(Petrović 1980: 10). While the reality of the ancients does not
know of movement, except as illusion, for the Cartesian mind
nature is nothing else but movement.
The main idea of nature ever since 17th century has been law
which, such as it is given, comes before the natural objects. The
causality itself, without which there is no modern science, accord-
ing to Petrović represents a “transcendental outlook that does not
belong to objects but to my knowledge of the object” (Ibid, 11).
Technology appears as owning nature of some kind, and cosmos
becomes mechanism. Since the boundaries of nature are defined
by the boundaries of scientific insight, nature gradually vanishes
to the point that in contemporary physics it becomes the world
of shadows gliding towards nothingness. For such science the
ideal is knowledge without the subject of knowledge, knowledge
as mere objectivity. If we add the idea of progress to that, the
picture becomes clear. The scientists are sacrificing the entire
previous history to the idea of progress. That is why, according
to Petrović, the science of today has no history and neither does
it care about historical roots of its problems.
Petrović notices that the process of technologizing in contem-
poraneity is twofold – in science it signifies “de-objectifying of
the object” and in the art the emptying of the subject of all kinds
of objectivity in order to be submerged into pure “I immedi-
acy”. Both of these mean disappearance of personhood from
reality for its nature does not easily bear dualism. It is enough,
Petrović says, to look at the modern scientific theories – they
are all faceless. Once the theory was, for example, Newton’s;

116
nowadays we don’t have such things for modern scientists are
only technologists.
As “gliding towards nothingness” is concerned, modern physics
that “happens in the situation of the observer” (Ibid, 13), begins
its investigation with “indivisible” atom only to make it ever and
ever smaller until it has reached particles who are also waves,
which means that, at the same time, they are that are not matter.
Heisenberg even found that quantum mechanics does not even
deal with particles but with our thinking about them. Science
ceases to be knowing and becomes a “concrete technological
activity of the will to pulverize reality” (Ibid, 14). Science no
longer has an essential relation with thinking and only serves as
ancilla for the technological conquest of the world. Contempo-
rary scientists who have lost place and initiative they once had,
are not persons but teams of technologists who do not think much
about the object of their work and instead flee from deep thought
as the devil flees from the cross. Technology has become its only
subject and it keeps asking questions only about itself.
At the same time all of this is related to the acceleration itself be-
ing a pollution of time. The faster ticking of the clocks, Petrović
says, has no longer any relation to our heartbeats. In the end, the
triumph of technology leads to the disappearance of subject and
object the distinction of which marked the beginning of the mod-
ern age. The chief paradox is that ever-growing distancing from
the object is called “objectivity” and, as Petrović says, “gliding
towards nothingness is shown as filling with being” (Ibid, 15).
Technology is our own will and choice in every sense. It is the
stone wall of the formula two times two equals four, usability as
usefulness, all that we no longer are. And young Petrović, ruth-
less as Spengler had been decades before him, does not see tech-
nological solutions (especially not such that are easy) for tech-

117
nological problems.3 The only possible exit out of the situation
has theological character and in Dictionary of Technology it is
defined as selfhood.

What is not Technology?

Technology is actually not technicity, but magic – it is as obvious

as it is convincing. The basic postulate of magic as uttered by the
famous English occultist Aleister Crowley is “Do what thou wilt
shall be the whole of the Law”. Magic is bringing the world to
submission and changing it according to one’s own will. That is
why Faust gives up on Word and Mind as the interpretation of
Logos from the beginning of the Gospel of John, saying: “In the
beginning there was Work”. Knowledge is Power and not loving
knowledge of Maker and the creation.
Technology has brought thus far unprecedented Power but human
being has lost feeling. This kind of life leads to terrible violence
towards oneself and nature. On the other hand, according to the
insights of the Orthodox thought, man needs innocent purity that
is a lack of egoism and pride. Due to the fact that man, after what
he has done to himself and the world, became emotionally unsta-

3
In the same issue, in the text by William Barret, “What is Technology?”
one can notice the irreversibility of the process that had begun long ago
and brought us where we are now. Namely, our culture (and culture
always arises from a cult) is such that in it ritual long ago became
peripheral to technology. Machine has become the essential expression
of the reduced humanity, for it is the embodied process of decision-
making. Since it performs a limited and immutable number of actions,
until it’s broken, it always ends its tasks with certain results. This leads
to giving life over to the non-human hands of technicity (that was in
the vicious circle of Rationalism, again build by human hands). Barret
says: “We turn to books to learn how to make love and as a result, sex
is primarily considered a technique. /…/ The man simply needs to find
the right method, a specific procedure, and all problems of life must
inevitably back down before him.” (Technology 1980: 20).

118
ble, we had as the result of the search for certainty the appearance
of the robot as a replacement for man. We have entered the age of
artificial intelligence. In the last fifteen years, due to robotization,
nine million workplaces have been lost. Automatization of the
working processes used to be controlled by humans whereas ar-
tificial intelligence improves itself on its own. The development
of this intelligence has its philosophical underpinnings – from
the scholastic reduction of God’s image in human being to mere
reason, across Descartes’ cogito ergo sum, to Enlightenment’s
attitude that each one of us is a kind of a machine, of which La
Mettrie wrote. Computer is called a “metamachine”, the machine
of all machines. Martin Heidegger discovered that our age is not
technical because it uses machines, but it is the age of the ma-
chines because it is technical. If technicity has turned science
from a heuristic activity whose goal was to discover cause and
meaning, into mere servant, if by the cult of measurability, count-
ability and predictability it has put man into a narrow place, it
seems that man has no longer any space for being human. The
question of essence [whatness], as the basic question of the hu-
man thought, has been suppressed by the question of how. Nature
was mathematized, and then technologized. From mechanical
clock to artificial intelligence, Orthodox thinkers have had the
insight that the fight of man against God has been going on and
seven-mile steps have been made.
What then is the essential relation between technology and
Christian Orthodoxy? It could perhaps be best summarized in
the statement that prayer is not technology. It is a living knowl-
edge of oneself as a selfhood that refuses to bow before the idols
of technology. But as the example of Dictionary of Technology
shows, to attain selfhood, one has to swim upstream. To swim
upstream means to guard over oneself and the world, which is
what Dictionary did, warning against the great tide of technol-

119
ogy. In Psalm 130 it is written: “My soul waiteth for the Lord
more than they that watch for the morning”. The famous Greek
theologian, Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) quotes Elder So-
phrony (Sakharov), the student of Saint Silouan the Athonite –
“Who wants to be a Christian, he needs to be an artist”, and in
this regard he says: “It is known that artists (poets, writers, paint-
ers) have inspiration. They love what they are doing, and their
minds are full of ideas, images, sounds. This means that when
they want to create something, they think about it day and night;
their whole being is filled with what interests them. The artists
have a great desire to express what they have conceived, and they
make great efforts to show it authentically. In that way they give
birth to works of art out of their own being. Even when they try
to describe the way they work, then they feel pain, because they
know they were not able to make sense of their original goal, and
that they did not represent and express the whole inner ocean of
their feelings and longings. A Christian should be such a person,
and this is how he should live. To be a Christian means to be an
artist – to have an inner longing, ‘desperate thirst’, as the holy el-
der used to say, an aspiring towards God that is the matter of life
and death, and we must not make any compromises there. Since
man was made in the image and likeness of God, he carries in
himself the principle of ‘entelecheia’, the principle of selfhood.
It leads him to the final unison: he wants to be like God, wants to
become by grace what God is by nature.”4
A Christian is, therefore, an artist by precedence. According to
the student of Sophrony, Father Zachariah, it means that man, by
shaping his own soul, ought to raise himself from psychological
to ontological, that is, spiritual level. Saint John of Damascus

4
Retrieved from: <https://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Ierofej_Vlahos/znayu-
cheloveka-vo-hriste-zhizn-i-sluzhenie-startsa-sofronija-isihasta-i-bo-
goslova/#0_17> accessed 19.10. 2018.

120
testifies that Adam, when he was made, had an enlightened mind
and was able to contemplate God. He possessed a ceaseless inner
prayer. After the Fall, Adam and Eve fell in their existence from
the level of being to the level of soul, which is transfused with
sense impressions. In such a state, man is always interested what
other people think of him so he tries to please them at all times.
He is hunting apparitions, reflects himself in mirrors, submits to
technology, becomes Boy. That is why he is constantly at war and
conflict with his close ones and himself. The war is both interior
and exterior. Illusion, then, wins. That is why, according to Elder
Sophrony, the art of the soul is – redemption.
Sin is not mere disobedience to God, but sickness of the entire
human being that separates us from the Maker. The spiritual forces
are in an unnatural state which is reflected on the body. That is
why man needs to return to natural and then reach supernatural
state for which he was built. Redemption includes God’s energies
and human synergy (cooperation) to go from one state to another,
blessed by God. There are two basic ways to achieve this: asceti-
cism and the act of grace. Asceticism means ceaseless answering
the question: “What does God ask of me?” and striving towards
completing that command. As far as the other way is concerned,
the grace of the Holy Spirit, like an X-ray, points to man the chaos
in his soul and the depravity of his condition, which moves him to
ceaseless redemption and the desire to become better. Grace of the
Holy Spirit wakes in him inspiration and longing to become one
with God. It is only on this way that illusions can be defeated – that
is the exit from the labyrinth in which man no longer recognizes
his original meaning. And that could perhaps be the best summary
of the joyful news that is brought by Dictionary of Technology that
selfhood shall not be defeated.

