The Affect of Modern Technology - Article Example

Evaluate the relevance of Heideggers notion of poiesis to recent theories of the information society. Understanding Martin Heidegger “Being” Martin Heidegger was one of the most original and important philosophers of the 20th century, but also the most controversial. Most of his works wanders around the question of being. The thinking of Martin Heidegger occupies a unique position. His works tries to describe the differentiation between entities and the being of entities. In simpler terms he tries to differentiate between Realism and Idealism. One of his unforgettable works was "Die Zeit des eltbildes." concerning technology which was then translated as "The Age of the World Picture" by William Lovitt which deals with the impact of Technology on being. The relationship that is between human existence and technology. His work utilizes the perspectives of social, political, economic, and environmental philosophy, as well as ethics and metaphysics; it analyzes and evaluates the impact of different technologies upon individuals, their physical, economic, social and cultural environments, and their value and belief systems. The question concerning technology that was pursued by Heidegger almost half a century ago among the peasants in the Black Forest has been carried over by thinkers. Using poetry he has described the affect of modern technology and its effects on human. He claimed that poetry is the medium through which one can eminently and powerfully reveal the art of being. He describes poetry as the essence of language. His works shows a lot of influence of poetry by Friedrich Hölderlin. According to Martin Heidegger the essence of technology is with the whole universe of beings and is an undifferentiated amount of energy available for any use to which humans can put it through. By essence he means the presence of the entity and its ability to describe itself outside its own boundaries. He stresses on the fact that the essence of technology is by no means anything technological. To experience the true essence of technology in our life we must experience it flow with it try to evade it or re-invent it. This makes one thing very clear that we remain detached and away from technology either we accept it or disagree with the same. Heidegger believed that our relationship with technology must be free – independent. A living with technology that does not allow it to "warp, confuse, and lay waste our nature of being. Our nature is to be world disclosers. What stood out in Heidegger work is thin line differentiation between being and the understanding of being. Man is what lies at the bottom of all beings; and that is, in modern terms, at the bottom of all objectification and representability. Post Modern and Modern Technology In the beginning man used technology just to improve or enhance his work but now that is not the case as technology gained its worth old things were being replaced by new. The once subject of control; the human started to being just at the bottom. Heidegger was critical of those who, still caught in the subject/object picture, thought that technology was dangerous because it embodied instrumental reason. Modern technology, he insists, is something completely different and therefore new. The goal of technology Heidegger then tells us is the more and more flexible and efficient ordering of resources, not as objects to satisfy our desires, or simply for the sake of ordering. Like many other people believed Heidegger argued that technology has grown beyond control and warned of a technological understanding of being. Dealing with Technology What he desired that people should understand is that instead of just saying Yes or No to technology which literally meant either meant accepting technology or rejecting it- One must tell both Yes and No to technology meaning that let technology in daily life be a mere devices and leave them outside as things which are nothing absolute but remain dependent on something higher. This he reffered as compartment towards technology. The ability to attach and detach it from life. Everywhere everything is ordered to stand by, to be immediately at hand, indeed to stand there just so that it may be on call for a further ordering. Whatever is ordered about in this way ... we call ... standing-reserve.... Whatever stands by in the sense of standing reserve no longer stands over against us as object. With Heidegger’s further works he confirmed that even objects cannot resist the advance of technology. The nature of technology does not depend on subjects understanding and using objects. Man is made the subject, the object just used to establish technology. He was worried as Technology was becoming an embodied instrument He predicted that technology and its affects on human would be critical as it where just used as they were just meant to be used to satisfy our desires. From this one could feel that he was foreseeing information replacing objects in our lives. This can be well put with an example Electricity is not a perfect example of technological stuff because it ends up finally turned into light, heat, or motion to satisfy some subjects desire. Heideggers intuition is that treating everything as standing reserve or, as we might better says, resources, makes possible endless disaggregation, redistribution, and reaggregation for its own sake. As soon as he sees that information is truly endlessly transformable Heidegger switches to computer manipulation of information as his paradigm. Heidegger completely believed that technology was entirely new as both objects; subjects are eliminated by this new mode of being. Technology takes it toll on human when it captures its being and makes it just not supreme but also dangerous as it leaves an impression of not being. This brings with it hazardous changes where natural changes in life is replaced with more unnatural and synthetic means of living. The change in technology viewed by Heidegger can be explained with an example which distinguishes between post modern technology and modern technology. LIBRARY CULTURE INFORMATION-RETRIEVAL CULTURE Careful selection a. quality of editions b. perspicuous description to enable judgment c. authenticity of the text Access to everything a. inclusiveness of editions b. operational training to enable coping c. availability of texts Classification a. disciplinary standards b. stable, organized, defined by specific interests. Diversification a. user friendliness b. hypertext--following all lines of curiosity Permanent collections a. preservation of a fixed text b. browsing Dynamic collections a. intertextual evolution b. surfing the web This clearly specifies the modern library structure and the post modern retrieval of data culture .Where the former just dealt with the data the latter deals with the search of it. Internet is another post modern technology growth where it is referred as social