Sunday, August 22, 2010
I was clearing out old files on my desktop when I saw this essay I wrote for Ethics in New Media. I'll just throw it up here for posterity and delete the file from my desktop.
7. Martin Heidegger claims that “We are delivered over to it [technology] in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral” (p.312). Explain how Heidegger arrives at this conclusion, and compare to what extent (or not) his argument resonates with any one of Jean Baudrillard’s writings on new technologies. At the dawn of this millennium, humankind seems more heavily reliant on technology than ever, especially in the fields of information and communication. However, to understand Heidegger is to comprehend that in essence, our relationship and involvement with technology remains fundamentally unchanged regardless of the era. To understand Heidegger’s insistence that we not see technology as “neutral”, it is first necessary to understand that the term “technology” does not simply refer to the outward manifestations of complex mechanical tools and their application. Rather, technology is to be understood in the philosophical, not vernacular, sense.
This essay will first establish Heidegger’s engagement with the term “technology” and his understanding of it as conveyed in his essay on “questioning”. Then, it will proceed to outline the string of reasoning leading to Heidegger’s inescapable conclusion; namely, that to view our interaction with technology as value-neutral is to be completely blind to the true nature of technology, the Dasein of it as Heidegger put it, and to its influence on the formation and procession of human thought. Lastly, I will discuss the relation of Heidegger’s warning to Baudrillard’s observation about the similar blindness of human scientific thinking in “The Vital Illusion”. The blindness Baudrillard observes is not in the validity of the workings of scientific inquiry, but rather the wider issue of the “destination of the scientific project.” This bears direct relevance to Heidegger’s interrogation of our commonly held views on the neutrality of technology, and the ethics of thinking in such a way.
Heidegger states that our current understanding of technology, solely as a “means and a human activity”, is flawed and insufficient, and that to fully understand and perceive technology, it is necessary to move beyond the instrumental and anthropological definitions of technology. This critique is as relevant today as it ever was during the time Heidegger first made it, in the post-WWII era, precisely because of the entrapping nature of the mode of thought Heidegger speaks against. This mode of thought is, firstly, to conceive of technology purely in reductive terms, to see technology as reducible to technological artifacts, devices, or the techniques that produce these things. This failing is merely a conceptual one and is relatively minor. The deeper failing is the mode of thought that engages in “enframing” the world as a “standing reserve”, or “Gestell”. In a stroke of irony, the enframing way of viewing the world enframes the understanding of technology itself – the trapped viewer cannot see the trap because of its very nature of being.
Thus, Heidegger believes that technology as a mode of thought is by no means neutral, and has altered our state of Being; in fact it is continuously doing so, from moment to moment. This effect is ambiguous – Heidegger by no means exhibits any Luddite tendencies, and to regard his essay as an anti-technological tract advocating a return to some mythical, more “natural” way of living would be completely incorrect and non-salient. He is questioning the essence of technology and its effect on how we think as human beings. Man is now “unfree” and “chained” to technological thinking, and therein lies the “danger.” The nature of this danger is in the process of what he calls “enframing”, which may be described as a way of rendering the entirety of perceptible existence a “standing reserve” or “Gestell” merely to be harnessed for specific, narrow purposes. The world, and various elements we perceive in it, becomes merely a “stockpile of raw materials”.
Heidegger’s identification of the challenge to humanity is as such: to break free of the mode of thought that causes us to see the world narrowly in this way and be unable to even realize the narrowness of our perspective, and to continue to use technology while remaining “free” in our use of it. This would constitute an authentic relationship with technology. According to Heidegger, we must see the world not only in terms of wielding instruments to control nature. The element of entrapment arises in that humankind is trapped by the ever-present desire to gain mastery over nature, or his surroundings. Heidegger asserts that the desire to gain mastery becomes “all the more urgent the more technology threatens to slip from human control.” This is a self-perpetuating mode of existence that results in humans becoming chained to technology. We ourselves become a “standing reserve” for an intangible higher purpose, and the manner of thinking we unthinkingly employ may be summed up thus: “To use A to accomplish B, and that is all.” As Godzinski puts it, the “danger” is in the fragile balance where Man gets ordered or dominated by the things that he in turn is trying to order and dominate, to the extent that the sending or presencing of Being gets closed off and concealed from him.
And thus we clearly see the chain of reasoning that points to the rejection of the neutrality of technology, stemming from Heidegger’s definition of it. Technology, once understood as a mode of thinking and doing transcending mere physical artifacts, is seen to be one that entraps the human mind in a particular way. Part of this way is to assert that technology is value-neutral, that it exists on a plane where ethical issues do not apply, where it is meaningless to ask questions about what the right or wrong ways of relating to technology might be. A corollary of this is also the notion that moral decisions about the use of technological artifacts can somehow be divorced from the nature of both the artifacts in question, and of technology’s essential nature. The recognition needs to be present, that the technological way of thinking, of using tools, pervades our minds and affects the ways we relate to everything and everyone around us in deep, fundamental ways. The incumbent realization is that technology is therefore not neutral, and in fact to view it as neutral is precisely part of its dangerous effect on our thinking.
