Existential Technologies: The Machinery and Morality of Futurology & Stanisław Lem’s Summa Technologiae (1964)

This essay proposes the concept of existential technologies—technologies that alter evolutionary trajectories over long spans of time, operating beyond conventional epistemic and moral frameworks—through a close reading of Stanisław Lem’s Summa Technologiae (1964). Lem is mostly known as a science-fiction author, but this essay looks to his theoretical text as an understudied and philosophically rich account of long-term technological change. Lem’s speculative futurology anticipates today’s debates around artificial intelligence, biopolitics, and epistemic automation, but also the moral and epistemological dilemmas posed by uncontrollable technological change. In contrast to both techno-utopian and techno-dystopian narratives, Summa Technologiae offers a vision in which technology evolves alongside and sometimes against humanity, generating outcomes that exceed ethical planning. In dialogue with Lem, the essay introduces two key categories: gnostic technologies, which automate epistemic functions, and anthropoforming technologies, which alter embodiment and identity, together constituting the domain of existential technologies. Re-reading Lem's work in the context of evolutionary amorality and Eastern European intellectual history—with its experiences of technological intrusion and historical catastrophe—this essay demonstrates how existential technologies transcend both human control and moral comprehension.