This paper examines medicine’s use of technology in a manner from a standpoint inspired by Heidegger’s thinking on technology. In the first part of the paper, I shall suggest an interpretation of Heidegger’s thinking on the topic, and attempt to show why he associates modern technology with danger. However, I shall also claim that there is little evidence that medicine’s appropriation of modern technology is dangerous in Heidegger’s sense, although there is no prima facie reason why it mightn’t be. The (...) explanation for this, I claim, is ethical. There is an initial attraction to the thought that Heidegger’s thought echoes Kantian moral thinking, but I shall dismiss this. Instead, I shall suggest that the considerations that make modern technology dangerous for Heidegger are simply not in the character — the ethos — of medicine properly understood. This is because there is a distinction to be drawn between chronological and historical modernity, and that even up-to-date medicine, empowered by technology, retains in its ethos crucial aspects of a historically pre-modern understanding of technology. A large part of the latter half of the paper will be concerned with explaining the difference. (shrink)

It has generally been recognized that while Bruno Latour’s and Martin Heidegger’s respective philosophies of technology converge on key points there is also a significant difference of attitudes towards the themes discussed. To better appreciate the similarities and differences, I suggest that we seek to understand both Latour and Heidegger as philosophers of the event, who seek to rescue the novel emergence of beings from the sedimentation of reductive, explanatory frameworks. I take up this line of thought and compare Latour’s (...) and Heidegger’s theories of things and the types of experiences they presume. Latour’s metaphysics of the actant ensures that no actant’s activity is ever reduced to being the passive effect of another. Yet while the actant can be ‘applied’ to any entity, from a Heideggerian standpoint this strength is precisely its weakness. Latour’s metaphysics provides a horizon of thought that blocks an original experience of things that Heidegger’s thought points towards. By stepping back from the horizonal experience Latour’s metaphysical blueprint for entities imposes, one can enter into an original opening that stems neither from humans nor nonhumans, but an ineradicable mystery at the origin of being. This mystery is nothing more than the inability to give ultimate reasons for the presence of beings. While Latour’s actant as _Ding_ is simply an actant with innumerable relations, Heidegger’s _das Ding_ is the concrete experience of the dissolution of metaphysical reasons, first and last causes. Precisely because Heidegger’s _das Ding_ emerges from a prior mystery that suspends any overarching causal or purposive schema, things can more freely presence from themselves. (shrink)

One can view the recent science fiction films Gravity, Interstellar, and The Martian as a three-part dialogue concerning the existential relationship between humanity, technology, and the science employed to create said technologies. Pitched into the deep of space, each film’s protagonist must seek to find technological answers to save their own existence. Each film’s exploration of these themes essentially questions the importance of technology as a product of scientific-calculative thinking and the validity of this thinking as the primary mode of (...) understanding the world. In this article, I explore the existential dialogue crafted between these films through Walter Benjamin and Martin Heidegger. Through Benjamin, we will see how the medium of film is completely dependent upon technology to present its art and how this transforms the stories it tells, while also transforming the audience and the audience’s reality. Consequently, understanding the popular reception of these films becomes just as important as the films themselves for our present study. Through Heidegger, we will see how technology provides a space where we can find a truth about ourselves and our reality. However, modern technology’s increasing scientific complexity, created by scientists who in turn employ modern technology to further science, also conceals just as much as it reveals. These films provide us with an opportunity to explore a truth about our dependence upon technology even though, as technologically dependent works of art, they may also conceal how dependent upon science we have become when constructing our reality. (shrink)

Online creative idea generation is often considered an extension of traditional creative idea activities on the Internet platform, in which digital technology plays an important role. Consistent with the studies on traditional creative idea activities, the studies on online creative idea generation take the creativity of mass psychology as the core, and believe that digital technology can stimulate people’s creative output. This study challenges the past research paradigm from the perspective of media materiality, redefines the processes and activities of online (...) creative idea generation, and further suggests that it may affect people’s psychology by reducing their creativity without real awareness. The study is innovative in both theory and practice. We also discuss the limitations and future directions of the study. (shrink)