laboratory for experimenting with the constructions and reconstructions of self that characterize postmodern life. Any one once addicted to the Net or in general the post modern technology he will develop sufficient skills to do one kind of work with one set of partners and then move on to do some other kind of work with other partners. Not being with oneself In such cases there will be no belonging to oneself and no sense of home or originality to one. The style that would govern such a society would be one of intense, but short, involvements, and everything would be done to maintain and develop the flexible disaggregation and reaggregation of various skills and faculties. Thus these desires and the satisfaction to satisfy these desires will take one away from the thrill of the moment. With these growth in technology people would form group or communities among themselves. For a while there would be an intense effort among a group of people and an enormous flowering of talent and artistry, and then that activity would get stale, and the members would go their own ways, joining other communities. Technology must be instrumental. The instrumental technology is so true that it applies even for modern technology. Even the power plant with its turbines and generators is a man-made means to an end established by man. Where this technology is completely different and therefore new. It truly signifies that Modern technology will also lead to an end. With the growth in technology and the impact on human one feels the desire to master technology as it tries to slip from our hand. But as man uses more and more technology on daily bases he feels insecure about it and there deepens his desire to control technology. Will To Technology The Will To Technology and the culture to Nihilism is what happens when previously separated worlds implodes, when the embedded time of critical theory streams the hyper space of Net….Heidegger was correct when he said that sometimes we understand the future best by traveling to the furthest and seeking the ancient roots of technology as destiny. One must clearly Exit the theatre of capitalism and enter the spectacle of technology There are various signs and codes which declared the will of technology. Codes of Technology The will to technology is the animating energy of 21st century politics and culture. Here breaking beyond the fetters of the nation-state, there dissolving the machinery of industrial production into virtual capitalism. The visible signs of the will to technology are everywhere. Set in motion by the software of information technology, volatilized by digital capitalism, driven onwards by the seduction of communication, and relentlessly aimed at the reducing existence to the moral axiomatic of fully realized technicity. Heidegger, the philosopher of hyper-nihilism, understands technology in the doubled language of technology and poiesis. His thought provides a bleak, comprehensive, and bitter account of the age of completed nihilism: its origins, development and possible measures of recovery. The Will to Technology Thinking bio-genetics beyond the perspective of genetic determinism, that we can approach an understanding of nihilism as the essence of technological destiny. The age of Artificial War has begun. Technology is not only the chosen aim of technological instrumentality, but also involves technologies of mythology. Artificial war, then, as a prolegomenon to the codes of technology. The Image Matrix The 20th century may have been dominated by the spectacle of the image, but the 21st century will witness the disappearance of the image into digitality moving at the speed of light. In a special case of the media preceding science, the image matrix is how biotechnology will penetrate the imagination. No need to wait for the sequencing machines of recombinant technology. What is the fate of the image in the age of the digital? Saving the image for the future? Or just the reverse: "Saving the future for the image?" Consequently, the urgent political question: In the digital age---Saving the image for whom?". The real question is not necessarily ensuring the survivability of the image, but of maintaining a cultural free and democratically accessibility to the images of the future. Body and Codes Flowing invisibly, but no less violently, through the light-arrays of the wireless world, data is the elemental material of the will to technology. Pooled in gigantic vats of cybernetic information, data basing is what we mean now by history. Our electronically traceable past, our digitally monitored present, empty data is the destiny of our artificial future. But as in life so too in digitality. Every presence has its absence. Every sign has its reversal. Every new medium has its hidden suppressed side. New media quickly establish themselves in the language of facilitation: the wired utopia of connectivity, speed, big bandwidth. But every new medium only really consolidates itself, only really comes alive, in the language of its phantom absence. Without art, digitality perishes. Art is the essential survival strategy of digitality today, and perhaps the basic survival strategy of human life itself. Hyper-Heidegger: The Question of the Post-Human These signify various factors that deal with the technology and its implementation in our lives. Heidegger said that "man is a transition," a "going between" the past and the future, so too all of Heideggers thought might be considered a projection of the future of "planetary technicity." Here, Heideggers philosophy of technology is itself a transition between the modern century conceived as a "going away" and a future not yet disclosed. The essence of technology is never strictly technological, the special contribution of art, today, is to begin such a fundamental reflection upon technology and "decisive confrontation with it." The new media art specifies that saving power is the means by which we can bring about metaphysics, and ourselves through this period of transition make it next possibility. Impact on Us Through Heideggers work he describes about the origins, nature, impact and control of technology on human and their being. His work has an impact on of Social, Political, Economic and Environmental Philosophy, as well as the Ethics and Metaphysics. When we examine his work in today’s context we tend to ask the question concerning technology what it is and what it has to do with our way of life ,are we really impacted by the same. The answers which we can derive are Technology is a means to an end and the other is Technology is a human activity. The two definitions of technology belong together. From all ends we utilize technology as a means to human activity. The manufacture and utilization of equipment, tools, and machines, the manufactured and used things themselves, and the needs and ends that they serve, all belong to what technology is. Though technology is instrumental but no