121
References

Bošković; Petrović 2015: Bošković, Dušan; Petrović, Aleksandar

(Eds.) Return from the Land of Dragons – Dictionary
of Technology 33 Years Later. Belgrade: Institute for
Philosophy and Social Theory. [Повратак из земље
змајева – Речник технологије 33 године после. Ур.
Душан Бошковић, Александар Петровић. Београд:
Институт за филозофију и друштвену теорију].
Dimitrijević 2017: Dimitrijević, Vladimir. The role of Vladimir
Vujić in Shaping the Ideology of Saint Sava’s Vision
of Orthodoxy. Niš: Church Studies. no 14. 501–519.
[Димитријевић, Владимир. Улога Владимира Вујића
у обликовању идеологије светосавља. Ниш: Црквене
студије. бр. 14. 501–519].
Dimitrijević 2016: Dimitrijević, Vladimir. Market or Temple.
The Stance of Vladimir Vujić. Belgrade: Catena Mundi.
[Димитријевић, Владимир. Тржиште или храм.
Становиште Владимира Вујића. Београд: Catena
Mundi].
Petrović 1980: Petrović, Aleksandar. Technology or the End of
Science. Belgrade: Vidici. no. 5–6. [Petrović, Aleksandar.
Tehnologija ili kraj nauke. Beograd: Vidici. br. 5–6].
Petrović 2015: Petrović, Aleksandar. About Dictionary of
Technology and Reduction of Illusions. Belgrade:
Theoria. no. 58. 147–166. [Петровић, Александар.
О Речнику технологије и тесању привида. Београд:
Тхеориа. бр. 58. 147–166].
Petrović 2018: Petrović, Aleksandar. Hermetics of Dictionary
of Technology and Obsolete Modernity of the Yugoslav
Utopia. Towards Po-etics of Regular Heptadecagon as
the Educational Standard. Catalogue of the exhibition.
Belgrade: Gallery “Prozor”. pp. 2–3. [Петровић,
Александар. Хермeтика Речника технологије и
застарела модерност утопије Југославије. Ка по-
етици правилног хептадекагона као образовног

122
 стандарда. Каталог изложбе. Београд: Галерија
,,Прозор“. стр. 2–3].
Rečnik tehnologije 1981: Dictionary of Technology. Belgrade:
Vidici. no. 1–2. [Rečnik tehnologije. Beograd: Vidici.
бр. 1–2]. Accessible on https://recniktehnologije.word-
press.com/.
Tehnologija 1980: Technology. Belgrade: Vidici. no. 5–6.
[Tehnologija. Beograd: Vidici. br. 5–6].
Vujadinović 2017: Vujadinović, Dimitrije (Ed.). Heptadecagon
– Dictionary of Technology as Anti-utopia (pro et
contra). Belgrade: Institute of European Studies.
[Вујадиновић, Димитрије. Хептадекагон – Речник
технологије као анти-утопија ((pro et contra).
Београд: Институт за европске студије].

123
 DICTIONARY OF TECHNOLOGY
AND CHURCH STUDIES: THE SAME IDEA
Dragiša Bojović
University of Niš
International Centre for Orthodox Studies

In this paper we approach Dictionary of Technology primarily

through its cover page, a prelude of a sort, in which crucial,
concluding thoughts are strikingly reliant on the theology
of Apocalypse. The relationship between faith and science,
which in several ways promoted Dictionary, has its reflection
in some contemporary projects such as, for instance, the
journal Church Studies.

Keywords: Dictionary of Technology, Apocalypse, faith, science,

Church Studies.

It was with many reasons that the paper written by Aleksandra

Stevanović, published in Church Studies, Theology of Dictionary
of Technology, was suggested as the initial text for the dialogue
during the symposium Religion and Technology: Dictionary of
Technology as a Case Study.1 Not only the place where the paper
was published, but the multitude of common things on the level of
ideas, decided the topic of this paper. The starting point about (to-
wards) Dictionary of Technology was determined by the ultimate
sentences of the prelude to Dictionary (the cover page) and the
final sentence in the mentioned paper. The sentences in the prelude
are, in fact, a command given to Dictionary: “Let us eat it! In our
belly it will be bitter, but in our mouth it will be sweet.”2 Today

1
Stevanović 2018.
2
According to: https://recniktehnologije.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/
recnik_high.pdf. Accessed 5/10/2018.

125
it seems almost incredible that in one such text, dating from 1981,
there appears a thought whose origin is in the Holy Scripture, New
Testament, Apocalypse. In the first place it has the character of
New Testament (Apocalypse), but also carries the Old Testament
as well as liturgical-eucharistic associations. And all this in a text
called Dictionary of Technology. The very prelude itself, therefore,
points at its significant, religious dimension.
The cited sentence is indeed a paraphrase of the verses from the
Apocalypse of Saint John the Theologian (10,9):3 “And he said
unto me, Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter,
but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey.” The anonymous
author of the sentences from Dictionary has surely at least in-
tuitively (which also means metaphysically) felt the polysemy
of the said statement, in which there happens a kind of a unison
between word and reader. The stated paraphrase (almost a quota-
tion) clearly emphasizes the character of the divine word and the
usage of Serbian Cyrillic in manuscript form (only at that place)
suggests the holiness of the text.
As the studies have already shown, “the understanding of the
Word of God as a kind of food with which we are supposed to
unite by eating is present in prophetic and apocalyptic literature.
Thus, God prepares the Prophet Ezekiel by telling him: ’And he
said to me, “Son of man, eat what is before you, eat this scroll;
then go and speak to the people of Israel”. So I opened my mouth,
and he gave me the scroll to eat. Then he said to me, “Son of
man, eat this scroll I am giving you and fill your stomach with it”.
3
The Revelation of Saint John the Theologian is a text of prophetic
and eschatological character. It was probably no coincidence that Al-
eksandar Petrović dealt with the topic of the end of history in one of
the texts (again it is not by coincidence that it is called The Revelation
of Mirrors), that preceded the issue of the journal Vidici in which Dic-
tionary of Technology was published. As regards this, see: Čakarević
2015: 130.

126
So I ate it, and it tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth’ (Ezekiel:
3,1–3). Prophet Jeremiah eats God’s words as well: ‘Thy words
were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy
and rejoicing of mine heart: for I am called by thy name, O Lord
God of hosts.’ He appropriates them deeply, becomes one with
them, they become parts of his whole being, and not only mind,
hearing, or sight. This holds true of the evangelist John the Theo-
logian who wrote: ’And the voice which I heard from heaven
spake unto me again, and said, Go and take the little book which
is open in the hand of the angel which standeth upon the sea and
upon the earth. And I went unto the angel, and said unto him,
Give me the little book. And he said unto me, Take it, and eat it
up; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth
sweet as honey’ (Revelation 10:9).“4
Words sweet as honey, which symbolizes their holiness, are also
mentioned in the instructive Old Testament literature (Psalms,
Fables of Solomon), but they also become a symbol of Eucharis-
tic and non-Eucharistic communion.5 Byzantine hymnography
has associations to the sweetness of the body of Christ, as well as
its symbols, the sweetness of which is felt exactly in the throat.6
Aside from this, the mentioned thoughts from the Revelation of
the Saint John the Theologian also bear associations to the sin
that brings bitterness due to retribution and future punishment.7
In that context the end of the prelude to Dictionary of Technology

4
Vukašinović, Vladimir. The Bible and Liturgy. [Вукашиновић,
Владимир. Библија и литургија] http://zlatousti.org/clanakview/in-
dex?id=62&strana=1.
5
See: Bojović 2017.
6
See: Saint John of Damaskus 2002. p. 147. and Bojović 2014.
7
Saint Andrew of Kaisariani. Interpretation of the Revelation. [Свети
Андреј Кесаријски. Тумачење Откривења] https://svetosavlje.org/
tumacenje-otkrivenja/31/.

127
is an anticipation of the punishment, that is, the fate of Dictionary
in the time when it appeared, but it also suggests the time that is
the “essence of righteousness” (Bošković; Petrović 2015: 22).
Certain authors were led by the command “eat me” to the con-
clusion that this is an example of a “deconstructive approach”.8
Of course, the question is whether the author of the mentioned
prelude to Dictionary had the same symbolism on his mind.
The answer may be irrelevant if one is aware that words of such
meaning are most often a gift that comes from Heaven, that is:
the written thought is the work of an invisible hand. With this
we reach the last sentence in the paper by Aleksandra Steva-
nović who talks of “Dictionary being the hand of the hand that
wrote everything” (2018: 415). That implies God as the author,
who is always the first author, whereas the one who writes it
down is merely the transmitter of the inspiration coming from
Heaven. The decision of the author of Dictionary to remain
anonymous is not only postmodern approach, but is one of the
models of affirmation of the medieval heritage, that spiritual
dimension of Dictionary of Technology that was not highlighted
enough. Prior to the paper by Aleksandra Stevanović, which
was completely dedicated to it, we had examples of occasional
pointing at the said dimension. Dušan Bošković and Aleksan-
dar Petrović accentuate that it is, among other things, a “reve-
lation of theology” (2015: 15). Some authors stress the signif-
icance of the fact that it contains the references to Orthodox
thinkers and philosophers (Justin Popović, Berdyaev, Shestov,
Bulgakov).9 Many authors also emphasize the form of the Ser-

8
“That deconstruction generates the question what does it mean to
eat a text. In this case it means eating Dictionary and through a play at
that, because something so serious cannot be separated from play.” See:
Dictionary and its Analysis 2015: 294.
9
See: Knežević 2015: 62; Čakarević 2015: 133.

