Technology as essence and essence as technology (2024)

Heidegger,M (2013) The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, Harper Perennial Modern Thought From “The Question Concerning Technology” (p.23)

“Because the essence of modern technology lies in Enframing, modern technology must employ exact physical science.Through it so doing, the deceptive illusion arises that modern technology is applied, physical science.This illusion can maintain itself so long as neither the essential origin of modern science nor indeed the essence of modern technology is adequately found out through questioning.”

As a DevOps element, one considers code as the fundamental technology that underlies the technical experience to enable flow, feedback and continuous learning. The quote begins with Heidegger’s Enframing concept to show how modern technology uncovers essence.Heidegger introduces Enframing several pages earlier as the gathering together of setting-upon man, challenging him, and revealing a real ordering as the standing reserve to show technology’s essence with nothing that is inherently technological (p. 20).The contrary paradox includes evaluating the essence of technology and comparatively, the technology of essence through physical science measurements.This concept appears often through Heidegger and Gadamer’s writings.

The approach’s point appears first as simple commutative property of addition, if A = B then B=A, however, when one considers essence, simply changing the order does more than change the phrasing.The essence of technology reflects unveiling illusions associated with modern technology.In discovering essence, one must accept what is revealed by technology becomes more than just the physical science reflected by measuring actions.At the same time, reflecting essence through technology creates deception through downgrading all things essence to no more than simple measurement.Questioning the application’s meaning allows one to assess the origin of both proposition sides.

If one considers the essence of technology, the underlying approach must be revealing what makes technology through technology.What are those characteristics, without which, one could not consider technology to be technology?The first and foremost must be measurement.In measuring a thing, we define it, and we give the thing character.When we define a code section, we call out the included lines, the references called, and the language.We also refer to actions achieved by running code, or enabling a function.In the same manner, when we define a rock, we call out physical characteristics, the size, the shape, the weight, the color, the texture, and perhaps even the smell.Just like we do not say these aspects are a rock’s essence, one can not call code the essence of technology although it contributes to the essence.

The essence of technology reflects from one’s past experience, the enframing revealing technology’s actions.The code is not only a physical expression, but the governing language defining how the environment interacts with code, and creates the experience which can drive security or functional requirements.Perhaps the function or security is not the essence, but merely measuring expressing technological characteristics.If those aspects are measurements of essence, does that show the second half of the proposition as technology of essence?

The technology of essence drives the approach but cannot merely be individual measurements as essence relies on how one experiences code, how those expressions relate to the individual, and how the identity appears through enaction.On the one hand, we show experiences through underlying technology, and on the other, we attempt to measure without letting physical science limit experiences.Instruments always limit physical results while exploring essence embodies thought and a different aspect of limitation.Heidegger considers this in evaluating Aristotle’s approach to logic as not lifting against a physical object with measurements but exploring unbounded thoughts where there is no weight, no wind, and no restraint to constrain an approach.

These concepts appear in the quote’s last sentence.Technology can only be complete, when measured through science, as long as one does not question how measurement limits the revealed essence.Revealing the true essence, only arrives through the questioning an experience.For a DevOps value process, the question should be, how does one reflect function and security in technology, especially as expressed through the physical structure created through code?Running code drives action, examining code drives action, and debugging code drives action.Each of those actions are governed by the pre-conceptions attached through the process and revealed through enframing.The essence of technology, does not appear from technical measurements but through evaluating the experience of function as constrained by underlying technological means.Questioning how we experience those technological changes should be the start of understanding the essence, and not end just because code is delivered.