Technically Thinking

Series on Arnold Gehlen

As discussed in previous posts, technological evolution has mainly two sociocultural implications:

1. The dualism of de-sensualization: on one hand, we lose touch with reality through increasing methodological abstraction which leads to a stronger conceptualization of every aspect of life. On the other hand, however, we experience a primitivization of human interests as we usually don’t have the capacity to get involved at a similar depth for every topic.
2. New super-structure: since the Industrial Revolution, technology, industry, and science are merging and are even dependent on each other. While technological advancements improve scientific practice and science improves tools, the industry pushes the growth of both due to economic motivation.

The Cultural Way of Thinking

One can easily assume that the culture, as well as, e.g., the epoch we live in, is constantly shaping the way of thinking of the individual.

Here, thinking in purely technical ways becomes so prominent and central in our society that it even creeps into non-technical fields. We started thinking in technical terms in our everyday life. It becomes so self-evident to think in such a way that the very conception of our reality transforms with it.

What becomes interesting during this process isn’t that we start talking about different things, but it changes how we think about it. Usually, the everyday life struggle remains pretty much the same, but it becomes the subject of technical interpretation as if we were machines. In a more abstract sense, the form of our consciousness changes while the content remains the same.

Social Implications

In the social context, the following principles start to emerge from this.

1. We somehow can’t stop using energy. Technologies are such optimised forms put into practice to increase the workforce. Applied to our lives, we are equally optimising our use of energy to make the most of the day.
2. Every aspect of life is controlled. Like trains on tracks, we organize every path and control its flow of it every second.
3. We start applying standard sizes to humans. Like exchangeable parts which are standardised, job offers describe requirements in an incredibly precise way.
4. Effects have to be maximized. In other words, for the least effort, we want to get the most out of it. An example of this on the social level is propaganda. The most efficient propaganda is the one that influences people so automatically (that is self-motivated) that they don’t need an external influence anymore to act in a certain way.

So, all in all, this describes a clear tendency to follow the pure and irresistible effects of our acts. This is usually the case to rationalise work, but as it becomes normal in everyday life, it applies there too. Additionally, with increasingly optimized speed, the wear and tear of products isn’t just a symptom of consumer society but especially, of a technical one.

Source: Man in the Age of Technology II.4, Gehlen