What is technology?

What is Technology?

What is technology?How is technology?

Technology are artefacts and knowledge of artefacts, their use, their manufacturing and role in a social context.

and Technology is determining our way of understanding world and reality

What is Technology?

Technology?

Technology is artefacts

Technology is knowledge of knowledge of art and craft

Technology is a way of understanding world and reality

Technology is not applied science

What is Technology?

Technology is artefacts

arte’fakt – et, er (af lat. ‘arte’factum hvad der er frembragt v. håndværk, kunst) arkæol. genstand forarbejdet a menneskehånd, mods. Naturfrembringelse; kulturgenstand; biol. hvad der er kunstigt frembragt; teknisk fejl fx i røntgenbillede. arte’fact adj.

What is Technology?

Forhånden – vorhanden – precent-at-hand

Tilhånden – zuhanden – ready-to-hand

“all scientific and methodological knowledge is secondary to the understanding people use in their everyday life “Wind, 1976

What is Technology?

Technology is knowledge of knowledge of art and craft

Episteme – scientific knowledge, universal, independent of time and space. Ex. Math.

Phronesis – social knowledge, pragmatic, changeable and dependent on context. Values and actions.

Techne – knowledge of art and craft, practical knowledge of manufacturing of things

Techne-logi - knowledge of knowledge art and craft

Episteme – Epistemology

Phronesis - ?

What is Technology?

Technology is a way of understanding world and reality

“The question concerning technology”

(Heidegger, 1953)

Technology is means to an end

Technology is an effect of human activities

Technology

Correct but true?

Truth as correspondence (Positivism)

Truth as coherence (Rationalism)

Truth as aletheia (Hermeneutics)

What is Technology?

Correct but true?

a. Essence – truth

b. Bestand (stock, standing reserve for man to use)

c. Gestell – (system, framework) the process that produces Bestand

What is Technology?

Technology as world view!

A pair of shoes – as technology

A pair of shoes – as art

Technology

The western conception of technology is efficiency – a world view

What is Technology?

What is Technology?

”Hmmm… let’s see. Size eight, ten inches high, four inches wide. A littele tattered, but i could get six bucks or so out of them. Or perhaps i could tear off the soles and add the leather to the scrap pile. Or they could be doorstops, paperweights, bookends.”

What is Technology?

”But for me these shoes are different. I show the shoes in their context. My painting shows that they are not just objects , but part of somebody’s world. They have a history, and are very important.

What is Technology?

Someone walks for miles in these shoes everyday, and comes home exhausted in them at night. Someone lives and works in them, and every scratch and tatter is an evidence of someone’s whole existence, the entire world of a peasant farmer”

What is Technology?

Technology is a world view – a way of understanding being

Western technology has only one goal: Efficiency

”Das Gestell will always get the upper hand”

”The what is ?” question is essentialist – therefore it cannot show us technology

What is Technology?

Two understandings of Heidegger’s “The question concerning technology”

The problem:

”The danger, then, is not the destruction of nature or culture but a restriction in our way of thinking – a levelling of our understanding of being” (Dreyfus 1995)

Efficiency as world view

Solution: The power of insignificant things

What is Technology?

The problem:

”How can we make a future socialist society? – a utopia” (Feenberg)

Efficiency is a consequence of a sick society – not necessarily part of technology.

Solution: Democratise production (technology)

What is Technology?

”It would be foolish to attack technology blindly. It would be short-sighted to condemn it as the work of the devil. We depend on technical devices; they even challenge us to ever greater advances.” (Heidegger 1966, p.53)

What is Technology?

Conclusions: What is technology?

Technology as techne

Technology as world view

Technology as materialised efficiency

Technology as materialised evil

No simple answer