Technology is distinct from what we do with tools, instruments, equipment, or the way of thinking about those things. Likewise, modern technology is not reducible to technological artifacts, devices, or the techniques that produce those things. It is not enough to think of technology as the means with which to gain control over some aspect of nature. Thus Heidegger wants to distinguish between a common and limited perception of technology and the one he wants to promote as the true grasping of the essence of technology. At the root of it, the essence of technology has absolutely nothing to do with technology.
In this case, it is not a question of the neutrality of technology, but rather Man’s mistaken perception of its neutrality that comes under scrutiny. The problem lies in Man’s unawareness of his bondage to technology, and his ignorance of his own actions being the cause of this enslavement, as he sees technology as a neutral object. As a result, his freedom is unsuspectingly taken away, even as he feels more and more liberated by the usage of technology.
Heidegger believes that ‘enframing blocks the shining forth and holding sway of truth.’ , and that the way to disabuse ourselves from this misconception is to understand and seek for the Truth, which is an “unconcealment”. Man can better perceive the truth about things when they set themselves in a proper relation to what is entailed in the idea of technology. In fact the correctness of the instrumental definition of technology is so correct as to perturb us if we pay sufficient attention to it. However this ‘correctness’ is not at all the truth understood as essentially true nature of the situation. It is worth remarking that Heidegger uses the word unheimlich to underscore the unusual (ungewohnlich) nature of this situation whereby we see no essential difference between modern technology and older forms of craftsmanship and agricultural methods. The instrumental definition of technology in a sense has blocked our access to the fundamental differences between modern machine technology and the older tools of farmers and craftsmen. This has happened as a result of Gestell.
Etymologically, the word ‘Technology’ stems from the Greek techne, which is “the name not only for the activities and skills of the craftsman but also for the arts of the mind and the fine arts”. For the Greeks, techne was intimately linked to poiesis, the poetic, as well as craftsmanship. This is a form of “bringing forth” the truth into unconcealment, and a way for Man to apprehend the truth about the being of the world. Heidegger advocates pursuing an authentic relationship to technology so that we do not become standing-reserves dominated by technology. This becomes the pursuit of aletheia/truth. The notion of concealment and unconcealment matters very fundamentally, as “Heidegger says that there is a concealment that is intrinsic to the very nature of Being itself. Being conceals itself in order to presence. Similarly, nothing would be able to come to presence without this concealment. In the process of presencing or coming to be, things necessarily conceal themselves. Furthermore, in order for something to come to be, it must hold itself back, hence the concealment.”
The key point to stress here is that Heidegger neither rejects the technological out of hand, as simplified humanists tend to do, nor does he embrace it without reservations. The danger and the gift of what technology can do by way of enframing depends not on technology but on the spirit or fundamental attitude with which we take recourse to it. A very different, and far more grim picture of what the deep-rooted human infatuation with technology does (in Heideggerian terms, the danger of being enslaved, instead of being freed, by technology in the act of wanting to use it as a means of bringing about the unconcealment of nature)
Baudrillard on the other hand, looks at new technology and its emergence as something cancerous, as he states that it will eliminate human contact. He also states his concern about Man’s dependence on technology, and the primary problem is, “What happens when everything has been realized in modernity, when everything is virtually given?” What happens after that?
Technology is both ‘saving power’ and ‘danger’ for Man, depending on how he tackles it. The point of knowledge is in the process of finding it, but when Man reaches a point when he is dependent upon technology to find all of his answers, then he is incapable of progress. Nothing changes from cause to effect. Baudrillard wants Mankind to live as humans instead of as robots. However, in the current system we have built, there is a “strong probability, verging on a certainty, that systems will be undone by their own systematicity.” Diversity, competition and natural selection are what made Man a successful species. Eliminate these and the whole point of humanity is erased. Therefore the problem with technology is Man’s dependence on it, and with this dependence comes the lack of competition.
Baudrillard seems to be making a reference to Freud, that the drive for technology and immortality is not moving us forward but back.
Our own death is indeed unimaginable, and whenever we make the attempt to imagine it we can perceive that we really survive as spectators. Hence the psychoanalytic school could venture on the assertion that at bottom no one believes in his own death, or to put the same thing in another way, in the unconscious every one of us is convinced of his own immortality.
It seems that the denial of death and sex is a function of technology. The desire for sex, and by extension all desire for consummation of any sort, is the desire for death. It is the satisfaction of a want, and the complete satisfaction would be the death of the want as well as the death of that desire. In short, from this point of view, all things naturally strive towards their death. Therefore, Baudrillard believes that technology will mute and even terminate this natural process, rendering all of us nothing more than robots.