128
bian medieval manuscript10, in which Dictionary appeared, and
particularly significant seems the authorial subject abandoning
which is close to the medieval neglect of the authorship. Alek-
sandar Petrović himself, the protagonist of this “history”, very
clearly testifies to this: “The freed hand also pulled the thought
outside the gravitation of ’I’. In the spirit of the medieval image
of Dictionary we naturally thought not to sign our own text.
And so we did, but not to hide ourselves, but to crystallize our
stance. Even today I feel relief due to this fact, because even as
I write this I do not have to write about myself and mention my
name, but may instead do all of this with regard to Dictionary.
The fact that the title is not accompanied by the name of the
writer, as is usual with the moderns, speaks that the authors of
Dictionary thought their work is a subject in such a magnitude
that they themselves have become insignificant. According to
the ancient, age-old metaphor the creator dies so that his work
could be born” (Petrović 2015: 112).
Dictionary represents, as Aleksandra Stevanović notices, the re-
turn to “the creative hand”, and in “monastic dedication, collect-
edness and calmnes, the hand writes Dictionary of Technology as
a typicon of warning(...)” (2018: 410). By bringing it into this
context, the point of emphasis is the likeness in character between
monastic and medieval creative asceticism. “The humbled author”
relegates his place to God, “the artist of everything” and the sacral-
izing happens through desacralizing of the creative potentials of
the author (Bojović 2009: 6).
There is no doubt that Dictionary opens the issue of the re-
lation between science and faith in a very special way and
that this issue is now dealt with in the author’s work pub-

10
What we have here is a kind of an escape into “an oasis of Serbian
medieval heritage” (Stevanović 2017: 144).

129
lished in the Church Studies, a journal which by virtue of its
foreword from the first issue announced its orientation, that
is, editorial concept and methodological approach, which
presupposes “public proclaiming of the cooperation between
theology and other sciences, that characterizes the whole proj-
ect with a multidisciplinary approach, indicating clearly what
is the essence of the methodology of research in the area of
church studies” (Bojović 2004: 9).11 Besides the texts from
the area of humanities and social sciences, there appeared
the papers dealing with the relation between faith and other,
most often, natural sciences (physics, medicine, biology, etc.).
As an example, these are some of the topics: Bojan Tomić,
Time and Movement in Basil the Great’s Hexameron;12 Dušan
Krcunović, Hexameral Cosmogony and Philosophical Grada-
tion of the Natural Investigations;13 David Perović, Themes of
Biblical and Hymnographic Ecology, Bioethical Technology
and Genetic Surgery with Virtual Design;14 Goran Golubo-
vić, Religion and Neurophilosophy;15 Biljana Radovanović,
Philosophical Criticism of the Atheistic Position of Richard
Dawkins;16 Vedran Golijanin, Richard Dawkins and Alister
McGrath on the Relation between Religion and Natural Sci-
ences.17 Such and similar topics are also present in other pub-
lications from the scientific and research centre of Niš: Centre
for Church Studies, Centre for Byzantine-Slavic Studies of

11
On the concept of Church Studies and the institutions-publishers of
this journal, see: Tomić B.; Tomić M. 2018: 23–31.
12
Church Studies 2. 53–64. [Црквене студије 2. 53–64].
13
Ibid, 3. 91–109..
14
Ibid, 5. 107–130.
15
Ibid, 7. 177–188.
16
Ibid, 12. 305–318.
17
Ibid, 15. 389–406.

130
the University of Niš and the International Centre for Ortho-
dox Studies.18
Besides other parallels that can be made, the similarities between
Dictionary of Technology and Church Studies may be found on the
graphic level (the title page of Dictionary and the front cover of
the journal). The emphasis on the esthetic of the medieval manu-
script and stressing the significance of the hand that creates had its
purpose, in both cases, to emphasize the divine origin of creativity,
eternity of the written, and the unique creativity of creators.
In such message we may recognize the Byzantine esthetic phe-
nomenon of spiritual sweet enjoyment (metaphorically – sweet-
ness is in the throat itself). On the other side is bitterness. God
has made man (reader) free to, among other things, decide be-
tween sweetness and bitterness, between sin and virtue. That
is how we recognize eschatological dimension of man, his di-
rectedness towards Heaven, wherefrom most often comes the
word that brings the sweetness to human throat (communion by
words) and immortality to his soul. That is the soul that Sve-
tozar Radojčić called Russian (1982: 196) and Mihajlo Pupin
called sweet Orthodox soul (2016: 84). There is no doubt that
one such ascent of such a soul motivated the authors of Dictio-
nary to create a work that is, with reason, spoken and written of
in our days as well.

18
The unique trilogy of Jean-Claude Larchet (Theology of Illness,
Therapy of Spiritual Illness, and Therapy of the Soul’s Illnesses) that
illustrate the relation between faith and medicine in a striking and
noteworthy way deserves special attention.

131
References

Bojović 2004: Bojović, Dragiša. With the First Issue of the Jour-
nal Church Studies. Niš: Church Studies 1. [Бојовић,
Драгиша. Уз први број часописа Црквене студије.
Ниш: Црквене студије. 1].
Bojović 2009: Bojović, Dragiša. Literary-theoretical Shaping
of the Essence. Foreword to the book: Naumov, Alek-
sandar. Old and New. Studies on the Literature of Or-
thodox Slavs. Niš: Centre for Church Studies. [Бојовић,
Драгиша. Књижевно-теоријско обликовање сушти-
не. Предговор књизи: Наумов Александар, Старо и
ново. Студије о књижевности православних Слове-
на. Ниш: Центар за црквене студије].
Bojović 2014: Bojović, Dragiša. Apple as a Eucharistic Symbol.
Niš: Church Studies. 11. 525–530. [Бојовић, Драгиша.
Јабука као евхаристијски симбол. Црквене студије.
11. 525–530].
Bojović 2017: Bojović, Dragiša. St. Maximus the Confessor
in Serbian Medieval Spirituality. Niš: Church Studies.
14. 407–414. [Бојовић, Драгиша. St. Maximus the
Confessor in Serbian Medieval Spirituality. Црквене
студије 14. 407–414].
Bošković; Petrović 2015: Bošković, Dušan; Petrović, Aleksandar
(Eds.). Three Reasons for the Return of Dictionary of Tech-
nology from the Land of Dragons. In: Return from the Land
of Dragons – Dictionary of Technology 33 Years Later. Bel-
grade: Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory. [Бошко-
вић, Душан; Петровић, Александар (Ур.). Повратак из
земље змајева – Речник технологије 33 године после. Бе-
оград: Институт за филозофију и друштвену теорију].
Saint John of Damaskus 2002: Saint John of Damaskus. Festive
Sermons. Translated by Bishop Atanasije. Belgrade:
Serbian Literary Cooperative. [Свети Јован Дамаскин.
Празничне беседе. превео Епископ Атанасије.
Београд: Српска књижевна задруга. 2002].

132
Knežević 2015: Knežević, Miloš. Clarifia for the Techno-Con-
spiracy. Cognitive Mindedness of Dictionary of Technol-
ogy. In: Return from the Land of Dragons – Dictionary
of Technology 33 Years Later. Bošković, Dušan; Petro-
vić, Aleksandar (Eds.). Belgrade: Institute for Philos-
ophy and Social Theory. 59–93. [Кнежевић, Милош.
Разјасница техно-ујдурми. Мислословљење о Речнику
технологије. У: Повратак из земље змајева: Речник
технологије 33 године после. Бошковић, Душан;
Петровић, Александар (Ур.). Београд: Институт за
филозофију и друштвену теорију. 59–93. 2015].
Petrović 2015: Petrović, Aleksandar. Dictionary of Technology
and Ghost of Illusion. In: Return from the Land of
Dragons – Dictionary of Technology 33 Years Later.
Bošković, Dušan; Petrović, Aleksandar (Eds.). Belgrade:
Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory. 93–119.
[Петровић, Александар. О Речнику технологије и
духу привида. У: Повратак из земље змајева: Речник
технологије 33 године после. Бошковић, Душан;
Петровић, Александар (Ур.). Београд: Институт за
филозофију и друштвену теорију. 93–119].
Pupin 2016: Pupin, Mihajlo. From Immigrant to Inventor. Novi
Sad, Idvor: Foundation Karić, Matica Srpska. [Пупин,
Михајло. Са пашњака до научењака, Београд, Нови
Сад, Идвор: Карић фондација, Матица српска. 2016].
Radojčić 1982: Radojčić, Svetozar. A Note with a Reference from
Sopoćani. In: Selected articles and studies 1933–1978.
Belgrade, Novi Sad: Publishing Institute of Yugoslavia,
Matica Srpska. [Радојчић, Светозар. Белешка уз један
цитат из Сопоћана, У: Одабрани чланци и студије
1933–1978. Београд, Нови Сад: Издавачки завод
Југославија, Матица српска].
Dictionary and its Analysis 2015. Dictionary and its Analysis.
In: Return from the Land of Dragons – Dictionary of
Technology 33 Years Later. Bošković, Dušan; Petrović,
Aleksandar (Eds.). Belgrade: Institute for Philosophy

133
 and Social Theory. 267–307. [Речник и његова анализа.
У: Повратак из земље змајева: Речник технологије
33 године после. Бошковић, Душан; Петровић,
Александар (Ур.). Београд: Институт за филозофију
и друштвену теорију. 267–307. 2015].
Stevanović 2017: Stevanović, Aleksandra. Dictionary of
Technology and Post-Truth. In Heptadecagon –
Dictionary of Technology as Anti-utopia (pro et contra).
Vujadinović, Dimitrije (Ed.). Belgrade: Institute of
European Studies. [Стевановић, Александра. Анти-
утопијски речник технологије у времену после
истине. У: Хептадекагон – Речник технологије
као анти-утопија (pro et contra). Ур. Димитрије
Вујадиновић. Београд: Институт за европске студије.
135–148].
Stevanović 2018: Stevanović, Aleksandra. Theology of
Dictionary of Technology. Nis: Church Studies. no.
15. 407–418. [Стевановић, Александра. Теологија
Речника технологије. Ниш: Црквене студије. бр. 15.
407–418].
Tomić, B.; Tomić, M. 2018: Tomić, Bojan; Tomić, Milica.
Cultural, Historical, and Scientific Heritage, and
Multidisciplinary Approach. Byzantine-Slav Reading
I. Niš: Centre for Byzantine-Slav Studies of the
University of Niš, International Centre for Orthodox
Studies, Centre for Church Studies. 23–32. [Томић,
Бојан; Томић, Милица. Културно, историјско и
научно наслеђе и мултидисциплинарни приступ.
Византијско-словенска чтенија I. Ниш: Центар за
византијско-словенске студије Универзитета у Нишу,
Међународни центар за православне студије, Центар
за црквене студије. 23–32].
Čakarević 2015. Čakarević, Marjan. Technology and Mechanisms.
Texts and contextual range of the Project “Technology“.
In: Return from the Land of Dragons – Dictionary of
Technology 33 Years Later. Bošković, Dušan; Petrović,

