What is a philosophy of Technology? What is technology, or as some may equivalently ask, what is the essence of technology? What has been our historical relation to technology? How has the technical and the technological been neglected by the “higher” cultural activities of philosophy and the humanities? What is a “critical” approach to understanding technology? Is it possible for ordinary people to gain democratic control over technological development or, as Heidegger prophetically proclaimed, can only a God save us?

In this group, for the next year or so, we will be exploring philosophy of technology through the historical development of different theories on technology and the technological. This discourse begins with a question that is then addressed in roughly three parts:

the asking of a question: how can we obtain a more positive relation to technology?
first part of discourse: the problem (?) -> outlining the situation, according to Heidegger, that we find ourselves in -> technology as the defining metaphysical condition of modern times

second part of the discourse: a possible solution -> resisting technology through focal practices and setting up local “worlds” -> a fundamentally phenomenological approach (Borgmann, Heidegger)

third part of the discourse: another possible solution -> critiquing Heidegger’s diagnosis and aiming to solve things at the broader social level -> towards the democratic rationalization & critical constructivism of Feenberg (Marcuse, Habermas, Foucault, Latour, Feenberg)

Also…

I hope to encourage engineering (and other STEM) students (if that’s you hello!) to join and participate with the hope of, by having those with (in the words of Heidegger) a more practical-technical comportment towards the world informed by a technological rationality, generating interesting discourse that would (1) not be possible with only philosophy students, (2) is sorely needed. Any kind of future regulation to guide technological development will require a mediation between technical discourse and philosophico-juridical discourse and we may, by having engineering students, encourage instances of such.

Check out the Discord!
https://discord.gg/m9BZqVYnQR