one can deny the fact that modern technology is also a mean to end. Technology in it very aspect is revealing. Technology is therefore no mere means. Technology is a way of revealing. But when we simply put across we just want to discover what does Technology actually mean. Technology which comes from a greek work Techne which means not just the activities and skills of the craftsman, but also for the arts of the mind and the fine arts. It is believed that modern technology is something incomparably different from all earlier technologies because it is based on modern physics as an exact science. Meanwhile we have come to understand more clearly that the reverse holds true as well: Modern physics, as experimental, is dependent upon technical mechanism and upon progress in the building of the mechanism. The establishing of this mutual relationship between technology and physics is correct. But it remains a merely historiographical establishing of facts and says nothing about that in which this mutual relationship is grounded. Relating with Technology Modern Technology is challenging as it has a lot of demands that have to be met. The challenges are against the energies of the nature. It just does not require our effort but also the creativity or art we dwell upon. Thus making even Modern Technology revealing. Unlocking, transforming, storing, distributing, and switching about are ways of revealing. But the revealing never simply comes to an end. Neither does it run off into the indeterminate. The next question arrives as to who can accomplish these challenges, of course that’s Us. Man can indeed conceive, fashion, and carry through this or that in one way or another. But man does not have complete control over it. Man’s expectations are so high from these resources that he starts no longer ruling over them and has to accustom to their terms. Modern technology is revealing and not merely human doing. Therefore we must take these challenges that are set upon man to order the real as standing-reserve in accordance with the way in which it shows itself. That challenging gathers man into ordering. So how does one relate himself with technology? To positively relate to technology we must understand that we can be disclosers or mortals. We must first get a clear picture of exactly what it is like to be turned into resources responding to each situation according to whichever of our disaggregated skills is solicited most strongly. We can get a hint of what such optimizing disaggregated skills looks like if we think of the relations among a pack of todays teenagers. When a group of teenagers wants to get a new CD, the one with the car (with the driving skills and capacity) will be most important until they get to the store; then the one with the money (with purchasing skills and capacity) will lead; and then when they want to play the CD, the one with the CD player (with CD playing skills and capacity) will be out front. In each moment, the others will coordinate themselves to bring out maximally whatever other relevant skills (or possessions) they have such as chatting pleasantly, carrying stuff, reading maps, tuning the car radio, making wisecracks, and scouting out things that could be done for free. Consequently, they will be developing these other skills too. If people lived their whole lives in this improvising mode, they would understand themselves only in terms of the skills that made the most sense at the moment. They would not see themselves as having a coordinated network of skills, but only in being led by chance to exercise some skill or other. Hence, they would not experience themselves as satisfying desires so much as getting along adaptably. Satisfying a desire here and there might be some small part of that. One can also understand that not every one needs to be or can be sensitive to the way each technological thing offers us possibilities for transforming ourselves. If we happen only to have skills for seeing our work as tending toward a finished product and ourselves as sole authors of that product, then the word-processor tied to the Net may never gather us to new ways of conceiving of ourselves or of our work. But if we are to respond positively to technology at all, we must find some technological thing that does not so much meet our subjective desires as it opens us up to new ways of being ourselves. The essence of technology is nothing technological, essential reflection upon technology and decisive confrontation with it must happen in a realm that is, on the one hand, akin to the essence of technology and, on the other, fundamentally different from it. Such a realm is art. But certainly only if reflection on art, for its part, does not shut its eyes to the constellation of truth after which we are questioning We postmoderns are more mature than former believers who excluded communities other than their own. Thus we can build a world that promotes both local worlds and a "community of communities" that satisfies everyones need for comprehensiveness. In this period we might once again shine forth in a unifying cultural paradigm. The tendency toward one unified world would impede the gathering and understanding of what has to be the prioritized and the how much can one depend on the other. Thus questioning, we bear witness to the crisis that in our sheer preoccupation with technology we do not yet experience the coming to presence of technology, that in our sheer aesthetic-mindedness we no longer guard and preserve the coming the presence of art. Yet the more questioningly we ponder towards essence of technology, the more mysterious the essence of art becomes. The closer we come to the danger, the more brightly do the ways into the saving power begin to shine and the more questioning we become. For questioning is the piety of thought. It follows that, as mortal disclosers of worlds in the plural, the only comprehensiveness we can hope to achieve is our openness to dwelling in many worlds and the capacity to move among them. Only such a capacity allows us to accept Heideggers criticism of technology and still have Heideggers genuinely positive relationship to technological things. So we can not do with technology or without it. We must make use of Technology for the betterment of our being. References: Heidegger, Martin. The Question Concerning Technology. New York: Harper and Row, 1977. Taylor, P. A. & Harris, J. Ll. (2007 [in press]) Critical Theories of Mass Media: Then and Now, London: McGraw-Hill. An excellent explanatory paper on Heideggers essay by: Mahon OBrien is available here: http://www.iwm.at/publ-jvc/jc-16-01.pdf William Merrins Baudrillard and the Media (Polity 2005) provides an excellent introduction to Baudrillards theory. Butler, Rex. Jean Baudrillard: The Defence of the Real. London: Sage, 1999. http://think.hyperjeff.net/Heidegger http://www.culturaleconomics.atfreeweb.com/Anno/Heidegger%20The%20Question%201954.htm Read More