The Question Concerning Technology

The German philosopher Martin Heidegger is the author of the article The Question Concerning Technology. In this article he talks about human beings and the relation they have with technology, he is also concerned about what type of behaviors technology causes on us. With technology as the main point of the article, he proclaims two definitions of the word at the beginning of it. He argues that "technology is a mean to an end," and also that it is considered a human activity. Heidegger promotes that this two definitions are attached to each other.

In my opinion, this two definitions explain really well the attitude that Heidegger has towards technology. By saying that technology is a mean to an end I think he tries to emphasize the fact that we are always trying to go further and further with technology, exploring things that were impossible to even think about a decade ago, trying to reach a limit that also keeps getting further because of the unlimited opportunities we have. It is an end that we are trying to reach by creating all this technologies, but that we will never be able to accomplish. This definition makes even more sense when it is combined with the other one: technology is a human activity. We create technology and work to improve it. It is attached to us because it has our DNA, is part of us, we are the 'parents' of technology. These two definitions also go along with the point he makes about he being worried about us going too far with it and how that can end up affecting us to a point we loose control over it.

Finally, in order to explain in a better way what Heidegger is trying to display in his article, we can use cars and Facebook as examples of technologies. Cars could be considered a positive example of what Heidegger is trying to say because they are helping us connect with other people easier and faster. We are trying to go beyond the limits trying to reach perfection that would make them and us safer. On the other side, a negative example could be Facebook, which started with the same purpose as cars, trying to connect people faster; but, little by little, has been taking control over our life (and still does) making us more insecure and taking privacy away from us.