We need a way out of the technological mindset itself, and for that task Brock calls on the assistance of Heidegger and two thinkers influenced by Heidegger (the Canadian philosopher George Grant and Michel Foucault). Heidegger argued that technology is not merely a set of skills or tools, but is modern ontology, epistemology, and ethics. It is the modern way of being, characterized by obsession with utility, mathematization of knowledge, and separation of natural and cultural artifacts from their human world. Grant elaborated Heidegger by bringing out the ideas of history, freedom, and will hidden within technology, and Foucault’s is useful for his detailed attention to the practices and habits engendered by technological society.

¶ 4:45 PM