Future Questions: Democracy and the New Converging Technologies

Abstract

Feenberg’s main reproach levelled at Heidegger is that Heidegger does not offer an alternative to the technological revealing as embodied in the Ge-stell. This is so because Heidegger conceives of the Ge-stell ontologically (as event of Being or Schickung des Seins) affecting all aspects of society, rather than sociologically, as the real-life interests of capitalism (calculation, profitability). And it is for this reason that Heidegger cannot distinguish between beneficial and negative effects of technology and his thought remains barren for any activist intervention. By contrast, Feenberg maintains that his Critical Theory of Technology can overcome technology’s negative ramifications through a politics of democratic participation in technical design. This paper argues, on the contrary, that recent developments in artificial intelligence, nanotechnologies, and molecular biology show that such democratic politics is itself increasingly implicated in the technological revealing that Heidegger referred to as Ge-stell. While this fact does not make political intervention impossible, it suggests that such intervention is implicated in the technological revealing rather than its corrective.

But in reality we are not Gods. (Feenberg 2010, xix)

The third great project of humankind will be […] to upgrade Homo sapiens into Homo deus. (Harari, 46)