Formats

In the following, a new conceptual framework for investigating nowadays’ “technical” phenomena shall be introduced, that of formats. The thesis is that processes of formatting account for our recent conditions of life, and will do so in the very next future. It are processes whose foundations have been laid in modernity and which will further unfold for the time being. These processes are embedded in the format of the value chain, a circumstance making them resilient to change. In addition, they are resilient in themselves since forming interconnected systems of reciprocal causal circuits.Which leads to an overall situation that our entire “Lebenswelt” became formatted to an extent we don’t fully realize, even influencing our very percep-tion of it.