Keywords

Key Terms From Martin Hiedegger’s: The Question Concerning Technology

Technology

the usage and knowledge of tools, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization.
originates from the Greek for an ‘art’, ‘skill’ or ‘craft’, and the study of something.

Essence

The attribute or set of attributes that make an object or substance what it fundamentally is, and which it has by necessity, and without which it loses its identity.

Four Causes

the word ‘cause’ is that which brings something about.
Heidegger’s view of the Four Causes are similar to the traditional Greek model.
The Four Causes:

A thing’s material cause is the material it consists of.

A thing’s formal cause is its form or arrangement of matter.

A things final cause is its aim or purpose; why it was created.

A thing’s efficient cause is the primary source.

the Greeks viewed it as the principle guiding the creation.
Heidegger viewed it as the agent that “effects” the production.

Poiesis

the act of making or producing something specified.
the process of creation.

Aletheia

the truth that first appears when something is seen or revealed.
implies sincerity as well as factuality or reality.
the state of not being hidden; the state of being evident.

Techne

the rational method involved in producing an object or accomplishing a goal or objective.
it is translated as either craft or art.

Episteme

comes from the Greek for knowledge or science.
the accepted mode of acquiring and arranging knowledge in a given period.
- the body of ideas that determine the knowledge that is intellectually certain at any particular time.

Forms

refers to the shape, visual appearance, or configuration of an object.
- Plato asserts that forms are non-material ideas that possess the highest and most fundamental kind of reality.

Enframing

it is a way of understanding being or what Heidegger also calls a way of revealing.
the way of revealing which holds sway in the essence of modern technology and which is itself nothing technological.

Key Terms From Primer for Defining and Theorizing Technology in Education

Sociotechnical Systems Theory

Sociotechnical systems theory is theory about the social aspects of people and society and technical aspects of organizational structure and processes.

Determinism

a broader philosophical view that conjectures that every type of event, including human cognition (behaviour, decision, and action) is causally determined by previous events.
- Determinists believe the universe is fully governed by causal laws resulting in only one possible state at any point in time.

Overdetermined

the idea that a single observed effect is determined by multiple causes at once

Contextualism – not develop in a vacuum

Contextualism describes a collection of views in philosophy which emphasize the context in which an action occurs, and argues that the action can only be understood relative to that context.

Interactionism

the study of individuals and how they act within society
it derives social processes (such as conflict, cooperation, identity formation) from human interaction

Actor-networks

claims that any actor, whether person, object (including computer software, hardware, and technical standards), or organization, is equally important to a social network.

Cyborgs

known as a cybernetic organism, is a being with both biological and artificial (e.g. electronic, mechanical or robotic) parts.

Hybridism

the occurrence of offspring of genetically dissimilar parents or stock, especially the offspring produced by breeding plants or animals of different varieties, species, or races.

Technological Determinism

Technological determinism is a reductionist theory that presumes that a society’s technology drives the development of its social structure and cultural values

Neurocognition

a term used to describe cognitive functions closely linked to the function of particular areas, neural pathways, or cortical networks in the brain.

Constructivism

a theory of knowledge (epistemology) that argues that humans generate knowledge and meaning from an interaction between their experiences and their ideas

Autopoiesis

Autopoiesis refers to a system’s self-production (self-creation, self-learning) of components realizing its organization, or “biological autonomy”.
- a process whereby a system produces its own organization and maintains and constitutes itself in a space. E.g., a biological cell, a living organism and to some extend a corporation and a society as a whole.

Enactivism