The Essence of Technology: Its Impact on Modern Society
Today when we think of technology, we instantly think of the tools that are integrated into our daily life routines. These tools such as a TV, a microwave, an iPhone, a laptop, a camera, an air conditioner and so on are there to make our life easier. Sometimes we don’t even think twice about what technology does to us in everyday life. We even tend to take it for granted, technology has now become very natural to all of us. The oxford dictionary defines technology as “the application of the scientific knowledge for practical purposes especially in the industry.” In the essence of technology essay we will try to understand its the viewpoint of Heidegger in his essay.
The German philosopher Martin Heidegger was interested in the technology at the very basic and simplistic level such as a hammer and nail but in 1954, he published an essay in which he tried to understand what exactly is technology? and what do all technological things have in common? The timeline of this essay was nine years after the world war 2 in which the technology used had destroyed nearly half of the Europe and all of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and the same time cities, factories and innovation continued to grow at an immense speed all over the world. Heidegger thought the new technologies and their effects were not just the result of natural human progression though innovation. He knew that this way of thinking could only take us down dark and dangerous paths but do no good.
In the essay, Heidegger starts off by saying that “the essence of technology is by no means anything technological.” Technology for Heidegger is not simply the pushing forward of innovation of newer faster and more efficient machines and systems. He says that any technology at its simplest level has two definitions one is a human activity (Anthropological) and the other is it's a means to an end (instrumental). The anthropological definition of technology says that all the technology involves some sort of human activity where as the instrumental definition says that the technology is the means to an end. Heidegger says that even though the given definitions of technology is correct, it is not sufficient for us to fully comprehend technology. The interesting thing to note down is that in Heidegger’s world we don’t see technology as tools but we are trying to understand the essence of technology and essence of the technological is not same as the instance of technology.
In the later part of the essay, Heidegger moves away from this idea of instrumental versus anthropological and dig deeper into the metaphysical philosophical side of the topic after making it clear that we cannot get the essence of the technology until we look the metaphysical side of the technology. Heidegger borrows Aristotle's metaphysics of causality otherwise known as the four causes to explain the essence of technology. Heidegger uses the silver chalice as an example in explaining these causes.
The first one of these causes is causa materialis refers to the matter or material from which it is made and in this case it is silver. Next one causa formalis refers to the form or structure in which it exists here in this case the chalice is in curved form. Third one causa efficiens refers to the source of change who brings out what is made in this case the silversmith and last one causa finalis refers the final effect and reason of why it is made and escaped a sacrificial right and voila this silver chalice is revealed.
If we apply the analogy of the four causes in some real world technologies like YouTube then we can refer to the causa materialis as not only the hardware and the servers but it is also the user generated content, the profiles, the link to articles and the videos. The causa materialis is both the raw material and the raw data. The next one causa formalis is the code of the youtube which includes the algorithms, types of connections, how they are organised, how they are presented and so on. Third one causa efficiens is the different reasons why users want to use the application. Finally the last one causa finalis might refer to the owner of the company but it may also refer to user again because even though the user does not have an access to the hardware and data, the feature like suggestions and autoplay are indirectly made by the user based on the previous choices he/she opted made.
Heidegger often refers to the unconcealmeant, and he says that we bring forth things from nothing, we think of an idea and make it into something tangible. Unconcealment is equals to althaea. Althea is Greek word for truth. Technology is a mode of revealing. Technology comes to presence in the realm where revealing and unconcealment may take place, where althea, truth happens. Heidegger infers that we must think of revealing or bringing forth as poiesis. Not only handicraft manufacture not only artistic and poetical bringing into appearance and concrete imagery is a bringing forth, poesis. In other words we must be sensitive and so to speak poetic to what is for what presences are laid out before us.
Another important term Heidegger mentions is the word techne which is skill, technique and also the arts of the mind and the Fine Arts. “Techne belongs to bringing forth to poesis, it is something poetic.” When one encompasses both poesis and techne, one can reveal to us so based on all this information so is it safe to say that technology’s essence is that it reveals out there althea or truth to us. According to Heidegger yes but no Heidegger uses the silver chalice to convey causality but can this concept apply to modern technology. Modern technology goes beyond causality and it has also changed the pattern of revealing something quite different and radically new.
Heideggers understanding of phenomenology has some common points with post phenomenological method but it is different from the later one in two main ways. First one is that, for heidegger “the phenomenon of phenomenology is not the object of a theory since all objectivity already presumes and enacts a relation (ontologically) between being and thinking and this relation is precisely the theme of phenomenology”. Second one is that, “phenomenology cannot be understood as a theoretical science regarding a specific domain of objects, since it simultaneously investigates the relation that has to be enacted in order to make objectivity possible.” This points to a fundamental difference between Heidegger’s phenomenology and post phenomenology.
Essentialism is way thinking in which every entity will have a described set of attributes that are required for its identification and functioning. In early western philosophy Plato also mentions that things have such an essence with the term idea or form. Transcendentalism on the other hand is a philosophical movement in the united states during 19th century. The moment started as a result of the protest against the intellectualism and spirituality at that time. The central point is that Heidegger’s understanding of the essence of modern technology concerns with the terms of the phenomenological concept of technical mediation. So it can therefore neither be reduced to essentialism nor transcendentalism. Both these critiques are situated on the ontic level of humantechnology relations and accordingly interpret Enframing as a flawed proposition about these relations. Ihde interprets “Enframing as a genus and criticizes it because one cannot reduce the complexities of human-technology relations to an overarching essence.” Verbeek interprets “Enframing as a condition of possibility for modern technologies and finds that human-technology relations cannot be reduced to these conditions. Yet Heidegger argues that “Enframing is never the essence of technology in the sense of a genus”, which indicates that it is not geared towards a theoretical description of technologies or human-technology relations.
