The Question Concerning Technology

Despite how difficult it can be to read Heidegger, it’s still one of my favorite essays. Every time I read it, I see something new. How I understand Heidegger’s argument is that there are two perspectives that can influence the question concerning technology. If we ask about the technology, then we are seeing it as a means to an end, as a standing reserve, which is to say that we see something (technological understanding) as “ordered to stand by, to be immediately at hand, indeed to stand there just so it may be on call for further ordering.” This view represents what he calls an instrumental perspective that presents technology as neutral and the primary goal is efficiency. When I think of this perspective, I think of deforestation or oil drilling. In my hometown state, North Dakota, a large reserve of oil was discovered in the top, western portion of the state. This has lead to significant wealth on the one hand, but also, for example, housing (not enough or makeshift) and personal safety issues (to just name a couple). There are also environmental issues such as tearing up the landscape and using natural resources. From this instrumental perspective, the oil reserves are seen only as being there for us to make use of, to order, and to find an efficient method for getting the oil out of the ground.

But Heidegger says that if we ask about the “essence of technology,” then we are viewing technology from an anthropological perspective, which sees technology as a human activity. But this too can conceal a means-to-an-end approach to understanding technology. Whereas the instrumental perspective chains us to technology and makes us believe that we can master technology, the anthropological perspective creates a technological understanding of being that is seeing people as resources. For example, companies that decide to layoff large numbers of people in order increase stakeholder profits, see people as just numbers on a budget line. The same can be said for companies that use algorithms to determine productivity without talking to any human beings (in this case, they are viewing people as resources).

What Heidegger is asking us to do is question these “enframings” first by seeing the frame (a “clearing”) and then by revealing (articulating) it. What I think of here is the effort to define global warming as a very real phenomenon and not just a theory (e.g., Al Gore’s documentary about global warming). For Heidegger, one way to create a revealing is through techne (art), which can lead to a free relationship to technology. Techne is productive knowledge that is concerned with making. It refers not to the end product, but to the making that leads to the end product. Aristotle defined techne as the “reasoned state of capacity to make” by which he meant that the maker can not only do, but also knows the how and the why of the making. Most people in my field associate techne with what would be considered expert or professional knowledge. It moves beyond simply knowing how to practice; the maker is able to state reasons why. Heidegger believes that techne, then, is one way to create a clearing.