Required Readings:
Heidegger, M. (1953/1977). The questions concerning technology. In M. Heidegger, The question concerning technology and other essays (trans. W. Lovitt) (pp. 3-55). New York: Harper & Row.
Petrina, S. & Feng, F. (2008). Primer for Defining and Theorizing Technology in Education pt. 2.
Although not a required reading the linked resource below (from the University of Hawaii) helps break down the Heidegger reading and the Guide makes a great reading companion for this article.
http://www.english.hawaii.edu/criticalink/heidegger/index.html
Summary: The Question Concerning Technology
M. Heidegger
The Essence of Technology
Heidegger’s “The Question Concerning Technology” presents a search for finding the essence of technology and humanity’s free relationship to it. Questions to consider while reading his essay include:
- How do we currently relate to technology?
- How do we stand in relation to technology?
- How do we think about technology?
- What do we imagine technology to be?
He begins the essay by simplifying technology into its fundamental being in an attempt to uncover its essence. This is accomplished through defining technology in relation to explanations of instrumentality, causality and revealing:
- Instrumentality: Technology is an instrument humans use as “a means to an end” and “a human activity” to be mastered; it is a way of getting things done (4/5)
- Causality: Instruments are developed to cause, bring forth, occasion and presence an end (6)
- Revealing: bringing forth something; unconcealing something that was concealed (11)
According to Heidegger, the essence of technology is a way of revealing. He considers the origin of the word “technology”, referring to both technique and knowledge. This understanding of technology extends the definition of the word from merely instrumental, to revealing. In contrast to the revealing definition of technology, Heidegger presents modern technology as a “challenge” to world’s resources through exploitative methods, however he states that it also reveals.
Standing Reserve, Enframing and Free Relationship
Standing reserve is a source of raw materials and reflects interdependence of resources and processes (natural and human) necessary for the creation of desired products. He states that “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” (17). Heidegger discusses product life cycle processes to explain the relationship between humans and world resources. He refers to this relationship as enframing, which is an orientation or attitude humans have to the world. Humanity’s enframing is the essence of technology, “the way in which the real reveals itself as the standing-reserve” (23). Once we realize this orientation, the free relationship that Heidegger mentions at the beginning of the essay can be established.
Heidegger believes that enframing is both a “danger” and a “saving power”. It is a “danger” as humanity can be destructive with too much control over nature and lose sight of the world revealing itself, and knowing truth. Enframing is a “saving power” as humanity’s orientation to the world demonstrates that we are responsible for it. By reorienting our relationship with nature, Heidegger believes that our actions towards the world will not be destructive. Heidegger proposes that humanity should try to view the world from an artist or poet’s perspective, and take the world as it reveals itself, as it is. In this way, we prevent the dangers of enframing and develop a free (and questioning) relationship with the technology in our lives. Since “everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it.” (4).
Focus questions for discussion posts on Vista:
- How would you apply Heidegger’s assessment of “technology” in general to modern information technology, and to communications technology in particular?
- How would you characterize the dangers of modern technology? How do your concerns compare with Heidegger’s?
- How do we currently relate to technology?
Summary: Primer for Defining and Theorizing Technology in Education Pt. 2
Petrina, S. & Feng, F.
Sociotechnical Theories
Defining and Theorizing Technology, pt. 2, begins with charting the development of sociotechnical theories. Sociotechnical theories are based on theories developed by Marx (industry and technology) and Weber (bureaucracy and rationality). Sociotechnical theories relate to the connections between humans and technologies as well as technological use and organization.
During the 1950s, the definition focused on the interface between the social and the technical, and then the cybernetic and systems theory developed to record human and machine behaviour. Eventually cybernetic ideas shifted from a focus on human and machine behaviour to the relationship between the cultural, social and technical components. Some theories focus on technological determinism (Frankfurt School), while others argued that there are many facets of human nature that are independent of technology (Tavistock Institute of Human Relations). During the 1950s and 1960s, theorists such as Ellul and Althusser did not put humans above technology, as humans were completely integrated with technology. During the 1980s and 1990s, the idea of contextualism developed which highlights the interdependencies of cultural, social and psychological factors with technology. Technology shapes the context and the context shapes the technology at the same time. The idea of interactionism also developed in the 1980s and 1990s, which states that technologies and other systems develop together at the same time. Hybridity theories of the 1990s focus on the idea that “human-machine relations are never fully harmonious nor antagonistic” (4).
Theorizing Cognition in a New Age of Technology
The reports about cognition and technology that were reviewed were based on the idea that “learners are active in the construction of knowledge” (5). In the 1980s and 1990s, constructivists studying how humans learn were criticized for minimizing technology as tools for learning, rather than as integral to the process. Cognitive science began to be developed in the 1940s and 1950s as biology and technology converged. Following the 1950s there were shifts in sociotechnology approaches to explain “human-technology interaction” (7), then in the 1980s theories shifted again to “actor-network theory, cultural studies, cyborgs, hybridity and postsocial relations with objects and the world” (7), merging the foundations of learning with the foundations of technology design. In the 1990s, cognitive theory shifted “from individual minds (constructivism) to collective activity (situated cognition) to activity systems” (7). Theorists then positioned technologies as having a central role in collective cognition that is situated in an activity system.
Focus questions for discussion posts on Vista:
- “Humans and society are not determined by economy and technology, but neither are humans free to determine technology or their relations with technology.” Do you agree or disagree? Explain.
- Are technologies tools for learning, or are they integral to the process?