134
 Aleksandar (Eds.). Belgrade: Institute for Philosophy and
Social Theory. 119–139. [Чакаревић, Марјан. Технологија
и механизми. Текстови и контекстуални спектар
пројекта Технологија, У: Повратак из земље змајева:
Речник технологије 33 године после. Бошковић, Душан;
Петровић, Александар (Ур.). Београд: Институт за
филозофију и друштвену теорију. 119–139].
Electronic Sources [Електронски извори]
Saint Andrew of Kaisariani. Interpretation of the Revelation.
[Свети Андреј Кесаријски. Тумачење Откривења].
https://svetosavlje.org/tumacenje-otkrivenja/31/
Vukašinović, Vladimir. The Bible and Liturgy. [Вукашиновић,
Владимир. Библија и литургија] http://zlatousti.org/
clanakview/index?id=62&strana=1
Church Studies [Црквене студије] http://www.crkvenestudije-
churchstudies.org/
Electronic sources accessed on 27. 9. 2018. [Електронским
изворима приступљено 27. 9. 2018. године]

135
 TECHNOLOGICAL-THEOLOGICAL
DILEMMAS IN THE POSTMODERN ERA1
Aleksandar Saša Gajić
Institute of European Studies – Belgrade

In the paper, the directions of technological development and

their origin in the postmodern era, as well as their relationship
with religious spirituality, are examined from the perspective of
Dictionary of Technology. Realizing that the attitude to technology
depends largely on what it implies, the paper explores the extent
to which the modern era and its ideals – those that have created
technological development as an imperative of civilization –
are still present in its late, postmodern phase of development.
Observing the connection between technology and modernity
in its main traits, a series of similarities and differences has
been noticed in the role contemporary technologies have in the
postmodern era, as well as in the fact that modernity attempts
to perform its last, posthumanist “leap” to completely exceed
nature, which is carried out precisely with the help of modern
technologies. Moreover, throughout the modern project, it is
noted that its aspirations are actually reduced and transformed
theological projections that turned out to be avoidance of vertical
fulfillment of life for the sake of governing on it horizontally.

Keywords: Dictionary of Technology, modernity, theology, post-

modernism, theocentricity, posthumanism.

At the beginning of eighties of the last century, Dictionary of

Technology, as one of the first postmodern writings, tried to per-
ceive technological development and its roots in the postmodern
era. In order to understand the context of such an endeavor, some

1
This paper has been implemented within the framework of the project
179014, financed by the Ministry of Education and Science of the
Republic of Serbia.

137
previous questions need to be clarified. What is actually meant
by the technology in the narrower, and the broader sense of the
term? To what extent is the modern era – the one that has sus-
tained continuous technological development as an imperative of
civilization – with its ideals still present in its late, post-modern
developmental phase?
Are technology and technique just synonyms, as is the case in
English (technology/technique) or are they two different con-
cepts? In most cases, European continental definitions refer to
the term technique as a set of all tools and knowledge of produc-
tion the man uses to manipulate nature and satisfy their needs.
Technology, on the contrary, implies science of technical pro-
cedures for making and processing natural goods and obtaining
production. Technology is, therefore, a systematized knowledge
of the technique, its procedures and resources. In colloquial
speech, however, these two terms are identified in most of the
cases; a systematic scientific knowledge of technical procedures
is mainly perceived as an abstract, derived study of the most im-
portant – specific, practical, exact, and effective procedures for
the impact on and exploitation of nature.
The term technique/technology is also quite variable and very
stretchable in terms of its extent. In the narrowest sense, it in-
volves a set of technical tools and resources, while in a wider
sense it also refers to all intellectual activities, knowledge, and
actions the man uses to reign over the visible world. In the broad-
est definitions, such as Ellul’s, technique/technology is “the total-
ity of methods rationally developed to attain absolute efficiency
(at a given stage of development) in every field of human activi-
ty” (Ellul 2010: 19). However, Dictionary of Technology defines
technology in the following way: “Technology: e. tehne (gr.) –
the basis of form as action; logos (gr.) the basis of form as the
mind. m. The Divine Comedy. i. Technology is the production of

138
forms: mind forms (logos) by thought, and technical forms (teh-
ne) by work: technology produces truth and beauty. It is the way
of transforming movement into form, which should be called
history; by opening a multitude of forms for Zeno’s way. Tech-
no+logy is abolished in the living identity of the realized logos
(word) and the realized technique (body) – Christ. The complete
realization of technology is given in the identity of mind, history,
work (Hegel, Marx): then it is necessarily concretized. Its con-
cretization in the material world completes Western history as
decomposition: doubling. The doubled world is broken when the
will is present. Technology is actively accomplished as a univer-
sal mediator, the analysis of selfhood and life, of every firmness
for existence, as a slight slide into nothing, as the creation of an
opposite world of mirrors that is the same (true), but not alive.
Technology is everything that is not selfhood. s. mirror, history,
West. eg. ‘The loss of the world may be called technology’ (Vi­
dici 5-6 / 80, Techn., Or the End of Science)” (1982: 24).
Its valuation also depends on the breadth of the definition of the
technique/technology. If its narrow definition is accepted, the one
that treats technique only as a sum of technical means, so-called
neutral perspectives of technology are more prevalent. “This
direction of thought, according to some authors, may be traced
back to ancient times, first of all to Gorgias’ understanding of
techne as a set of tools and instrumental skills. In the later devel-
opment of thoughts on society, this attitude can also be related
to Adam Smith, and it has remained relatively common to this
day. For example, John Stuart Mill believes that technology has
an independent impact only when it stops working. Finally, the
influence of Weber’s instrumental definition of technology on
various subsequent considerations of this phenomenon is signif-
icant as well. Even those authors, who essentially do not support
the thesis regarding the neutrality of technology, at least formally

139
often start from the thesis of technology as a means (or a set of
resources) (Damjanović 2013: 117). Such views are supported by
the idea that technical inventions, like all other things created by
human hands, could not be regarded as good or bad themselves
(in philosophy this would be referred to as the term of adiapho-
ra), but the way of their use, or abuse can be indicated as good or
bad. The neutral view of technology is often present in theologi-
cal Christian interpretations, especially in relation to information
technology. It is considered that – if we approach technological
achievements and use them reasonably, with a prayer approach
and use them moderately and with altruistic intentions or for the
purpose of promoting moral content – they can be used well, in
a “positive way” and “in the right measure”.2 Otherwise, abuse
may occur in the form of selfish, foolish, or excessive use. How-
ever, even Lewis Mumford, a prominent philosopher of technol-
ogy who had referred to machines from the neutral perspective in
his early writings, realized that technology could not be separated
from the wider social context and its thinking flows – wherein it
would emerge, evolve and have an impact on the social and natu-
ral environment, because it is precisely this context that gives the
meaning, direction and purpose of technology.3
Therefore, if technology is perceived in the wider social, as well
as in the cultural-civilizational context, especially the one that
intends to fully exploit and rule the substantial nature with the ul-
timate goal that man will ascend to the throne of all creation with
its help – then the value of technology acquires a completely dif-
ferent image. It is obvious that technological means and proce-
2
Further reading Subotić, Oliver. Orthodoxy and Information Technolo-
gy. Belgrade: Orthodoxy. 2006. p.19. [Суботић, Оливер. Православље
и информационе технологије. Београд: Православље. 2006. стр. 19].
3
See: Mumford, Lewis. Technics and Civilization. Novi Sad: Mediter-
ran. 2009. [Mamford, Luis. Tehnika i civilizacija. Novi Sad: Mediter-
ran. 2009].

140
dures are not morally neutral, but that their value determination
and often only “effective” orientation are acutely questionable. A
number of modern technological means has been created for the
sake of utterly controversial actions on man and nature, and in
spite of the efforts to use them reasonably, “for good purposes”,
it is almost impossible to achieve it. An additional problem is that
further technological development is increasingly focused on
those very disputable aspects of the use of technological means
and the actions that follow, which, by their use, impose a prob-
lematic thought horizon to those people who resort to them, and
who are often unaware of it taking it “for granted” as a common
fact, a practical inevitability. It is important to point out another
important element in the attitude towards modern technologies: it
is the one where it is obvious how the good, moderate, sober, and
altruistic use is presented as derived, posterior, and only possible
with an effort. It is an extorted reaction, an incomparably rare,
“alternative” way of the use of modern technologies compared to
the original, predominant, and more common one. Positive use
of modern technologies is in most cases an aspect of conscious
redirecting the ways of technological inventions utilization in
relation both to the motives that led to their invention and the
ways in which they are widely employed. Let us refer to a series
of examples of the use of modern technological achievements,
from the banal to the unusual ones, made for specific situations
and purposes, so we should ask ourselves: whether widely pop-
ular games on personal computers, besides the development of a
reflex and a focused attention, can be used for some really pos-
itive, moderate and sober purposes, even if in the most positive
sense we are referring to the entertainment against the boredom
of everyday life? How should modern mechanical and electronic
sexual aids be referred to? How can modern military technolog-
ical achievements be regarded and used positively, e.g. nuclear

141
weapons, biological and chemical poisons, even if the defense of
a political community from an external attack is apriori treated
as something positive, i.e. altruistic? How to refer to the track-
ing and hacking programs, and to the viruses? How to consider
modern biotechnologies manipulating genetic material, especial-
ly those that tend to crossbreed human and animal hormones? It
is difficult to find examples of undoubtedly positive use of these
technologies. On the other hand, can modern technology and
how – bearing in mind its exact-material determinations and do-
mains – be applied “to good” deeper, subjective sides of human
nature, those that strive for the spiritual dimensions of life? Is
it possible to actualize the tendencies of technological influence
directed towards profound metanoia, the establishment of a rela-
tionship between the man and God, or a man with another man,
without mediation, or, let us assume, towards an intrusion into
the subjective side of human nature below the threshold of their
consciousness with unselfish intentions? Does technological ac-
tivity in the sphere of spirituality remain only as an idea of utopia
and technological delusion, so visible in the Victorian aspirations
to capture separating the soul from the body with X-rays or using
the camera? There are other similar ideas to communicate with
the deceased ones via transistor radio or (as in the works of Niko-
lai Fedorov)4 to carry out the resurrection of the dead using elec-
tricity (which irresistibly resembles Mary Shelley’s novel about
Dr. Frankenstein’s experiments).
A broader perception of the phenomenon of technology in the
modern world indicates its controversial value orientation and
denies its completely “neutral” position that in most cases al-
lows the human being to focus on its value. It was Heidegger
who also noticed this when, even though he saw the way of “dis-
4
Further reading – Fedorov Nikolai. Philosophy of the Common Task.
Podgorica. 1998.

