Technology and the transformation of experience

pp. 66-81

in: Don Ihde, Technics and praxis, Berlin, Springer, 1979

Abstract

Underlying much of what we usually take for granted within experience there are various subtle and hidden structural features which a phenomenology seeks to make explicit. But the situation becomes even more complex when in the course of experience some artifact is used. In the analysis to follow I shall try to demonstrate certain features which technology in use implies for human experience. My thesis is that any use of techology is non- neutral. However, non-neutrality is not a prejudicial term because it implies neither that there are inherently "good" or "bad " tendencies so much as it implies that there are types of transformation of human experience in the use of technology.