Abstract

I argue that the category of equipment denoted computational objects have, by virtue of the unique presence of those objects in the world as permanently withdrawn from full disclosure of operation due to their dependence on computational code, a unique manner of causal interaction with users that can only be described as vicarious. As computational devices become increasingly ubiquitous as tools for managing and navigation the human world, this vicarious relationship becomes important in understanding how this technology affects the phenomenological experience of being in the world as it is, alongside computational objects, and how orientation towards the world can be described as computational.