SKETCHING THE TECHNOLOGICAL IMAGE OF THE WORLD

Bobana M. Andjelkovi
S!""a#$:
Ke$ %o#d&: technics, technology, techne, machineries, humanity, contemporary world.
Ab&'#a(') In the age of the fast progress of technologies and transfering originally
human functions to the machines and automata, it is a good time to analyze human
approach to technics and technologies through centuries, where it had started from, to
where it came to today, having in mind daily interaction between human and technics,
on different levels in all the segments of human life, anywhere.
*. INTROD+CTION
During XX century, humans were busy developing tools, machines, machineries,
robots. Human attachment to produce parallel nature became a ind of total revolution.
!his technological revolution, started by humans is still going on. It brings changes in
human communities and interpersonal relations.
"nd for start to refer to #urzio $alaparte. He contributed to the analysis of the
human relations in organized groups and their interactions with the current technological
e%uipment & machinery ' either on the group formed by good or bad cause. (hat is
relevant is the fact that #urzio $alaparte was writing in the )*s of the XX century about
event from +*',* years before that time. -rom today.s perspective, it appears relevant
and proved by reality. /ater reality. #urzio $alaparte writes that technology or,
engineering, at that time, is of very big importance for any serious changes within
society. 0+1 2urcio $alaparte, !ehnia dr3avnog udara, "postrof, 4eograd, +55,.
,. THE CONCE-T OF TECHNOLOG.
!he concept and notion of technics, people are familiar with today, is not
embedded in human history. It is a new concept and it does not have much to do with the
6ree term it origins from linguistically. !o understand new concept of technics, it is
important to tae into consideration the period from !he -irst Industrial 7evolution.
In 8hilosophy of !echnics, #roatian philosopher, Hotimir 4urger says that capital
itself is the culprit of technique and at the same time it provides it a large working field
and experimental facility where the technics is established and developed and becomes
world-historical or planetary, as capitalism. 0,1 Hotimir 4urger, -ilozofi9a tehnie,
:apri9ed, ;agreb, +5<5.
!he beginning of the era of $odern !echnics is connected to the era when
inventions, innovations and their application are not anymore a matter of coincidence,
personal urge or interest for discovery. It becomes a matter of systematic and rationally
based production which taes part in the construction of the world. !he evidence may be
found in the different inventions, which incorporated new approach to technics, but
designed new thining, as well. It brings to the lime light the %uestion: how was it
possible for the machines to start ruling human civlization, if civilizaition itself, by its
inner movements, did not turn to the machines, as masters= -rom the Hegel.s
philosophical story about $aster and >lave humans to I! story about $aster and >lave
hard drives.
In the contemporary age of machines, there are many spaces to be produced and
imagined. /ong distances became the matter of fast planes or space crafts. "nd all that
started with precise measurement of time se%uences, completely divided from the
natural phenomena and ?niverse. It is one of the important changes in establishing the
technological image of the world.
It is a clock, not a steam machine, the main machine of the modern industrial age,
$umford says. 0)1 #ited toward: Hotimir 4urger, -ilozofi9a tehnie, :apri9ed, ;agreb,
+5<5.

>ynchronizing of chronological time began in @II century, the measuring of time
in XIII century. !oday, it can be noticed that the clocs are omnipresent and perfect
machines. "ll the machines aim to that omnipresence and perfection. !he cloc&watch is
considered machinery and it may be concluded that it is perfect and ineAhaustible
machinery it produces hours, minutes, seconds which are being counted and only
then, in the moment of counting they eAist, but they also disappear in the moment of
counting.
>o, the space and time are totally divided from natural and human events and that
is what contributed to the creation of the world of mathematically measurable
se%uences, which become the foundation in creating the other nature or the second
nature. "nd then, it made it possible to produce separate world of science and technics,
which becomes the generator in producing the human environment.
/. DE0ELO-MENT OF THE CONCE-T OF TECHNOLOG.
!here are several classifications of the development of the technics, but the
authors mostly agree on the general periods. !he first one is connected to the
development of the tools in prehistoric era, up to the late neolite, the second is connected
to the instruments in high agricultural communicties, the third to the
machineries&propusions and forth to the automata. (e can add fifth period to the
classification: it would be one connected to biotechnological automata, or in other
words, digital automata. In this period began the imbedding of eAclusively human
funcions to the machines.
