THE ESSENCE OF MODERN TECHNOLOGY

-- By ReynaldoWilson - 25 Oct 2024

“Modern Technology Will Save Us!”

There are several ways to look at the pervasiveness of modern technology. One common view is the world has many problems and it is through modern technology that we humans can solve this problem. Thus modern technology and the people who control it become saviors. Another common viewpoint is that technology is neutral and that it can be used for good and bad. For this latter viewpoint, Martin Heidegger may give us pause.

The Essence of Modern Technology and The Danger

Heidegger was particularly interested in the role of Technology (and again, by extension, rationalism, science, and positivism) in society and nature. First, as he was concerned with ontology and Being, he wanted to understand and define the essence of technology. He disagreed with the ‘simple’ anthropological understanding of technology, which roughly finds that technology is a means to an end. He instead sought to, “understand the instrument itself.” In order to understand the question that technology poses, Heidegger speaks about the nature of truth and how it is revealed. Fundamentally, he believes that things in the world are concealed and that there are a multitude of worldviews that bring about the truths of the world, or althea, and that one of them is poesis. In other words, there are different ways of revealing and bringing forth [Her-vor-bringen] what the truth is. He writes, “It is of utmost importance that we think bringing-forth in its full scope and at the same time in the sense of which the Greeks thought it. Not only handicraft manufacture, not only artistic and poetical bringing into appearance and concrete imagery, is a bringing-forth, Poesis.” I take the liberty of calling this a ‘worldview’ because, poesis, akin to the traits of a Dionysian social understanding, envelops a whole methodology of bringing forth and revealing a world of poetics, literature, and humanities.

Heidegger also develops the worldview that technology or techne uses to unconcealed truths in our world. He writes, “Technology is a mode of revealing. Technology comes to pretense in the realm where revealing and concealment takes place, where althea, truth, happens.” Heidegger understands that techne is a genuine way to reveal the phosphorescent truths in the world, but he still wonders, “Of what essence is modern technology that it thinks of putting exact science to use?” (320). Here is where he employs the use of one of his most powerful metaphors that contrasts technology and modern technology.

Heidegger, a proud German, uses two of the most quintessentially German furniture items, the Rhine River and the Windmill to demonstrate the difference between technology and modern technology. He argues the windmill, as a form of technology, does not disturb the current of the wind in any meaningful way. It simply sways in the wind that was already there and does not tempt to “unlock” or “Store” anything from the wind. The wind and the windmill simply exist, at the same time, not disturbing each other. He contrasts the windmill as an example of technology with a dam on the Rhine River as an example of modern technology. He argues modern technology “challenges [Herausfordern]” nature. Through modern technology, the Rhine River, instead of revealing itself as the highest order of natural force, it reveals itself as a power source of human consumption; something we can bend to the whims of our own distance. He calls this “challenging” worldview “Enframing,” wherein we view, “order,” and “set-upon” nature in an “oppressive way” as standing-reverve [Bestand] to be used by humans, as opposed to the view that humans must simply co-exist with nature. He writes, “We now name the challenging claim that gathers man with a view to ordering the self-revealing as standing reserve: Ge-stell [Enframing],” which he concludes is part of the essence of modern technology.

For Heidegger, there was a clear danger present with modern technologies' tendency to Enframe and order things a standing reserve. “As soon as what is unconcealed no longer concerns man even as an object, but exclusively as standing reserve,” he writes, “then he comes to the brink of a precipitous fall; that is, he comes to the point where he himself will have to be taken as standing reserve” (332). It is here, where we can see when Enframing reigns, that there is danger in the highest sense. When we as a society start to value all the exacting and quantifiable characteristics of our world, we may even start to view ourselves just as we do the Rhine River, and a disposable good or service with a stored potential, to be used for some larger societal need.

Are we in The Danger?

Well, yes and no. Arguably we humans have been Enframing other humans as Standing Reserves for a while now under systems of slavery and mercantilism. While the aforementioned examples are more practical and Heidegger is concerned with the more abstract study of being (or Dasein) I argue it should stand that chattel slavery even existing as a most wicked possibility on this earth should bear on our study of consciousness.

To look at something more ingrained in our daily lives, powerful algorithms operating within software serve to remove our wonder about the world which makes us human walls also designing new ways of being and molding our behavior (a la Zouboff). It can be said that these algorithms are an example of the powerful viewing users of software as standing reserve which is a worldview that challenges instead of synergizes. Perhaps the pit of The Danger gets deeper as the algorithms grow ‘better.’

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