Breaking technological meta-paradigms : selling the unspeakable

This is a unique, path-breaking paper seeking to open up an area for analysis. It focuses on the technology of perception and introduces a number of new concepts as part of a theory-building effort. It is argued that the taken-for-granted perceptual space has been shaped by a sensory order. The notion of vision and auditory as ‘higher senses’ and the other channels as ‘lower senses’ derives from Aristotle. Western art became predominantly visual or auditory and this influenced the technologization and commodification of these perceptual channels. However, the technologization of the other perceptual channels (the ‘proxo-senses’) is emergent. This paper seeks to theorize what will be a fundamental technological shift of the 21st century.