The History of the Philosophy of Technology: The German tradition
Chair(s): Darryl Cressman (Maastricht University)
The History of the Philosophy of Technology posits the philosophy of technology as a wide-ranging and comprehensive field of study that includes both the philosophical study of particular technologies and the different ways that technology, more broadly, has been considered philosophically. Influenced by the history of the philosophy of science, the history of ideas, and the history of the humanities, our aim is to examine how different individuals and traditions have thought about technology historically. This includes, but is not limited to: the work of different thinkers throughout history, both well-known and overlooked figures and narratives, including non-western traditions and narratives that engage with technology; analyzing the cultural, social, political, and sociotechnical contexts that have shaped philosophical responses to technology, including historical responses to new and emerging technologies; exploring the disciplines and intellectual traditions whose impacts can be traced across different philosophies of technology, including Science and Technology Studies (STS), the history of technology, critical theory, phenomenology, feminist philosophy, hermeneutics, and ecology, to name only a few; histories of different "schools" of philosophical thought about technology, for example French philosophy of technology, Japanese philosophy of technology, and Dutch philosophy of technology; mapping the hidden philosophies of technology in the work of philosophers (e.g. Foucault, Arendt, Sloterdijk) and traditions whose work is not often associated with technology (e.g. German idealism, logical empiricism, existentialism, lebensphilosophie); and, exploring the contributions of literature, art, design theory, architecture, and media theory/history towards a philosophy of technology.
This panel focuses on the German tradition within the philosophy of technology. Perhaps best associated with both the Heideggerian/phenomenological tradition and the Marxist/critical theory tradition, German-speaking philosophers have made significant contributions across the history of the philosophy of technology.
Presentations of the Symposium
Heidegger, "the intimate technology revolution," and AI
Natalie Nenadic
University of Kentucky
The unprecedented power of today’s technology is making the detrimental facets of technology’s permeation into our lives exceptionally visible. Through addictive social media, the fact that technology is standing in for social relations, with harmful consequences for real ones and mental health, becomes especially perspicuous (Haidt, 2024). Technology’s reduction of us to extractable data (Zuboff, 2019), parlayed into intimate emotional recognition and exploitation of us (Wylie, 2019) and mimicry of those emotions through AI, makes technology’s takeover of our bodies and psychology especially stark (Roose, 2024; Cahn, 2024).
This condition has been interpreted as an “intimate technological revolution” and, as such, a development that confronts us with novel vulnerabilities and risks to our well-being, including to our personal identity and relations in the world. This “revolution,” in turn, poses new existential and ethical questions for philosophers. They center on better understanding this condition through novel conceptual frameworks to aid us in responsibly handling it.
I argue that this interpretation rests on some confusion, where sorting through that confusion will aid in effectively confronting these detrimental features of technology. For this interpretation appears to conflate what today’s technology is capable of bringing into sharper relief and making more widely visible with a fundamentally new technological phenomenon, indeed a “revolution,” as if canonical thinkers (e.g., Heidegger, Arendt) haven’t already identified and treated it in foundational ways. This conflation is largely a result of insufficiently considering insights from the history of the philosophy of technology, in particular Heidegger’s analysis of modern technology, which ontologically distinguishes it from pre-modern technology and tools. His analysis constitutes foundational thinking about “the intimate technological revolution.”
Certainly, AI-centered technology is new. Accordingly, so are the specifics of how this technology permeates our lives and the current extent of that permeation. However, what is not new is a paradigm shift in our understanding of modern technology as permeating and taking over our lives in a manner that places the most intimate aspects of our humanity at existential risk, indeed constituting a “supreme danger” (Heidegger, 1977, 1954; Heidegger, 2012)
I explicate Heidegger’s analysis of “the intimate technological revolution,” where he shows that human freedom, hence our humanity, is most at risk through technology’s ubiquitous, imperceptible, and unprecedented capacity to alienate human beings from life. He posited this philosophy in the midst of modern technology’s relative inception over seventy years ago, when these features were much harder to notice. The power of today’s technology has borne out his analysis that technology would press along this trajectory, with deeper “intimate” detriment, now making it harder not to notice these features of technology.
Understanding Heidegger’s foundational analysis brings powerful conceptual resources to the much-needed task of charting the genuinely novel concepts that navigating today’s manifestations of “the intimate technological revolution” demands. For this understanding keeps us from misinterpreting these manifestations as the decisive moment of this “revolution.” It equips us to know the difference between novel concepts and claims that “reinvent the wheel” in a manner that scratches the surface of the original.
Bibliography
Cahn, A. F. (2024, December 19). An Autistic Teenager Fell Hard for a Chatbot. The New York Times.
Haidt, J. (2024). The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. New York: Penguin.
Heidegger, M. (1977, 1954). The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. New York: Harper Torchbooks.
Heidegger, M. (2012). Bremen and Freiburg Lectures: Insight Into That Which Is and Basic Principles of Thinking. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Roose, K. (2024, October 24). Can AI Be Blamed for a Teen's Suicide? The New York Times.
Wylie, C. (2019). Mindf*uck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America. New York: Random House.
Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. Profile Books: London.
Simondon, Heidegger, and the digitalization of farming
Mariska Bosschaert
Wageningen University
Heidegger theorized that we understand the world in which we live and act differently in different era’s. For instance, humans used to assign various meanings to trees, but now trees are understood as a resource to store CO2. To study the world in which we live and act, Heidegger used language. He did not reflect on concrete technologies for he argued that concrete technologies did not affect this world. However, various concrete technologies have been part of our changing understanding of the world, as the clock and the electric telegraph. The aim of this paper is to understand how digitalization is changing our understanding of farming. However, before being able to reflect on farming, it is first important to develop a methodology that enables us to study the world in which we live and act in a way that includes the role of concrete technologies. It is not easy to reflect on the world in which we live and act, for we cannot step outside of this world. It is about questioning what is self-evident to us. To develop such a methodology, Simondon’s evolutionary perspective on technology will be used. Simondon’s theory puts concrete technologies in the perspective of a broader evolutionary process, which enables us to question what has changed in the course of this process and to subsequently question what has become self-evident to us. After developing this methodology, it can be used to explore how digitalization is currently changing our understanding of farming. Digital technologies are increasingly integrated into farming, a development known as precision farming. Precision farming refers to the approach in which all kinds of digital technologies together should enable farmers to precisely address the needs of individual crops and animals so that they can increase efficiency, thereby boosting productivity and mitigating climate change impacts. Consequently, farmers increasingly understand farming through data. For instance, in the ideal of precision farming, cows are no longer understood as the physical animals but primarily as their digital representations so that the data can show what their exact needs are. This shift raises important questions about the relationship between farmers and their crops and animals. The central question of this paper therefore is: How is datafication of agriculture changing our understanding of farming?
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