Redefining Reality - The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science

It has long been argued, however, that this progressive picture of
in fact, the reverse is true: We have become slaves to technology.
Technology governs our activities, thoughts, and goals.
Technology’s ability to alter human life seems worrisome, but the
German philosopher Martin Heidegger, in his essay “The Question
Concerning Technology,” argues that technologies create worlds and
reveal truths. Technology is a creative re-visioning of how the world
could be that then changes the world. Elements that were hidden
become accentuated; aspects we thought were necessary are seen as
arbitrary; and choices we never realized we had become possibilities.
Heidegger argues, however, that the wrong approach to technology
not only will fail to create worlds but will endanger them. Becoming
captured by technology dictates our goals and frames our view of
the world, preventing truth from being revealed by shielding our
eyes from the rest of the world.
Heidegger was writing in 1949, in the wake of the two world
wars, in which technology had caused horrible, painful deaths and
brought about the possibility of global annihilation. Humanity had
reached that point, Heidegger argued, because we had allowed our
with its own limitations.
Death
In another work, Being and Time, Heidegger contends that the
starting point for technology’s disclosure of truth is the glimpsing
of death. Every one of us, he contends, has the shocking realization
that we will die. And it is only by seeing that our lifetimes will have
an endpoint that we can project ourselves into that bounded future.
The moments of our lives are made meaningful by the fact that they
will end. As humans, we plan; we envision ourselves as being more
than we are, then we make it so. Who we are, Heidegger thinks,
is determined by who we want to be. But because we have only a
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