[W]hen Heidegger speaks about the 'essence of technology,' he has in mind something like the frame of a fundamental fantasy which, as a transparent background, structures the way we relate to reality. Gestell, Heidegger's word for the essence of technology, is usually translated in English as 'enframing'. At its most radical, technology does not designate a complex network of machines and activities, but the attitude towards reality which we assume when we are engaged in such activities: technology is the way reality discloses itself to us in contemporary times. The paradox of technology as the concluding moment of Western metaphysics is that it is a mode of enframing which poses a danger to enframing itself: the human being reduced to an object of technological manipulation is no longer properly human; it loses the feature of being ecstatically open to reality. However, this danger also contains the potential for salvation: the moment we become aware and fully assume the fact that technology itself is, in its essence, a mode of enframing, we overcome it -- this is Heidegger's version of traversing the fantasy.

Pp. 29-30

¶ 8:22 PM