Ten Paradoxes of Technology
Ten Paradoxes of Technology
复制标题
技术十大悖论
DOI：
10.5840/techne20101412
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发表时间：
2010
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
A. Feenberg
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
A. Feenberg
尽管我们可能有能力使用许多技术，但我们认为自己对技术的了解大多是错误的。我们的错误源于人们对事物的日常观念，即事物彼此之间以及与我们是分离的。实际上，技术属于一个互连的网络，其节点不能作为技术独立存在。更重要的是，我们倾向于将技术视为准自然物体，但它们与自然一样具有社会性，既取决于我们赋予它们的含义，也取决于支配其力量的因果法则。常识错误会在发展、医学和环境政策等领域产生政治后果。在本文中，我总结了技术哲学所得出的许多结论，反映了我们技术世界的现实。从我们日常的角度来看，这些结论似乎是悖论。本文提出了一种技术哲学。它借鉴了我们在过去 30 年中所学到的知识，因为我们放弃了旧的海德格尔主义和实证主义观念，面对现实的技术世界。事实证明，我们大多数关于技术的常识性想法都是错误的。这就是为什么我以悖论的形式提出了我的十个命题，尽管我在这里宽松地使用这个词来指代我们对技术的了解的大部分内容的反直觉本质。 1、部分与整体的悖论。马丁·海德格尔曾问鸟儿是因为有翅膀才飞翔，还是因为飞翔而有翅膀。这个问题看似愚蠢，但却为反思技术和发展提供了一个原始的切入点。鸟类似乎配备有翅膀，这解释了它们的飞行能力。这是对海德格尔问题的显而易见的常识性回答。但这个答案的含义并不那么明显。尽管我们的直觉告诉我们鸟类属于空中，但我们的语言似乎在说它们与它们活动的环境是分离的，甚至与它们用来应对该环境的“设备”是分离的。鸟类使用翅膀飞行，就像我们人类使用飞机一样。
Though we may be competent at using many technologies, most of what we think we know about technology in general is false. Our error stems from the everyday conception of things as separate from each other and from us. In reality technologies belong to an interconnected network the nodes of which cannot exist independently qua technologies. What is more we tend to see technologies as quasi-natural objects, but they are just as much social as natural, just as much determined by the meanings we give them as by the causal laws that rule over their powers. The errors of common sense have political consequences in domains such as, development, medicine and environmental policy. In this paper I summarize many of the conclusions philosophy of technology has reached reflecting on the reality of our technological world. These conclusions appear as paradoxes judged from our everyday perspective. This paper presents a philosophy of technology. It draws on what we have learnt in the last 30 years as we abandoned old Heideggerian and positivist notions and faced the real world of technology. It turns out that most of our common sense ideas about technology are wrong. This is why I have put my ten propositions in the form of paradoxes, although I use the word loosely here to refer to the counter-intuitive nature of much of what we know about technology. 1. The paradox of the parts and the whole. Martin Heidegger, once asked whether birds fly because they have wings or have wings because they fly. The question seems silly but it offers an original point of entry for reflection on technology and development. Birds appear to be equipped with wings and it is this that explains their ability to fly. This is the obvious common sense answer to Heidegger's question. But this answer has implications that are less than obvious. Although our intuitions tell us birds belong in the air, our language seems to say that they are separate from the environment on which they act and even separate from the "equipment" they use to cope with that environment. Birds use wings to fly in something like the way in which we humans use airplanes.