Heidegger's Questioning concerning technology

Question #11

One particular learning experience that stand out to me from what I learnt from the website on Heidegger is his views as the danger associated with technology. He begins by say that he was questioning concerning technology in order to bring to light our relationship to its essence.” He said it is not enough to identify Enframing as the essence of modern technology, but that we need to determine how we, as human beings, stand in relation to technology. He suggested how humanity might come into the “free relationship to technology”. which is, remember the aim of his essay. He said because enframing does not utterly change humanity’s connection to the world, there is room, even within enframing, for different—we might say “renewed” orientation to the world. Once we realize that our own orientation to the world is the essence of technology, once we open ourselves, we will find an opportunity to establish a free relationship to technology. He emphasize the fact that humanity can come to realize that it, too, is ”on its way” to an arrival, and that only by reorienting itself to the way in which nature reveals itself can humanity establish a relationship with the world that is not ultimately self-destructive. Heidegger views as the danger associated with technology is not so much the direct effects of mechanization, but that humanity will eventually reach a point at which the human will become only so much “standing-reserve” if he continues on the path of enframing. He also said humanity over inflated sense of its power over the natural world might led to his believe that he has control over all existence, and that excessive pride leads to “delusion”. He concluded by say that such an orientation to thee world will blind humanity to the ways in which the word revels itself. This discussion by Heidegger is a food for thought for me after reading it. I now have a different view of what technology is all about, and in short his essay has re-enforce my re-orientation and thinking about technology since the beginning of this course.

Question #12

Enframing:

Enframing is one of the concepts in Heidegger’s essay, the question concerning technology. Enframing is the essence of technology, which “means the gathering together of that setting-upon which sets upon man, i.e., challenges him forth, to reveal the real, the mode of ordering, as standing-reserve”. Enframing tends to rule out other ways of revealing and meanings that do not fit the egocentric use of resources. Human beings begin to see themselves in the same way as they view other resources. Heidegger uses the term enframing as a challenging claim on man. Once things have been revealed to us we place them inside of a “frame” of understanding. Example is what a picture frame does to an image. Not only does the image now have a place inside the frame, but also we can call it a picture because of the frame, which it has around it. Heidegger wants us to know that we cannot neglect the surroundings, no matter how small they may appear to us at the time. He believes that modern technology, as Enframing is dangerous, that if we enframe we are losing sight of our revealing and our essence. He said our essence is concealed from us because we become users of the world as standing-reserve. “Enframing, Heidegger said is a danger that sets man on a destructive and self-destructive course, because it blocks every view into the coming-to-pass of revealing and so endangers the relation to the essence of truth”. On a second taught, enframing could makes clear the responsibility of human beings to the world if we reflect upon the it as the essence of technology, and then we find not only that we are a part of the world, but that the world needs us to care for it”.