STS Module 4 - Technology as a Way of Revealing

Essence of technology

Two ways of viewing technology!

  • Instrumental

  • Anthropological

Instrumental view is that technology can be viewed as a means to an end, to like the end-be-all. viewed as a tool “Technology is omniprescent” - Martin Heidegger

For anthropological view, it is a view that can be seen as ‘human activity’. Like its in our nature, to create technology.

However neither touches the essence of technology. According to Martin Heidegger, it is a mode of being; or of revealing. Revealing the world through technology - seeing new things that we can do through technology that we wouldn’t have been able to do without technology. We will be incorrect if we think that it is something neutral.

MARTIN HEIDEGGER

  • 1889-1972

  • Joined the NSDAP until it was dismantled at the end of WW2 (which made him controversial)

  • Made the book Being and Time

  • Technology as a way of revealing (1977, 12)

His philosophy is focused on ontology - the study of being or Das sein in germany

His study includes:

  1. Forgetfulness: We have forgotten that we are alive, running away from the das Nichts (The Nothing)

  2. Rootedness in Soil: We are connected.

  3. Essential: Forget to be free and live for ourselves. Wants to overcome the throwness (geworfenheit)

CASUALITY

Technology brings about change casually. For example, the invention of the internet was originally intended for military communication but now it has transformed the way we communicate.

The cause (invention) is what is responsible for the effect, and the effects are indebted to their causes.

According to Aristotle, there are four ways in which this relation holds:

  • Material cause

  • Formal cause

  • Efficient cause

  • Final cause

    • Material cause: A table was formed out of wood. BECAUSE of the wood, it can be made into a table.

    • Formal cause: A snowflake has a unique appearance BECAUSE of its natural hexagonal crystalline structure. a smartphone is a smartphone BECAUSE of the little things that make it work

    • efficient cause: the agent responsible for making something happen. the how. if you break a glass, the efficient cause is the physical action of you breaking it. the efficient cause explains the actions or events that lead to particular result.

    • final cause: refers to the purpose or the why behind a thing’s existence. we eat food to nourish and feed our hunger. that is a final cause. the why does it exist or why do we do this?

The unifying notion is that of starting something on its way to arrival. So its like technology is snowballing? Like technology is getting more and more advanced.

Being responsible is an inducing to go forward. Responsibility is a motivator for one’s progress and improvement.

BRINGING FORTH

Bringing forth means to bring out of concealment. This revealing is what the greeks call the truth. If the world is concealed, then technology reveals the world. This is seen in the way the greeks understood techne, which encompasses not only craft but other acts of the mind, and poetry.

MODERN TECHNOLOGY

All kinds of technology can reveal. Primitive and modern technology. However, if primitive crafts REVEAL the world (bringing-forth), then modern technology CHALLENGES the world (challenging-forth). modern technology exploits nature. it extracts something from it and transforms it, stores it, and distributes it.

STANDING-RESERVE VIEW

It is a view refers to the resources of the natural world being seen as a reservoir of raw materials for human use and consumption. Basically, it is something to be exploited.

Man is challenged to do this, and as such he becomes part of the standing-reserve. He becomes an instrument of technology (labor), to be exploited in the ordering of nature.

ENFRAMING

Das Gestell (german word for enframing)

Martin Heidegger’s philosophy. Enframing is seeing the world through the lens of technology. It is not man that orders nature to do its bidding through technology, but rather it reveals nature to man. This is called enframing. In enframing, the world is revealed as a standing-reserve.

This is “historically” prior to the development of science.

Enframing is the ESSENCE of technology.

DESTINING

Gestel (germand word for destining)

If enframing is the practical use of the world through technology, then destining is the mindset upon which how we interact with the world through the lens of technology. Hence, enframing, and technology is a destining. We are sent upon the way of revealing the actual as a standing-reserve. The destining of man to reveal nature carries with it the danger of misconstrual. of being misunderstood

THE DANGER

Man is in danger of becoming part of the standing-reserve (basically man is magiging resource like labor) or alternatively, he may find only himself in nature

He may think that the ordering of the world through technology is the fundamental mode of revealing

So the real threat of technology comes from its essence, not its activities or products. It can lead to the loss of the deeper meaning and value of human existence, where individuals are treated as a means to an end rather than as ends in themselves.

THE SAVING POWER

Poet Holderlin writes that the saving power grows where danger is. The saving power is often associated with Holderlin’s concept of the role of a poet in society and the power of poetry.

He believed that poetry had a unique and profound capacity to help humanity find meaning, solace, with the divines.

The saving power would allow a bringing-forth that is not a challenging forth (that things would reveal themselves not as a standing-reserve, but as nature itself that should be appreciated and be grateful for)

Both technology and bringing-forth grow out of “granting”

Granting is the human ability to grant meaning to objects. We grant a purpose to objects.

So technology and bringing forth came from the human ability to grant meaning to things. Thus, it allows things to be revealed.

ART AS SAVING POWER

Poetry and other arts have the power to reveal in the sense of “bringing-forth”. Poetry in particular, is included in the Aristotelian techne and is akin to modern technology. Aristotelian techne is often translated as “art” or “craftsmanship”. It may be the best means for getting at the essence of technology itself.

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

supplementary

WHAT IS HUMAN FLOURISHING?

Flourishing is the highest good of human endeavors and that toward which all actions aim, it is the success as a human being. The best life is one of excellent human activity.

According to Ceslas Spicq, the focus of ancient philosophers was defining the well-lived life. They called this life Eudalmonia, which we can translate as flourishing or happiness.

STOICS

The only way to achieve true flourishing was to live a life separate from the influence of fickle emotions. This is achieved by following the Stoic Happiness Triangle, which explains the Stoic’s core teachings.