In the beginning of
Arnold Gehlen’s article, Gehlen expresses the notion that to live, man needs to
build an environment that is suitable for his survival. Because of this, technology becomes not only the tools used to
build said environment, but also the skills needed to create the tools, also
using Kapp’s concept of “organ projection,” Gehlen then illustrate how we then
interpret the tools man uses; there are three types; Organic relief, Organic substitution or replacement and Organic strengthening or improvement, either in themselves
or through their interactions.
Gehlen concentrated his
efforts on an anthropological view of humankind and the technology that had
been created from a variety of efforts. He believed that technology was not
only used to further progress, but to also preserve and protect humans. Gehlen
pointed out that “The use of weapons fire, and hunting techniques thus belong
to the behavioural patterns designed to preserve the species, so that the word
‘technology’ (Technik) must refer to both the actual tools and those skills
needed to create and use them which make it possible for this instinct-poor and
defenseless creature ‘to preserve itself’. Other technologies Gehlen listed
were bows, arrows, wheels, knots, coal, wind, and electricity. Since humans
seemingly lacked the appropriate instincts to survive on their own, creativity
and ingenuity were utilized to preserve oneself and were manifested in the
tools and technologies humans created to do so.
Ultimately, Gehlen seemed
to believe that humans were trying to build a safe environment in which to live
and be comfortable, man’s self relief, and would not have to rely on instincts
but rather technology and innovation. Gehlen cemented this
particular ideology by including discourse on cybernetics (which in his
statement has no uniform definition of what is to be understood by it),
mankind’s navigation towards some end or goal. Gehlen supposed “There is no
longer any doubt concerning man’s increasing existential dependence on his new
constructed environment ” that is physical survival presupposes undistributed
functioning of energy plants, water supply systems, communication and information
systems etc and “If man’s dependence on
nature was severed in earlier days, then it has increased in today’s self created
cultural environment”. However, Gehlen was concerned with this newly created
environment might not be as safe or sustaining as that which nature could
provide. Gehlen surmised that without some of the man-made technologies, we
might not even be able to function in this new realm as we would have in
natural surroundings. The danger exists that the maturation of this science
will be short – circuited politically, since it is already being used as a
conceptual instrument for disqualifying certain social attitudes or for
legitimizing certain claims of competence. There are interpretations of
cybernetics which, with respect to so called “alternative” views about how
technology should be used, make the latter out to be simply examples of
cultural backwardness or a preoccupation with pleasure, emotional childishness,
a need for dependence, etc.
There is no longer any
doubt concerning man’s increasing existential dependence on his constructed
environment that is physical survival presupposes undisturbed functioning of
energy plants, water supply system, chemical industries etc. so if mans dependence
on nature was severe in earlier days, then it has increased in today’s self
created cultural environment; for although an individual with his natural
organic resources and what he might make with
own hands could hold out alone for a while in nature, he will find it
difficult getting through three days in a non – functioning technological
industrial system
Gehlen cited many ways
technology was becoming one with the population, both manipulating and
transforming it. One example he wrote of concerned news services. Gehlen
proposed “People are being fed continuously by radio, the press, and
television; they are more reflexive; and insofar as they thing more they alas
to some extent become more insecure, at the very time they are becoming more
committed”. Subsequently, “High degrees of ignorance of the world can then be
quite effectively communicated by means of current technology,” thus
facilitating and reinforcing the man-made world we live in today.
According to Gehlen, Hans Freyer’s
pointed out that the technology of the industrial age does not fit the
description which applies to all technology prior to the eighteenth century
namely, that man fabricates appropriate means and tools to attain his goals in
life, and then improves these until they serve his purposes. The meaning of
technology, according to this formula rests with its subordination to the
successful achievement of what man wants or wills. According to Freyer, such an
idea is outdated. It applied to a state of technological development which was
primitive by comparison with the present. Instead, Freyer maintains that
technology now creates a kind of abstract ability, and it is not until later
that the question arises of what one “wants” to do with the existing means.
Under such circumstances, the technological spirit becomes an absolute and is
no longer tied to set goals. Mentally, the desire for controlling and
interfering with nature, and for process, has become so manifest as to create
the impression that man set absurd goals, such as landing on the moon, in order
to solve the extremely difficult technical problems which only arise out of
this risky project.
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