It is important to notice the similarities and differences with the 6ree concept of
!echnB in order to understand the new concept of !echnB. !he metamorphoses of the
concept, from the "ncient 6reece to today are best described by reduction of concept, if
using the langugage of the classical "ristotelian logic. 0C1 Hotimir 4urger, -ilozofi9a
tehnie, :apri9ed, ;agreb, +5<5. Dne of the first application of the concept !echnB in
the "ncient 6ree language was to signify sill. It was refered, both to the craftsmen or
scientists sills. 4eside the leAical, it is important to outline the meaning presented and
eAplained in the essays of of "ncient 6ree philosophers 8resocratics, 8lato and
"ristotle.s. In the dialogue 8rotagoras, 8lato writes that techn is the skill of the
blacksmith to work with iron and he was given that gift by Hefestos and Athens. 0E1
$artin Heidegger, Doba slie svi9eta, >tudentsi centar sveuFiliGta u ;agrebu, +5H5.
!here are many eAamples both in 8lato and "ristotle.s wors which refer to craftsmen
and artistic sills. 4ut there is also a very clear order in theoretical sills, connected to
nowledge. !heoretical purity is the criteria for that order. >o, the highest place in the
hierarchy is for dialectics, then aritmetics, architecture and then go the sills based on
the eAperience and habbit curing, agriculture, strategy. In $etaphysics, "ristotle said
the human is the only being in nature to have sills, and those sills combine perceptual
eAperience and memory, so the human may be labeled silled. "s if 8lato and "ristotle
also imply sciences and sills.
In :icomachean Ithics, !echnB is producing relation based on planning and
calculus. "ristotle writes that the nowledge, related to !echnB is not the nowledge
about purpose, but about instruments which are necessary to get to the purpose&goal.
!echnB itself is directed to the development of sill, not the purpose of the sill. !echnB
is a dimension embedded in various theoretical, practical or applied spheres of
nowledge. If we would try to eApress the concept of the modern technics in "ncient
6ree.s way of understanding, it would be techn tehnik!

0H1 "ristotel, :iomahova,
etia, >veuFiliGna nalada /iber, ;agreb, +5J,.
If one analyzes the concept !echnB when signifying craftiness&tricery or the
cunning man, then it is refered to the sill to wisely overpower the forces of nature
which, the cunning man things, do endanger him. !he wise acting in nature is directed to
overpower it, but not to destroy it. -rom the "ncient 6ree times or even earlier, to the
Humanism and 7enaissance, or in other words, until the $odern "ge, there were not so
many new insights about technics it was simply used, made, developed. !hen, >ir
-rancis 4acon started to write something new in his essays. He does not pay much
attention either to the "ncient 6ree notion of techn or to 7oman notion of ars. 4acon
says that the nature is a real challenge to him to inspire human wisdom and tricery in
order to con%uer or overpower it. !he only way to overpower nature is by human
agency, not by treatises or dialogues. 0<1 -rensis 4acon, :ovi organon, :apri9ed,
;agreb, +5JH. 4acon is the first to eAplicitely says that the nature is a total stranger to a
human being and overpowering nature means the construction of social happiness. "nd
in the process of that construction, the human mind should not be let to act toward its
own inner principles, but it should be governed, in order for "ob to be done as by the
machine. !he essential reason for this ind of approach lays in the fact that 4acon thins
the nature of things can be found rather in the torturing by sills, than in own freedom.
>everal centuries afterwards, Heidegger claims that !echnB is a ind of eAtortion or
human.s daring.
Heidegger writes that !echnB is not a mere means. !he definition of !echnB as an
instrument he finds unprecise and untrue. He finds it a conse%uence of human decline
over the centuries because we are not able to remember and inherit good practices and
nowledge in order to preserve life, sills, progress, toward good. 4ut, since humans are
ready to forget the achievements and repeat own mistaes, the things have to happen
again, until humans learn, both individually and in collective nowledge and memory.
"ll those forgettings, Heidegger finds, come from linear human history, which
was always a reliable source for the concept of progress in other words, for
managemenent and strategy. !hat is why he suggests the foundation of the concept
!echnB having in mind the fundamental philosophical categories as being, freedom,
truth, uncovering of the being. "nd that is the language and analysis of the phenomena
which bring Heidegger to the most important %uestion: #hat is the essence of the
modern $echn, that it can use natural sciences in order to get its own results% 0J1
$artin Heidegger, 8itan9e o tehnici, Dret, >tudentsi centar sveuFiliGta u ;agrebu,
+5H5.
