Toward a Phenomenology of Addiction: Embodiment, Technology, Transcendence by Frank Schalow

Author:Frank Schalow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

5.1 The Shadow of Technology

5.1.1 The Development of Cybernetics

Historians of philosophy credit Martin Heidegger for spearheading many key intellectual movements in the twenty-century, from developing a terminology that would be largely adopted by existentialism , to resurrecting the perennial, albeit perplexing question of (the meaning of) being. But one overarching insight that we cannot underestimate is Heidegger’s acute glimpse into the troubling onslaught of technology. Indeed, if decades from now someone were to write an intellectual history of the twentieth century, a chapter would have to be reserved to the prophetic vision that Heidegger demonstrated as one of the first thinkers to address the danger of our technological age, which he initially described by the term “machination” (Machenschaft).2 By “machination,” he did not simply mean the use of machines and gadgets, or even the technological innovations that led to their development. Rather, Heidegger has in view a complete change in humanity’s relationship to everything that is, including itself and nature. As a result of this transformation, which occurs on a global scale, humanity and nature become intertwined as “resources” to be used and exploited for exclusively instrumental purposes.3 Thus technology is in itself a complex phenomenon, which becomes increased nuanced through its transformation into cybernetics (beyond the Industrial Revolution of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century through tool-use and manufacturing).4

We need only think of the current “oil” crisis to conjure up an example of technology’s drive toward planetary exploitation and domination. As the “resource” of all resources, the competition for oil is not confined to the need for petroleum products, but rather its global necessity drives companies, and ultimately nations, into ruthless competition and conflict with each other. This struggle may even precipitate wars. By the same token, the individual becomes assimilated into this global network of instrumentality, the proverbial cog into the machine, divesting his/her identity on the one hand, whose value becomes reduced to his/her labor as a “resource” to be exploited. As Heidegger remarks in his pivotal essay, “The Question Concerning Technology”:.... A tract of land is challenged into the putting out of coal and ore. The earth now reveals itself as a coal mineral district, the soil as a mineral deposit....Agriculture is now the mechanized food industry. Air is now set upon to yield nitrogen, the earth to yield ore, ore to yield uranium, for example, uranium is set upon to yield atomic energy, which can be released either for destruction for peaceful use.5

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