Cristel Bagaoisan BSE 1-A

The Question Concerning Technology

By: Martin Heidegger

In this article, Heidegger emphasizes that technology is a complex thing. Technology is

not the same to the essence of technology and the essence of it does not mean anything
technological. Humans are chained to technology, we became dependent and want to master on it.
He opposed the two questions if technology means to an end or is technology a human activity.
These two questions belong together. These 2 domain ways of technology is not the exact essence
of technology.

Technology means to an end in a sense that it needs mastery and to reveal something. It
needs to uncover the thing and question its essence. Only at the point where such uncovering
happens does the true come pass – it needs thorough questioning and very detailed. Technology is
a human activity in the sense that everything that what we do is associated with technology. It is
even man made because even in the ancient times, they have their own way of technology in order
for them to survive. This means that even simple things that we do is all associated with
technology.

Technology does not only mean the use of tools, equipment or machines. The fact that
technology is complex, it means that the roots of it is hard to understand. The solution is to question
and confront technology. Heidegger wants to emphasize that technology is to break chains and to
be free not the absence of technology but through better understanding as a way of revealing
something.

This article is for clarity. Technology is both mastery and slavery; the truth rather than a
revelation of the real. Therefore, there is a more complex essence and wide explanation of what a
real technology is and the real essence of it.