142
covering” in technique (which corresponds to the Greek term
“aletheia”), he clearly depicted an extremely dangerous feature
of modern technology: one that puts an extremely irrational re-
quirement on the created nature: to provide man with its power,
with the energy that can be extracted from the nature and stored,
because it would harrow and attack the land, exhaust it, exploit
and change.5 The exploitative imperative of technology is clear-
ly identified here with the most dangerous strive of the modern
man: the pursuit of arbitrary ruling. Having considered broader
and deeper aspects, the problem of technology was thoroughly
perceived by Dictionary of Technology, a special edition of the
journal Vidici number 1–2 published in June 1981 in Belgrade.
“Dictionary of Technology has 162 entries written in a total of
28 pages of a large format, which provides a basic characteris-
tic of a dictionary, according to standard lexicographic criteria.
Although it was titled as Dictionary, it should rather be said that
this is a thoughtfully considered selection of relevant concepts
within a wider context of understanding the contemporary world
by a group of authors gathered around the editorial board of the
journal Vidici” (Knežević 2016: 115–116). “Dictionary, as a
manuscript with its critical system of terms, metaphors, symbols,
allegories, etymologies, written in ‘Aesopian language’, cut the
tissue of a ‘prosperous society’ based on a technological siege of
life (...) It is obvious that Dictionary was a kind of early warning,
a prophetic alarm that resounded strongly in the Serbian envi-
ronment, but it was only because it encountered prosecution of
authorities, anathema of servile intellectuals and curse of those
who were building technology of power on the mysteries of the
ideology.” (Bošković; Petrović 2016: 14). The essential feature
of Dictionary is that having criticized the former socialist en-

5
See: Heidegger, Martin, The Question Concerning Technology and
Other Essays. New York/London: Garland Publishing. 1977.

143
vironment, it represented a thorough critique of modernity and
the modern, technological world above all. “Modernism is a cat-
echism of technology that imposes its action on behalf of the
man by doing everything possible against him, dispossessing
him of his hand and mind and putting him in the position of the
Boy. Therefore, it could have never been accepted in Yugoslavia,
which is a mere symbol of modernization” (Petrović 2016: 105).

Technology, Theology, and Modernity

What is actually the essential connection between technology

and modernity? There are many controversies regarding the de-
termination of modernity. Some may define it as an opposition
to the Middle Ages and all other, prior to modernity pre-modern
epochs. Others observe it in a progressive key as an expression of
infinite technological and scientific development, which is now
always ahead and better than it used to be before. The third claim
it to be the expression of the emancipation of mankind against
the forces of ignorance, underdevelopment, and evilness. Mo-
dernity is characterized by five convergent processes: individu-
alization that has been achieved by the destruction of traditional
forms of life; massivization reflected in standardized behaviors
and life patterns; desacralization through the retreat of religios-
ity before the development of exact sciences; the rationalization
through the prevalence of rational knowledge over all other as-
pects of the perception of the world, and universality reflected in
the aspirations of global expansion of the models based on some
other modern features, considered not only superior to other cul-
tural models, but predetermined for a historical triumph as well.
“But it was not a triumph of humanity over nature, but rather the
triumph of humanity over itself or over those privileged ones.
Its path was not the path of intellectual discovery but the one of

144
an intellectual conflict” (Wallerstein 2005: 110). Either way, the
post-ideological, late modernity of the present with all its con-
tradictions represents the overall result of the modernist project.
Throughout the course of several centuries after the end of the
Christian Middle Ages, the deconstruction of the ethical pos-
tulate of the “theocentricity” of the meaningful world occurred
gradually, when the relation of the Creator and the creation was
uninterrupted and continuous. “Integrated” and religious, this
view of the world was based on the experience of constant divine
action and guidance of nature, people, and their societies. The
man was given the role of free, creative coparticipant in the rela-
tionship between the Creator and the creations. All the spheres of
existence were perceived and judged in relation to the spiritual
vertical between God and the man. When this experience of con-
nection with the ulterior world, for various reasons that we would
not discuss on this occasion,6 was becoming increasingly rare,
or non-existent, new, proto-modern experiences of life began to
appear. On their basis, and in contrast to Christian theocentrism,
the “new”, humanistic “anthropocentrism” is positioned. For the
central argument in denying the theocentric concept, anthropo-
centrism used its own affirmation. It relied on the human mind
and ability to, here and now, manage to transform nature, human
society and the man himself rapidly. In anthropocentric human-
ism, in his decision to be “on his own” and “better” on the basis
of his own strength, without anything else and their co-participa-
tion, all contents and goals of modern enterprise could be found.
Man – with his mind, will and free decision – is the measure of all
things: he is the one revealing, creating, or assigning the meaning
and value to the entire world. “(...) The immortal striving of the
man is replaced by the individual, natural, closed, and limited ‘I’.

6
Further reading Gajić, Aleksandar. Spiritual Bases of the World
Crisis. Belgrade: Konras. 2011.

145
(...) Instead of familiarity in the great community of beings, what
succeeds is the reflection of solitude of the individualized ‘I’”
(Cvetković 2008: 58). Turning towards the desacralized, profane
existence that has lost all contact with the divine, the man has
positioned himself on the pedestal of the visible world, in a mere
desire to “behave in a godlike manner” through all his activities
– through thinking and acting, through feelings and will, through
science and technique, through culture and philosophy, through
religion and politics.” (Gajić 2011: 136). “An individual (as an
individuum, citizen, personality) is born through the genesis of
modernity as its main impulse and the reason for existence...“
(Cvetković 2008: 60). He is willing to use his mind in order to
conceive and realize such a society that would enable self-reali-
zation, direct thinking, absolute self-concept and entire freedom
of the subject, whose individuality would have universal reach.
It is certain that the modernist project represents “counter-tradi-
tional rationality” in its roots. It includes “the emancipation of
thoughts from authority, the victory of intellectual formation over
the privileges obtained by birth, the liberation of the individuum,
the enthusiasm for science, the ethics of human sublimity (au-
tonomy), the kind of Christian atheism (natural religion) and the
malicious temptations to reign over the nature (...) in compliance
with if not innate, then certainly acquired egocentrism of humanity
(...)” (Ibid, 27). Instead of archaic, faith guided synthesis, moder-
nity offers the exact sciences. Instead of the ideal of holiness, it
offers individualistic self-improvement. Instead of pure-hearted
intuition, it offers a scientific cold-mindedness. “Everything that
is considered to be ruinous in the pre-modern tradition and reli-
gious view of the world, everything that seems to be a long-term
source of destructiveness for them – the compliance with selfish-
ness, self-improvement without self-sacrifice, the transformation
of the ‘will for modern’ into the bare ‘will for power’, the advoca-

146
cy of the ideology of opposing, resistance and rebellion as a fly-
wheel of social changes – is considered to have the highest values​​
and represents foundations of modernity. The basic principle of
modernity is that the transcendental foundations which the social,
ontological and political orders rest on can no longer be taken as
reliable, true. Therefore, the deconstruction of a religious (at the
same time meaningful and ethically oriented) order is carried out.
On the contrary, self-centered rationalism is inaugurated and it ini-
tiates a series of mutually conditioned quantitative and qualitative
social changes that are proclaimed to be a way to something better,
as ‘progress’. In contrast to religiosity, humanism appears. Instead
of holism – empiricism; instead of community – organization. The
foundation of everything is – the crisis; as an initiator – an orga-
nized rational plan for overcoming the crisis; as the outcome of
everything – an even bigger and more widespread crisis, which
repeatedly seeks solutions” (Gajić 2011: 53).
The logic of technique, its function and development, is identical
to the logic of modernity. It seems that modernity has taken a
technical approach as its role model and applied it first to the man
as the center of its activity, and then to the whole world. While
the technological tools were merely a means of enabling survival
or facilitating existence and creativity in their practical domain
of coping with the material world, technical direction was not
controversial: the way the man used it or abused, provided it with
a morally-spiritual sign. The problematic moment was when this
technological approach was adopted as the central and total one,
according to which anthropocentric humanism understood itself
and the whole world, in all its material and spiritual complexity
and entanglement. “The quantification of nature, which led to
its explication on the basis of mathematical structures, separated
the reality from all inherent goals and, consequently, separated
the true from the good, science from technique (...) Likewise

147
character deprivation of the reality affects all the ideas which
by their very nature could not be verified by a scientific meth-
od. No matter how considered, respected, and glorified they are,
they, in their own right, expiate for not being objective” (Herbert
1990: 142–143). It was even more disputable when the reason
began to regard everything from the instrumental perspective, to
reduce, generalize, and mold everything to schematism with its
fixed values, set patterns of development and goals. There was
nothing beyond it that could be used as its reference, that could
be valued and to whom it is subordinate. “Due to this ‘closed’,
self-defining approach which is dominant in both cases, the tech-
nique, when defining it, is often associated with human ratio-
nality and action. Under the impression of technical efficiency,
an extremely reduced, mechanically-rationalist approach with
its ‘own’ orientation has been developed – from self-centering
towards self-improvement, all along with developing its own
indivisibility and autonomy. Such technology has turned into a
belief in “transformed and reduced projections originally theo-
logically formulated. It accepted the expectance of the future
from theology in order to obtain the opportunity to oversee all
flows delaying the realization of the fullness of life” (Stevanović
2018: 411). That way, the technical approach has grown into an
irresistible external force that subjugates and changes nature con-
ceived exclusively in its material, exact form. The pretensions of
thus conceptualized technique are universal and unwavering: it
tends to transform everything and replace it with itself. All mod-
ern forms of human association and direction are actually tech-
nical: thus, ‘economic techniques’ have emerged from planning,
through production to distribution. There are, then, ‘organization
techniques’ for a large number of people, from industry to state
and its individual services, including the most important – armed
formations. Eventually, there are specific ‘human techniques’ in

