Entwined Dangers: Pandemic and Modern Technology

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic constitutes a crisis situation in which the dangers posed by modern technology have never been more pronounced. As the devastation of the coronavirus epidemic continues, epidemic control around the world is focused on the introduction of new legal and regulatory measures against the virus. In this paper, I analyze Heidegger’s and Foucault’s critical theory of modern technology to show that the threat is not only biological, but also ontological: the threat of modern technology to our existential state of being, which cannot be ignored. The existential dangers posed by modern technology to the social control of human rights are far more subtle and have as long-reaching effects as the biological dangers of COVID-19.