Summary or Baby Thesis
-------------------------------------------------
Fourth Year AB-Philosophy
An Analysis of Don Ihde’s Phenomenology of Technics in Relation to Man’s Dependence on Computers
Summary
In this thesis, the researcher would like to expound the meaning of our relation to technology as means-ends relationship. Don Ihde’s Phenomenology of Technics (1990) which builds on insight from Heidegger and Meleau-Ponty, provides further points of relevance in prefacing a discussion of the dynamics characterizing the navigation of the city. Phenomenology of Ihde has been modified and it has been corrected by the environmental model of pragmatism under the influence of John Dewy. According to Idhe, “pragmatism counterbalances Husserl’s overstressing of consciousness and the epistemology of early modern philosophy in general.” Here Ihde defines technics as “…the symbiosis of artifact and user within a human action” (Ihde 1990:73). In this book of Ihde, he puts forth several existential relations that we have with technology, including: embodiment relations, hermeneutic relations, alterity relations, and background relations. Embodiment relations describe the way in which technology comes to be taken into the body and factored into one’s experiencing of the world. With hermeneutic relations, technologies are understood as something to be read and interpreted. With alterity relations, technology becomes the other or quasi-other to which one relates. And among these three variations of relations, Ihde also discusses background relations, nothing that when technologies operate in the background the “withdrawal” of its overt presence manifests itself as a sort of present “absence”, where the technology operates as if it were “to the side”.
In this book of Nardi and O’Day (1999): Information ecologies: Using technology with Heart pointed out the description of technology in parallel with Ihde’s, technology as a tool involves viewing it as a means to an end and tends to
Fourth Year AB-Philosophy
An Analysis of Don Ihde’s Phenomenology of Technics in Relation to Man’s Dependence on Computers
Summary
In this thesis, the researcher would like to expound the meaning of our relation to technology as means-ends relationship. Don Ihde’s Phenomenology of Technics (1990) which builds on insight from Heidegger and Meleau-Ponty, provides further points of relevance in prefacing a discussion of the dynamics characterizing the navigation of the city. Phenomenology of Ihde has been modified and it has been corrected by the environmental model of pragmatism under the influence of John Dewy. According to Idhe, “pragmatism counterbalances Husserl’s overstressing of consciousness and the epistemology of early modern philosophy in general.” Here Ihde defines technics as “…the symbiosis of artifact and user within a human action” (Ihde 1990:73). In this book of Ihde, he puts forth several existential relations that we have with technology, including: embodiment relations, hermeneutic relations, alterity relations, and background relations. Embodiment relations describe the way in which technology comes to be taken into the body and factored into one’s experiencing of the world. With hermeneutic relations, technologies are understood as something to be read and interpreted. With alterity relations, technology becomes the other or quasi-other to which one relates. And among these three variations of relations, Ihde also discusses background relations, nothing that when technologies operate in the background the “withdrawal” of its overt presence manifests itself as a sort of present “absence”, where the technology operates as if it were “to the side”.
In this book of Nardi and O’Day (1999): Information ecologies: Using technology with Heart pointed out the description of technology in parallel with Ihde’s, technology as a tool involves viewing it as a means to an end and tends to