148
their different aspects in the range of medicine, through the edu-
cational process (sic!) to propaganda, in which a person becomes
the object of technical processing. What is the connection be-
tween the technique and the machine? “The technique integrates
the machine into a society. It constructs the kind of world that the
machine needs and introduces the order where the imprudent hit-
ting of the machine has made a pile of ruins. It clarifies, manages
and rationalizes, it does the same in the domain of abstract what
the machine learns in the domain of the labor. It is efficient and
makes everything efficient” (Ellul 2010: 23).
The modern man “dragged down” Christian ideals and eschato-
logical goals on the historical horizontal, into the framework of
the real world, and gave them a completely different direction.
Thus, he wants development for himself and from himself, fur-
ther, through society, from quantitative changes to the qualitative
ones. The history of this development has to be constant self-con-
firmation and self-exceeding. Man is the one who determines the
purpose of such a historical development. It is only him planning
and realizing the ideas that lead and improve him and the whole
world. A modern man tends to perceive this history from its be-
ginning as a continuous improvement and an endless develop-
ment. “The ‘triad’ of paradise, fall, and redemption is attired in
a secular, ‘modern’ suit, so that ‘the nature’ becomes an initial
source of cosmic and human harmony. ‘The historical suffering’,
the fall, is seen as a violation of the original principles of nature
and reason that leads to social aberration. The redemption is the
realization of a utopia that re-establishes happiness and universal
social perfection” (Gajić 2015: 120). The equation of subjective
manifestations and objective empirical reality is considered to be
some sort of well-organized mechanical order that necessarily
strives towards its goal. Unique observation of natural and so-
cial flows arises from the rationalism which tends to comprehend

149
the abstract models derived from reducing reality to its primary,
quantitatively measurable traits. It is a technological, mechani-
cal understanding of nature that is applied to the whole world.
The technological equation of naturalistic and rational arouses
a strong sense of the whole world connection and creates a con-
viction of its true and complete cognition. The individual and his
understanding of the world development where he has positioned
himself as the main aim, is based on the belief in the possibility
of immanent historical success by using immanent human poten-
tials, in the acquisition of harmony within the historical frame,
or, historical empiricism. “In the endless line of time, the exis-
tence of a particular or critical point is allowed, at which ‘prehis-
tory’ is replaced by ‘history’ (which seems to be starting now).
But even after the famed ‘leap from the empire of necessity into
the empire of freedom’, the change of generation continues and
it is prolonged, and it should continue, because progress would
otherwise lose its full meaning. The entire ‘prehistory’ is a long
process of production and stockpiling in relation to a future con-
sumer, with the assumption that in these blissful and blessed con-
ditions of an ideal order and arrangement there will be someone
who will live and enjoy it” (Florovsky 1991: 20).
The ideals of a modern man rest on the equalization of values
– those proclaimed by his own will – and natural facts. Firstly,
human desires are claimed to be values, and then, their “natural-
ization” is carried out by reason. The outpourings of human fan-
tasies thus become a natural common feature, an “undeniable”
fact. Continuous historical development – in fact, the effort of
his will – is now seen as “the uncovering of innate and pre-or-
dered tasks, like the grain maturation, as the realization of a plan
and entelechy” (Ibid) that is predictable and can be rationally
recognized. Rationality and nature have the same basis, in which
the same laws are applied, the same abstract principles that only

150
need to be discovered and recognized. “As a man himself and
all men (abstractly understood humanity), in addition to all the
singularities, make up a part of a unique nature, that is belong to
the same substance bound by universal principles, man by dis-
covering these principles as the ‘bearer’ of the ideals inevitably
goes towards perfection, and therefore they also have a univer-
sal moral force.7 Thus perceived ideals claimed to be the facts,
recognized by the people and applied through history, lead to
the realization of ‘a unified perfection of a social order, which
is equally and infallibly “normal” (suitable and appropriate) for
every society and every nation, equally beneficial for all times’
(Ibid, 19) because it stems from a man’s ‘generic being’ as such”
(Gajić 2015: 121–122).
Instead of the Christian Holy Trinity which creates, connects, and
directs the world with its thought and love, the rational-naturalistic
principles of the mind now stand above the unity of the “self-deify-
ing” nature. But, in the sense of unity there is a paradox of modern
autonomy, separation. Once recognized, the uniformity of the ra-
tional-natural order inevitably begins to observe all forms of free-
dom without any substantiality; any particularity is perceived as
an accident in a necessary, comprehensive process. Individualism
must also be subordinated to determinism within it. Each individu-
al must become a part, a link of a wider progress in which, beyond
one’s individual life, the emergence of some suprapersonal entity
occurs, the existence of a higher degree – no matter whether it is
called “nature”, “humanity”, “universal truth”, “human rights and
civil order”, “superior race”, “state”, or “absolute spirit”. The uto-
pian spirit of modernity requires that an individual, for the purpose
of abstract, generalized principles and values, “embed” into this
process which fatalistically leads to its final, complete outcome,
7
Further reading Talmond Jаcob. The Origins of Totalitarian Democ-
racy. Norton &co. London, 1955.

151
whether it has a form of a classless communist society, a totalitar-
ian state, a racial retro-utopia, civil society, or free market. Within
it, the individual turns into a part of a wider social mechanism as
an integral part of a natural “machine”. In this natural mechanism,
all potentials of life are realized, and thus each individual achieves
his “right” designation. Man’s nature teaches him to strive for
overall cognition, unity and perfection. In the absence of a real
relationship with God and the fulfillment which is the result of the
relationship, a person creates false Gods of nature and himself to
worship. Modern forms of an ideological idolatry are a testimony
of a naturalistic deadlock. “The obsession with the world urges
man to draw and realize a particular image of unconditional per-
fection that is present in his soul. The answer for the paradoxical
connection of slavish knowledge and enthusiastic self-confidence
is hidden there. It is precisely because the man realizes his meta-
physical nonsense and feels himself as a ‘dreaming of nature’, as
the medium of external objectivity that he is inclined to attribute
objective meaning to his fantasies. Therefore, the Luciferian con-
viction in the entire comprehension of the world’s secrets and in
the achievability of the tendencies and aspirations aimed towards
him which did not pawn nature in vain. Stronger than anything, this
was expressed in the ‘Subjectivity’ developed by German idealists
from the beginning of the last century (it refers to the 20th century,
A.G.): the subject is born from the same root as the object – hence
the object is cognizable to the end” (Florovsky 1991: 32–33).

Postmodern World of Technological Self-Sustainability

The transition from the modern into the post-modern, post-ideo-

logical epoch does not imply the overall abandonment of modern
ideals, but only the abandonment of their comprehensive realiza-
tion due to the failures and lack of motivation to try over again.

152
This post-condition of things – the so-called “postmodern condi-
tion” (Lyotard) – represented an already existent state character-
ized by a partial modern ruin that seeks to conserve and preserve
itself in current forms and existing relationships. The best testi-
mony to it includes the first relevant postmodern political text –
the second edition of the “Encyclopedia of Yugoslavia” – which
enabled the transition of socialist Yugoslavia from the modern
into the post-modern state, as well as its subsequent disintegra-
tion.8 The “postmodern state” contained a simultaneous critique
of modernist projects and their ultimate ideological endeavors,
as well as adhering to the already present consequences. As such,
“postmodern does not refer to the essential points which, in an
effort to resolve the crisis of existence and community, were cre-
ated by modernity: opposition to all authorities through eman-
cipation both of thought and the entire life, of the faith in the
power of self-improvement while personal and cultural heritage
is negated or rejected, of the ethics of human ‘sublimity’ with
8
“Yugoslavia also tried to make its ideological internet, but with great
communication barriers. The center was within the lexicographical
institute of Miroslav Krleža, who, such as a ‘deep throat’, had maintained
a relationship between intellectuals and the central committees of the
Party for decades. In 1975, Central Editorial Board of the second edition
of the Encyclopedia of Yugoslavia was formed and it included scientists
gathered according to the quasi-regular order from all the republics
and Serbian provinces that constituted the mosaic of Yugoslavia. The
Encyclopedia of Yugoslavia represents the programmed upbuilding
of a new memory. As it relies on historical assumptions, memory
must be periodically changed when it seems to be spent and when the
new form is necessary. The highest expression of memory during the
Enlightenment period was the notion of modernity, which apparently
was no longer suitable for the unambiguous interpretation of history.
The Encyclopedia of Yugoslavia abandons the stream of modernity,
which was the origin for creating Yugoslavia on the basis of Illyrian
memory and floating during the European Enlightenment, and quietly
embarked on the postmodern pluralism of memory. The feature of
postmodernity is primarily the accumulation of equal histories that
have no obligation to make an agreement among themselves and to
have any kind of relation to memory” (Petrović 2017: 23–25).

153
hidden instincts such as selfishness, manipulation and ruling.
Playing on the ruins of self-destructive rationalist projects, post-
modernity, in fact, through interpretation and deconstruction, and
even wider, through the relativization of values ​​and knowledge,
simultaneously justifies individual decentralization, thus main-
taining the basic views and ‘achievements’ of modernity in the
micro-plan, that is the state of ‘void existence’ and narrowing
the perspective of movements caused by the modernity” (Gajić
2011: 99–100). “Postmodern turn” is also seen in the sciences
that refer to social life characterized by: “anti-epistemology (the
focus is on studying manifestations as such instead of what they
should be related to; the skepticism in relation to the essential
basis of truth and value; interest in the way the statements are
formed, instead of the question whether they are “true” or not);
interest in the uncertainty of meaning as a potential for creating
identities and structures; the decentralization of the society (the
understanding of social structures in the way they are formed in
continuous processes which take place in time and space, and
which are not causally determined; absence of central institution
(state, for example) or the meaning (for instance, ‘truth’) around
which every aspect of social life is organized so that it has been
determined; anti-essentialism (the realization that identities and
structures are constructed and historically conditioned)” (Nash
2006: 42–48).
With the help of its main means – modern technological achieve-
ments – “postmodern states” and postmodern societies are
maintained and they metastasize, multiplying their “achieve-
ments” and their interpretations. An opulent supply of modern
ideological patterns that despite mutual intolerance weakened
coexist in social life, represents a suitable material for their
constant replacement. Post-ideological recycling is performed
through various techniques and technologies: from media tech-