4y asing this %uestion, Heidegger shows the gap between his opinion and the
one which was usual through the centuries, saying that modern !echnB came out from
natural sciences. Heidegger might be right, thining totally opposite. If it is taen into
consideration that modern physics is eAperimental, directed to the technical apparatus
and it relies on the development of the technical apparatus, it is senseless to claim that
!echnB depends on natural sciences. It might be rather said that modern !echnB and
modern natural sciences are interconnected and interdependent in the process of
creating the technical apparatus.
!his is the danger to which humans aim every time when they want to discover
and apply the discovery or invention into the direct production of goods, commodities,
services,...whatever. 4ut, at the same time, there is no any demonology of the modern
!echnB, but there might be a secret of its essential being. >o, the real threat to humans
are not machines, robots, automata, but humans. fundamental relation toward them.
In several different essays, Heidegger repeats that it might appear that the
essentail being of !echnB is not technical. Dr, it would appear that it something
completelly non technical. !rying to eAplain what would be the non technical, Heidegger
mentions 6oethe and HKlderlin. !hat comes from the connection of art and technB in
the original significance in "ncient 6ree language. !he difference is in the new
valuation of the concept of !echnB in the modern ages. 051 $artin Heidegger, 8itan9e o
tehnici, >tudentsi centar sveuFiliGta u ;agrebu, +5H5.
!!!Is it possible to rein the rampage of techn% &oes it say about human
helplessness in being transfered to the mercy of techn%' 0+*1 $artin Heidegger, Doba
slie sveta, >tudentsi centar sveuFiliGta u ;agrebu, +5H5. How does it sound almost a
century afterwards= How to understand the development of technB in the last eighty or a
hundred years= Did it appear that !echnB is directing humans=
!he new world image is based on !echnB and it is being developed and amended
by the new technologies. Is the purpose of !echnB eAhausted by improving new
technologies and its methods= Did cybernetics actually overtoo the place from
philosophy by being the most important foundation for any further technological and
other developments and change management=
?prootedness of the humans from their last stronghold, the Iarth.s soil, has shown
that the civilization based on that soil ended. !he human era of inveteracy with the soil
is finished. !he Iarth stops to be the only homeland. !he universe is here also, and the
humans dived into it. 4oth physically and virtually.
!echnB has its immanent characteristics, determinations and conditions of
eAistence, as any other phenomenon of human or any other world. !he secret of !echnB
was not solved, it 9ust became more mysterious. Heidegger says it is because of the
damnation of the human nowledge. !he origin of !echnB is not mystical, but it gained
its mystical and magical character in the process of development, through technologicial
processes rituals with machineries. 7econstruction of !echnB.s origin can be
conducted, somehow, but, as we write, it is being changing. In that practical sense, the
final approach to !echnB is almost impossible. $he world(s movements are installing the
absolute technical statehood and philosophy will not be able to conduct any
modification in world(s events ) this applies to every human thinking and endeavor,
Heidegger wrote in +5)J. 0++1 $artin Heidegger, 8itan9e o tehnici, >tudentsi centar
sveuFiliGta u ;agrebu, +5H5.
"t the end of the day, the world of !echnB and technologies, has been always
eAisting. >ince the moment when humans had started to use their body parts as tools or
when humans started to use the products of nature as tools. Dr, said by technB language:
nature represents a well organized machinery. :ature is self regulated mechanism, but
not machinery. !hat is why cybernetics is the only one to replace philosophy in the right
manner.
#ybernetics regulates !echnB, which produces changeable and eAchangeable
technologies. !heir appearances and reappearances depend on immediate human
nowledge and sills, needs, affections. "nd, after all those combinations and
recombinations, there are information and machineries left and ready for the neAt
scientific and technological recycling. Information is still divided toward the concept of
encyclopaedia nowledge. "s nowledge has been specialized, !echnB was advancing.
!ectonic changes happened in human relations while synchronizing with the new world
which was made.
1. CONTEM-ORAR. WORLD AND TECHNOLOG.
!oday, we live in a world of interconnected and networed machineries and
automata. !he only culture mutual to everyone is culture based on technB. It is a culture
whose foundation lays in !echnB the human agency which has been being developed
the most intensively for centuries. It is about culture emerged from interaction between
humans and nature, but the culture they produce together, is neither natural or human. It
is technical. !his culture was a side effect of many other social happenings through
centuries. >omehow, it emerged from the side stream to the main stream and
overpowered everything else.
(athever was the previous concept of !echnB, it is no more. It has been eAisting
through different mutations and changes, as humans while creating it. !echnB is the
name for the man made world, created while imitating nature. "t the essence of this
creating there is something which can not be eAplained and that is why humans lose
control over the technological world. Dne of the reasons for that might be found in very
low level nowledge about nature. Dr, low level memory on important matters on nature
established, but forgotten. !he development of !echnB shows shallow and voluntary
human understanding of nature. !he indicators of human.s nonchalance toward nature
are the processes of the destruction of nature, which represent ontogenesis of !echnB.
