Het gevaar van de techniek in de 21ste eeuw

Martin Heidegger warns about the danger that stems from the essence of technology. The implications of that warning don’t allow philosophy to ignore this warning and beg us to keep questioning technology. By analyzing texts from Langdon Winner and Don Ihde we attempt to show how philosophy has dealt with this danger of technology so far. Through their insights we come to understand more about how technology exerts its influence on man. When we consider Heidegger’s arguments from a 21st century perspective, we come to realize that our position differs from that of Heidegger. We find ourselves in a world where the danger of technology has come to pass. This calls for a new question to technology, in which we find that the danger of technology has taken the shape of a growing inability to make sense of technology. Our 21st century position forces us to approach this new danger instrumentally by addressing the challenges that this danger poses. Two possibilities are explored to respectively provide this danger of the essence of technology with sufficient gravitas to be taken serious, and provide a paradigm from which this danger can be approached. The first possibility is to reformulate existing crisis as crisis of technology. The second possibility is to view technology from the paradigm of the technological genome.