154
niques, techniques of creating and managing crisis, to the tech-
niques of conducting electoral campaigns. Thus, the illusion of
civilization development forces is maintained, as well as the
illusion of the autonomous historical dynamics of individuals
and societies that have previously been deprived of all the deep-
er, credible values and
​​ foundations. All of them, primarily and
above all, exist by adhering to instrumental values ​​and created
instruments – technology.
The post-ideological world of the present has similarities, but
also a number of noticeable differences with its earlier modern
phases. It identifies the occupation of people with autonomous
determination. It stems from dissatisfaction with the existing state
and the desire to change things in the world to be better. How-
ever, a different kind of change is sought. The required chang-
es in the world are no longer fundamental, but only superficial,
positional, and partial. The world continues to be understood in
a rationalist-naturalistic key and attempts to be in accordance
with recycled modern ideals, while there is a continuous failure
to observe all aspects of its complexity and nuances. Everything
that is modern and actual is accepted with an incredible conde-
scendence and uncritically. Any, even the slightest suspicion in
contemporary “world achievements” – most often worthless and
lifeless schematisms the postmodern world abounds with from
pseudo-science, through media to art and trending events – is
perceived as sacrilege followed by horror. What differs is that
the comprehension of changes does not occur spontaneously,
from the mere imagination of individual people and their direct
communication, but it is created by media. Without media-based
public opinion, these views could no longer be possible. And
what is identical to the previous stages of the modern epoch is the
identification of every social movement with progress, while the
difference is that the movement has, in fact, been fairly reduced

155
and only focused on intensifying superficial social communica-
tion and the acceleration of the performance of the established
social system that no longer encourages true social transforma-
tions, but only maintains already existing relations. Identical to
earlier ideological content is the postmodern identification of the
enemies of progress, which is marked as the only big and real
source of dissatisfaction and failure. These are the deposits of
“essentialism”, religious tradition, and historical heritage from
pre-modern times, seen as sources of “exclusiveness”, “intol-
erance”, “narrow-mindedness”, and “impoliteness”. The way
of dealing with this “inacceptable content” is different in com-
parison to modern ideologies: in the early and mature modern
epoch, these enemies would be physically eliminated or their
behavior will be reshaped by the toughest forms of disciplinary
punishment policies. Now, they are only marginalized and ex-
communicated from the public or their behavior is reshaped by
deep biopolitical approaches. Human “universal values” are also
identical to these in modern times. The purpose of their advoca-
cy is that the masses of post-ideological followers would be kept
under control. These values are
​​ not universal at all, but they are
just pretentious to be: in fact, they are made up of abstracted,
generalized forms of rational-naturalistic equalization that refer
with ultimate exclusivity to everything concrete that disproves
both their content and the desired extent of influence by their
existence. It is, however, different that these values no longer
represent a real motivational framework, or a starting point for
the willing reshaping of the world. They are usually only a mere
excuse for countless unarticulated behaviors, or for the obedi-
ent inclusion into the channeled forms of manifestation of so-
cial activism. Despite of the constant glorification of spontaneity
– which, by the way, in the modern epoch emerged generally
because of the inability to overcome pre-modern ethical content

156
and behaviors in contrast to the non-applicable schematics that
were supposed to create a “better future” – any post-ideological
world is almost completely deprived of any spontaneity. Spon-
taneity is only, calculated and organized, simulated: the absence
of spontaneity due to mass conditionality by projected schemat-
ics and “mechanics of interest” is mostly manifested in an orga-
nized, instant, unanimous opposition to almost all pre-modern
identity deposits and “fixed” values ​​as enemies of individual
freedom. This is probably precisely the reason why Dictionary
of Technology appears very decisively in the pre-modern form
of the medieval manuscript. And its main warning is to accen-
tuate the danger of the simulacrums that always set the goal in
a wrong way, that is simulate the mere existence of the goal as
they tacitly deny that the historical flow has meaning. This im-
plies – in contrast to the stories of tolerance and coexistence of
different values (which,
​​ in fact, as it is constantly pointed out
through the media, no one should take seriously and consistently
adhere to them) – the post-ideological world which is above all
negational, where the destroyers of values ​​prevail: those not be-
lieving in anything anymore.
What is the reason for all these differences to occur in the
post-ideological world in relation to the earlier phases of moder-
nity when the ideologies flourished? Firstly, due to the weaken-
ing of the utopian ideological fervor directed at social changes;
and not so much because this fervor was not fully achieved in the
world or because of its failure in the intention to build a different,
new world – but because it was partially successful, no matter
how much its actual effects differed from idealized fantasies.
Modern post-ideological and technological civilization is a place
of partially realized anti-utopia of life in a world without God,
according to the man’s needs. In this anti-utopia, the ultimate
failure of the modernist project, the abjuring of its utopian prom-

157
ises and the abandonment of the ultimate set goals, is concealed
by skillful substitutes of the thesis: a technological attempt to
compensate for the sweetness of the earthly “paradisal” utopia
and denying any other meaning and purpose except for that one
which the man, at his own discretion, gives to everything. There-
by, the starting point from which the whole modern enterprise has
been ventured is – a separate, secularized individual with hyper-
trophic reason and passion – proclaimed for its goal, for the mere
source. Individual is the only purpose, it is its own goal, while the
existing forms of self-improvement and self-exceeding of that
“human, too human” with the help of technology have become
a kind of an imperative of the modern world. In the post-ideo-
logical, technological anti-utopia, universal, external utopia is no
longer realized, but all the energies are directed to the inner, sub-
jective realization of utopian plans regarding the final transfor-
mation and the prevailing of man’s own nature. A world without
God has been achieved to a great extent, and it should not be rad-
ically changed at this stage, but rather maintained. What needs to
be changed is the nature of man. He and these changes need to be
“in a godlike manner” and the outside world should be changed
only through successfully achieved self-exceeding.

Posthumanism – the Last Attempt of Technology to Heaven

Posthumanism represents central direction of performance of

modernist post-ideological activities in the 21st century.9 Car-
ried out with excitement due to the new opportunities opening in
the areas of cybernetics, informatics, genetics, medicine, and the
creation of new forms of artificial intelligence, those advocating

9
The new coined term “posthuman” was invented and firstly used in
1880 by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, a well-known occultist-theosophist,
even though she did not elaborate what this concept may refer to.

158
Posthumanism tend to turn modern high-tech achievements in
the direction of causing fundamental changes in the very nature
of the human species and its relation to the world. Systematized
new knowledge regarding the work of human body nature should
be directed away from genome mapping and stem cell testing
for the need of medical treatment and prolongation of life, in the
direction of overcompensation and overcoming of not only the
physical aspect of the natural givenness, and not only in attempts
to change “human conditions” (contained in the key phases of
human existence – birth, growth, emotionality, aspirations, con-
flicts and mortality), but also because of the diversion of all the
differences separating man from animals and machines. There-
fore, it is just enough to determine the degree of genetic similar-
ity between man and the chimpanzee, but it is also necessary to
erase all the observed differences, overcome and “freely” go to
both directions – from man to animal, and vice versa. Although
they are attempts to abandon human nature as givenness, this is
not (although some posthumanists, under the influence of anti-
humanism that wanted to highlight the problematic nature of the
modern figure of man, thus point it out)10 about leaving modern
anthropocentric position – but about its full reaffirmation and
a new elation. Posthumanism is not willing to overcome and
abolish the present human nature and leave it behind, but rather
strives to present it as extremely unstable and prone to change,
so it can be used as a springboard for major breakthroughs in
different directions of development. Posthumanism mainly relies
on biotechnology, or technology in general, even though it also
assumes the future development of other sciences and scientific
disciplines of mathematics, architecture, paleoanthropology, bot-
any, as well as geography, pedagogy, human rights studies, post-

10
Further reading: Wolfe, Cary. What is Posthumanism? University of
Minnesota Press. Minneapolis, Minnesota, 2009.

159
colonial studies and the gender studies all the way to fetishism,
the scientific study of paranormal phenomena, and the research
of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence.
The experiment of creating post-human intends to confirm the
human will through the biotechnological self-exceeding of its
physicality, which should also involve and connect other life
forms, and other types whose natural givenness is also supposed
to undergo transformation. Posthumanism has the same attitude
towards machines, that is, towards overcoming the existing re-
lationships between living and non-living creatures. This is why
the crossing (“improvement”) of the man with robots and the
creation of a cyborg (cybernetic organisms) is promoted. Since
the proclamations of the first programming texts that propagated
it (“A Cyborg Manifesto” by Donna Haraway in 1985), posthu-
manism has been directed towards three interconnected “border
demolitions”, the destruction of barriers – a clear distinction
between human and animal, between the organism and the ma-
chine, and between physical and non-physical. By pushing these
barriers – the posthumanists are convinced – a new space for the
creation of chimeras (creatures that were created by crossbreed-
ing different animal species), human-animal hybrids and the cy-
borg (a combination of man and robot) will be opened.
Only when this inner, posthumanist progress becomes wide-
spread, as its supporters believe, it will be reflected in the out-
side world and it will influence its further improvement. When
people, improved by biotechnological methods, will be living
for about 120 or 150 years, this would inevitably affect social
life: the time when people get married and the length of mar-
riage, reproduction, career span, the age of retirement, and even
the existence of a pension system. “Extension of the lifespan
will cause an indescribable chaos in most of the age-based hier-
archies. These hierarchies traditionally have a pyramidal struc-

160
ture because death makes a group of those competing for the
particular position smaller (...) However, with people who rou-
tinely continue to be active in their sixties, seventies, eighties,
and even nineties, these pyramids will increasingly turn into flat
trapezoids or even rectangles. The natural tendency of a gener-
ation to be removed from the way of the following one will be
replaced by the simultaneous existence of three, four, and even
five generations” (Fukuyama 2003: 82). Not only will human
life last longer, but senior phase in which all the life activities
decrease as well. “This is a period society does not like to think
about because it directly threatens the ideals of personal auton-
omy that are dear to a lot of people. The increase in the number
of people in the first and second category has created a new
situation in which individuals who are approaching retirement
are faced with restrictions of their own choice because they still
have to take care of one of their living parent who depends
on them” (Ibid, 86). These are, according to posthumanists,
only less important side social changes: the accomplishment
of the post-man would be a crucial moment in evolutionary
processes. When these changes are successfully carried out, a
supernatural, titanic being will be created. These creatures will
be able to transform and awaken new potentials in the entire
material universe, those one which, as not awakened and un-
realized, “sleep” since the creation of the cosmos. Some of the
posthumanists (for instance, Kurzweil) even attribute the sacral
dimension to such an “awakening”, while the scientific, non-re-
ligious majority among them sees the emergence of postmodern
intelligence as the driving force leading to the reconstruction of
all the natural laws that exist in our universe.
The key notion of the “posthuman condition” is “singularity”. It
is a term derived from astrophysics. It refers to the central part
of the black hole where all the atoms and all the material parti-