According to Heidegger’s view, technology seems to be swallowing everything, when he states that we should see it as merely one way of understanding the world, and that we should be aware of this. However, Baudrillard unravels that idea and states that Mankind is moving forward and progressing. However, the forward arc of technology is a circle, and without Heideggerian self-reflexivity, Man would be devolving.
In a way, both essays are making the same point from different directions. Both essays argue that technology will be detrimental to Man, unless we are aware of the dangers and risks associated with using Technology. The danger lies not in the technology itself, but in the dangerous mode of thinking that results from the use of technology.
Baudrillard says various life functions such as sex and death will be all designated as activities, which can be opted out of, and 'death must be included only as virtual reality’
There is a similar kind of distancing effect that Heidegger has described. By seeing everything as having a use, there is an alienation from ontological concerns. The ontological becomes or is replaced by the technological.
Baudrillard states that there is the same uncritical acceptance that these things should be 'functions' or 'activities'. This could be argued to be part of techne. In the time of the greeks, techne was a mode of revealing to get at aletheia. However, in modern times, techne, the derivative of technology, is all about enframing, without being conscious of the frame. As enframing is a way of seeing the world in terms of usable resources for predefined functions and acitivities, if something is not useful, it should not exist Therefore, people do not question why these functions should be seen as activities, and instead they just accept that it should be. This is ironically seen as progress, when, according to Freud, in fact the drive for immortality is a means to death. Man wants to live forever in the technological sense (cells, heads, etc) and destroy any sense of the ontological.
If we examine Heidegger through the lens of Freud, it also implies that not being self-reflexive about techne will just cause the progress of Man to regress back to where he originally begun. Baudrillard also begins his whole argument based on it.
“Here we must pose the question of the destination of the scientific project we must consider the very possibility that the very ‘progress’ of science in fact does not follow a line, but a curve…. we must ask if this final solution towards which we unconsciously work is not the secret destination of nature as well as of all our efforts. This throws a fairly harsh light on everything we still, today, persist in regarding as a positive evolution, as a step forward.”
“If modern physics must resign itself ever increasingly to the fact that its realm of representation remains inscrutable and incapable of being visualized, this resignation is not dictated by any committee of researchers. It is challenged forth by the rule of enframing, which demands that nature be orderable as standing-reserve.”
Both of the quotes are implying that Man has been so preoccupied with the scientific endeavour and technological progress that he has neglected the most basic components of knowledge and truth and thus distancing himself further and further away from his essence, “nowhere does man today any longer encounter himself.” What Man currently understands about technology is not technology itself, but merely the process. Baudrillard further emphasizes that by not fully understanding techne, humans will eventually devolve and enter a state of regression instead of progression.
Therefore I conclude that in the two articles under discussion, Heidegger and Baudrillard are thinking along very similar lines. I find I can relate one to the other closely when it comes to the key issue of questioning. Both Heidegger and Baudrillard stress the need to adopt a questioning mindset. The unfortunate tendency of most people is to regard such questioning as fatuous, or gratuitous, possessing no merit intrinsically. The sad irony would be that according to Heidegger's explanation, this very sort of thinking would be the key symptom of a mindset ruled by technology, without an authentic relationship to it. According to Baudrillard, it would constitute a sort of blindness to the regressive nature of unquestioningly applying scientific precepts, without being simultaneously scientific about doing so. In this way, Heidegger's writing resonates with that of Baudrillard according to the selected articles.
~~~~~~~~~
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baudrillard, Jean. The Vital Illusion. (Columbia University Press, 2000)
European Graduate School. Jean Baudrillard – Baudrillard on the New Technologies: An Interview with Claude Thibaut. March 6, 1996. http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-baudrillard-on-the-new-technologies.html
Freud, Sigmund (1915), “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death” Standard Edition. Vol. 14
Godzinski, Ronald, Jr. “(En)framing Heidegger’s Philosophy of Technology.” Essays in Philosophy: A Biannual Journal. 6, no. 1 (2005) http://www.humboldt.edu/~essays/godzinski.html#26
Heidegger, Martin. “The Question Concerning Technology.” Basic Writings from ‘Being and Time’ (1927) to ‘The Task of Thinking’ (1964), ed. David F. Krell (San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers, 1977)
O'Brien, Mahon. 2004. “Commentary on Heidegger’s The Question Concerning Technology”. In Thinking Together. Proceedings ofthe IWM Junior Fellows' Conference, Winter 2003, ed. A. Cashin and J. Jirsa,Vienna: IWM Junior Visiting Fellows' Conferences, Vol. 16.
University of Hawaii. “Heidegger Terms,” Heidegger: The Question Concerning Technology. http://www2.hawaii.edu/~zuern/demo/heidegger/termsframe.html
Omnia mutantur
11:04 AM