(hat can be done if there has been no answer to the %uestion on the essence of
!echnB for centuries= (hat about numerous unusable or unapplicable scientific and
research hypotheses= Here it is not taen into account that all the technologies come
from military labs, developed for war machineries. It is 9ust a matter of time, when some
of them will become products for wide global consumerists. societies. It is custom that
military labs leftovers become the products for the general public as potential customers.
!here is one eAception, which might show some other directions. It is Internet.
Driginally, it was made as a potential resource for information eAchange aftera potential
nuclear disaster. It was made after Hiroshima and :agasai. 4ut, it is used in different
manner, than one imagined and created originally. It is a foundation for the new human
communication and development.
!echnB appears as the second human nature always new and constantly new.
4ut, if there is no eAchange, speaing the modern language, if creative energy can.t be
eAchanged with electric energy, then, creative energy starts to depend on electric energy,
by time. !his overturn which happened to a human ind, is only one of the overturns
which have been happening through two'dimensional, linear, historically mesured time.
However, what is being achieved by humans now, may be described as degradation of
all the phenomena, which mared human nature for so many, many centuries.
In the technological world, all actual technologies are part of daily either
professional or private life. !he %uestion of origin, appearances or what technology once
was, is useful in theoretical or research procedures which mar or wor on
interdependance of different technological fields.
"lthough $ac/uhan.s understanding and intepreting of the phenomenon of
communication were abandoned at the end of the XX century, his method of invention
remains one of the basic methodological&strategic approaches in the technological world.
It first refers to the development and status of technologies.
In the postindustrial, neoliberal networed societies, the approach to phenomena
is completely changed. !here is no classical terms of sub9ect or ob9ect disccussed in the
conteAt of structure, whole, system...with the certain time and space chacteristics. !he
main interest moves from the traditional way to understand the presence or absence of
the phenomena.
2. CONCL+SION
!echnB is omnipresent in everyday.s life, but its progress and accomplishments
are not discussed, analysed or researched for the purpose of understanding it, but for the
purposes of creating new technologies out of the eAiting ones. It means that !echnB is
not certain platform with certain characteristics, but rather distributive channel. !he
invisible pervasive effects of technology suggest that its progress, improvement and
adaptation, in fact, are not considered a progress, but a natural development. !hat is the
danger Heidegger was warning about. In the stage of persistant innovation it is not
posible to tal about progress, which was an inspiration in earlier periods.
!he case of technological developments shows that innovation is seen as a natural
ingredient of every technological process and new technology developed by humans.
!he removing of linear and historical out of digital culture shows that every new
technology is a medium which overturns every old image of the world: everything is
being changed in accordance with new technological possibilities. !here is a whole
range of human activities that are different from the narrative and that are far more
suitable basis for what is going to happen with the technology and practice of new
media, when apart of the language, watching and listening are legitimate for decision
maers about what something is.
Re3e#en(e&)
0+1 2urcio $alaparte, !ehnia dr3avnog udara, "postrof, 4eograd, +55,.
0,1 Hotimir 4urger, -ilozofi9a tehnie, :apri9ed, ;agreb, +5<5.
0)1 #ited toward: Hotimir 4urger, -ilozofi9a tehnie, :apri9ed, ;agreb, +5<5.
0C1 Hotimir 4urger, -ilozofi9a tehnie, :apri9ed, ;agreb, +5<5.
0E1 $artin Heidegger, Doba slie svi9eta, >tudentsi centar sveuFiliGta u ;agrebu, +5H5.
0H1 "ristotel, :iomahova, etia, >veuFiliGna nalada /iber, ;agreb, +5J,.
0<1 -rensis 4acon, :ovi organon, :apri9ed, ;agreb, +5JH.
0J1 $artin Heidegger, 8itan9e o tehnici, Dret, >tudentsi centar sveuFiliGta u ;agrebu,
+5H5.
051 $artin Heidegger, 8itan9e o tehnici, >tudentsi centar sveuFiliGta u ;agrebu, +5H5.
0+*1 $artin Heidegger, Doba slie sveta, >tudentsi centar sveuFiliGta u ;agrebu, +5H5.
0++1 $artin Heidegger, 8itan9e o tehnici, >tudentsi centar sveuFiliGta u ;agrebu, +5H5.