161
cles that are presumed to pass into another kind of energy split
and disappear. A model of “singularity” – with a “final horizon”
around a black hole whose gravitational attraction is so great that
nothing, even the light cannot escape from it – unites the desire
for self-disappearing and the desire to transform into something
better and higher. It, therefore, symbolizes nothingness with the
possibility of a different cosmos to be born again. As such, the
notion of “singularity” is extremely suitable to encompass all
contradictory urges of modern nihilism: a desire for erasing all
barriers that allegedly interfere with individual freedom and a si-
multaneous desire for self-abolition, but also a belief in self-over-
coming, and a tendency to turn into something better and more
perfect. Thus conceptualized, posthumanist nihilism also under-
lies the efforts of the human ego to prove itself again and the
existing life inertia, as well as the desire to live (through various
aesthetic corrections, conditioning exercises and advanced med-
ical interventions of the biotechnological and nanotechnological
type) and hatred towards various aspects of real life (ignorance,
nonsense, suffering, diseases, aging, and dying)... With all of
this, posthumanism, with the offer of continuous improvement
in the market of biotechnological innovations, also represents a
form of new marketing acceptable to all those who are likely to
develop progressive-utopian aspirations.
Posthumanism is, above all, oriented towards the transformation
of the composition of the body of a human individual and only
consequently towards the changes of the external world and hu-
man society. Nevertheless, it is still characterized by a modern
approach, the one in its extreme utopian form, but with anoth-
er orientation. Fundamental positions remained unchanged. Al-
though the human body is an object of a desired endeavor, an
autonomous individual with his own intelligence and willingness
to make constant changes remains the main carrier of this trans-

162
formation. The autonomous individual remains obsessed with
the belief that humankind is still in the early stages of a sudden
knowledge increase, lifespan, freedom and intelligence that hin-
der and suppress old old-fashioned ideological concepts, social
structures, and processes. As their main enemy for the dominant
“braking” force, the posthumanist modernists still see faith in
God and religious beliefs. For God and believers, posthumanists
dedicate disqualifications that are already seen so many times in
modern ideological visions: for them, God is merely a primitive
idea made by the benighted people in an attempt to rise from total
ignorance and unconsciousness. Faith in God, for the advocates
of post-humanism, has, over time, turned into an extremely op-
pressive concept that one should get rid of. As a true, effective
alternative to faith in God – beyond the nihilist despair and sterile
scientism, followers of posthumanism refer to their own learning.
For them, all the previous forms of anthropocentric humanism
were only the initial stages on an uninterrupted evolutionary de-
velopment. This leads to a “posthuman condition” that will erase
all the borders, lead to radical changes in a given human nature,
and increase all its possibilities unpredictably. All the main fea-
tures of modern pursuits are still there: an optimistic belief in the
inevitability of the success of the endeavor of continuous growth,
a persistent progress unfamiliar with stagnation; the desire for
absolute emancipation; hatred for the existing barriers, distinc-
tions, and all hierarchies, structures, established relationships,
and all types of constraints that are merely considered to be ham-
pering and repressive. Of course, as Dictionary of Technology
warns, in all of these innovative requirements, posthumanism is
neither new nor original at all. In essence, it – like all modernists
and progressivists – is trying to enthrone itself in the place of the
Christian God. Posthumanists are striving to mimic the Creator,
but, like all usurpers, in the most sinister and wrong way: through

163
the use of technology of obedience, with constant resort to vio-
lence, destruction, and not with sharing and transformative love
that is the only one to provide authentic creative fruits.
Starting from the dynamics of human nature and the tendency to-
wards creative participation in the transformation of the creation,
posthumanism is only a new form of human attempt to relive the
rejected Christian spiritual perspective with the help of techno-
logical methods and fulfill its egoistic striving for self-exceeding.
It seems to misrepresent and turn into parody the “Epistle to the
Romans” of the Apostle Paul: “For the creation waits in eager
expectation for the revelation of the sons of God. For the creation
was subjected to futility, not by its own will, but because of the
One who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set
free from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious free-
dom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has
been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until the present
time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of
the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as
sons, the redemption of our bodies” (To the Romans 8: 19–23).

References

Bošković; Petrović 2015: Bošković, Dušan; Petrović, Aleksan-

dar (Eds.). Three Reasons for the Return of Dictionary of
Technology from the Land of Dragons. In: Return from
the Land of Dragons – Dictionary of Technology 33 Years
Later. Belgrade: Institute for Philosophy and Social The-
ory. [Бошковић, Душан; Петровић, Александар (Ур.).
Повратак из земље змајева – Речник технологије 33
године после. Београд: Институт за филозофију и
друштвену теорију].
Cvetković 2008: Cvetkovic, Vladimir. Will for the New.
Belgrade: Dereta. [Cvetković, Vladimir. Volja za
novo. Beograd: Dereta].

164
Damjanović 2013: Damjanović, Ivana. Politics–Technology
Relation in Contemporary Political Theory. Faculty
of Political Sciences. Belgrade. Doctoral Dissertation.
[Дамјановић, Ивана. Однос политике и технологије
у савременој политичкој теорији. Факултет политич-
ких наука. Београд. Докторска дисертација].
Ellul 2010: Ellul, Jacques. Technique or The Stake of the Century.
Belgrade: Anarchy/Blok 45 and the Brotherhood from
Everton. [Елил. Жак, Техника или улог века. Београд:
Анархија/Блок 45 и Братсво из Евертона].
Fedorov 1998: Fedorov, Nikolai. Philosophy of the Common
Task. Podgorica: CID. [Фјодоров, Николај. Филозофија
опште ствари. Подгорица: ЦИД].
Florovski 1991: Florovsky, Georges. Metaphysical Preconditioning
of Utopia. Belgrade: Moderna. [Флоровски, Георгије. Ме-
тафизички предуслови утопизма Београд: Модерна].
Fukuyama 2003: Fukuyama, Francis. Our Posthuman Future.
Podgorica: CID. [Фукујама, Френсис. Наша постху-
мана будућност. Подгорица: ЦИД].
Gajić 2011: Gajić, Aleksandar. Spiritual Bases of the World
Crisis. Belgrade: Konras. [Гајић, Александар. Духовне
основе светске кризе. Београд: Конрас].
Gajić 2015: Gajić, Aleksandar. In the Vortex of Transition:
Serbia and the Contemporary World 2005–2015.
Belgrade: Institute of European Studies. [Гајић,
Александар. У вртлогу транзиције: Србија и сав-
ремени свет 2005–2015. Београд: Институт за ев-
ропске студије].
Heidegger 1977: Heidegger, Martin. The Question Con-
cerning Technology and Other Essays. New York/
London: Garland Publishing.
Herbert 1990: Herbert, Marcuse. One-dimensional Man. Sara-
jevo: Veselin Maslesa – Svjetlost. [Herbert, Marcuse.
Jednodimenzionalni čovek. Sarajevo: Veselin Masleša
– Svjetlost].

165
Knežević 2015: Knežević, Miloš. Clarifia for the Techno-
Conspiracy. Cognitive Mindedness of Dictionary of
Technology. Belgrade: Philosophy and Society 26(1):
115–138.
Mumford 2009: Mumford, Lewis Technics and Civilization.
Novi Sad: Mediterran. [Мамфорд, Луис. Техника и ци­
ви­лизација. Нови Сад: Медитеран].
Nash 2006: Nash, Kate. Contemporary Political Sociology.
Belgrade: Službeni glasnik. [Неш, Кејт. Савремена
политичка социологија. Београд: Службени гласник].
Petrović 2015: Petrović, Aleksandar. Dictionary of Technology
and Ghost of Illusion. In: Return from the Land of
Dragons – Dictionary of Technology 33 Years Later.
Bošković, Dušan; Petrović, Aleksandar (Eds.). Belgrade:
Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory. 93–119.
[Петровић, Александар. О Речнику технологије и
духу привида. У: Повратак из земље змајева: Речник
технологије 33 године после. Бошковић, Душан;
Петровић, Александар (Ур.). Београд: Институт за
филозофију и друштвену теорију. 93–119].
Petrović 2017: Petrović, Aleksandar. Res Publica and Res
Occulta. Dictionary of Technology between Recollecting
and Memory. In Heptadecagon – Dictionary of
Technology as Anti-utopia (pro et contra). Vujadinović,
Dimitrije (Ed.). Belgrade: Institute of European Studies.
pp. 17–37. [Петровић, Александар. Res Publica и
Res Occulta. Речник технологије између сећања и
памћења. У: Хептадекагон – Речник технологије
као анти-утопија (pro et contra). Вујадиновић,
Димитрије (Ур.). Београд: Институт за европске
студије. 17–37].
Rečnik tehnologije 1981: Dictionary of Technology. Belgrade:
Vidici. no. 1–2. [Rečnik tehnologije. Beograd: Vidici.
бр. 1–2]
<https://recniktehnologije.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/recnik_
high.pdf> Accessed on June, 30th 2018.

166
Stevanović 2018: Stevanović, Aleksandra. Theology of Diction-
ary of Technology. Nis: Church Studies. no. 15. 407–
418. [Стевановић, Александра. Теологија Речника
технологије. Ниш: Црквене студије. Бр. 15. 407–418].
Subotić 2006: Subotić, Oliver. Orthodoxy and Information
Technology. Belgrade: Pravoslavlje. [Суботић, Оливер.
Православље и информационе технологије. Београд:
Православље].
Talmond 1955: Talmond, Jаcob. The Origins of Totalitarian De-
mocracy. London: Norton & Co.
Wallerstein 2005: Wallerstein, Immanuel. After Liberalism.
Belgrade: Službeni glasnik. [Валерштајн, Имануел.
После либерализма. Београд: Службени гласник].
Wolfe 2009: Wolfe, Cary. What is Posthumanism? Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
  

167