Living in the event of technology

Abstract

In this essay Wolfgang Schirmacher argues for an approach that perceives technology as an event, as a happening that is concealed and yet obvious. His position can be distinguished in two ways. To Schirmacher our present understanding is governed by the bias that technology is a means to an end, what Martin Heidegger referred to as Gestell, or (technological) enframing. In Schirmacher’s view such a craft or tool-oriented approach is upheld by a technological-scientific world-view that is characterised by its “mad attempt to deny the world in which we live.” On the other hand Schirmacher goes beyond Heidegger’s view by claiming that technology should be perceived as an event rather than as simply a frame. In this manner we are enabled to grasp the technological phenomenon as a cosmic relation manifest in our lived experience.