Examining Douglas Engelbart in the Context of Heidegger's Philosophy By Eugene Eric Kim December 21, 2002 Martin Heidegger discusses the essence of technology in "The Question Concerning Technology," which he first delivered as a lecture in 1949. His definitions are oriented towards physical technology, and his essay is rich with allusions to massive machines and to energy. He does not mention computers, which had just been invented and which were scarcely available at the time. Given the importance we place on computers today and the impact they have had on our lives, it seems worthwhile to examine them in light of Heidegger's views on modern technology. In this paper, I review Heidegger's discussion of the essence of modern technology, and explore whether and how his thinking applies to computers. I then introduce the work of Douglas Engelbart, a computer pioneer who was motivated by the desire to augment the human intellect. Engelbart's peers viewed his work as unorthodox and mostly rejected it. However, many of Engelbart's inventions -- including the mouse and hypertext -- are predominant today, a half century after he first created them, and his approach to application design is rapidly becoming common wisdom. I compare Engelbart's philosophy with Heidegger's, and explore whether Heidegger's views can be reconciled with Engelbart's work. Heidegger on Modern Technology Heidegger begins his essay by deprecating the instrumental definition of technology, which states that technology is a means to an end, and that it is a human activity. Heidegger does not dispute the correctness of the definition, but he notes that it does not reveal the essence of technology. For that, Heidegger examines the origins of the term itself. "Technology" is derived from techne, which is a kind of bringing forth, or poeisis. The Greeks used techne to describe both craftsmanship, such as the creation of a basket, and the arts. Technology is a bringing forth in that the resulting functionality reveals the essence of the materials from which it is crafted. This revealing, or Hervorbringen (bringing forth), is the essence of technology. Heidegger distinguishes between the technology of the Greeks (premodern) and post-Industrial Revolution technology (modern). According to Heidegger, the essence of modern technology is a different kind of revealing: And yet the revealing that holds sway throughout modern technology does not unfold into a bringing-forth in the sense of poiesis. The revealing that rules in modern technology is a challenging [Herausforden], which puts to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy that can be extracted and stored as such. (p14) The essence of modern technology is Gestell (Enframing): Enframing means the gathering together of that setting-upon which sets upon man, i.e., challenges him forth, to reveal the real, in the mode of ordering, as standing-reserve. (p20) By revealing the real as standing-reserve, Heidegger implies that we view nature as something that can be exploited, thus missing its true essence. Modern technology challenges us to view the river Rhine as an energy source for hydroelectric power plants or as a waterway for boats, even though neither view represents the Rhine's true essence. In the relationship between humans and tools, or subjects and objects, the object becomes prime, and the subject disappears: As soon as what is unconcealed no longer concerns man even as object, but does so, rather, exclusively as standing-reserve, and man in the midst of objectlessness is nothing but the orderer of the standing-reserve, then he comes to the very brink of a precipitous fall; that is, he comes to the point where he himself will have to be taken as standing-reserve. (pp26-27) Modern technology eventually causes us to view ourselves as something exploitable, which leads to forgetfulness of Being. Despite Heidegger's pessimistic portrayal of modern technology, he does not condemn it. He explains: On the one hand, Enframing challenges forth into the frenziedness of ordering that blocks every view into the coming-to-pass of revealing and so radically endangers the relation to the essence of truth.... On the other hand, Enframing comes to pass for its part in the granting that lets man endure -- as yet unexperienced, but perhaps more experienced in the future -- that he may be the one who is needed and used for the safekeeping of the coming to presence of truth. Thus does the arising of the saving power appear. (p33) Enframing thrusts a view upon us, but it also creates the potential to question that view. When we do that, we put ourselves in the position to experience Dasein, in which truth reveals itself. Computers As Modern Technology In describing the essence of modern technology using words like "energy" and "standing-reserve," Heidegger's orientation towards physical technology is apparent. This is not surprising given Heidegger's post-Industrial Revolution upbringing, and the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings four years prior to his lecture. Although computers are not physical technology, we can apply Heidegger's reasoning to see if they share the essence of the modern technology with which Heidegger was more familiar at the time. A cursory etymological analysis shows that from the start, computers were thought of as replacements for humans. Prior to 1945, the term "computers" described a profession. Computers, who were mostly women, literally computed numbers for a variety of purposes. By calling these machines "computers," their creators were positioning humans as standing reserve, beings that served some purpose, and whose functions -- physical and intellectual -- could eventually be replaced by machines. In this vein, the mathematician John von Neumann named the computer's internal storage mechanism "memory," even though it bore little actual resemblance to human memory. The notion of computers replacing humans is not only implicitly apparent in the terminology, but was also explicitly a goal of the machine's financial backers. The U.S. Department of Defense, which funded much of the early work on computers, recognized the potential for computers to control other technology, specifically as command-and-control systems for weapons. To help facilitate this, the U.S. government devoted much of its early financial resources to artificial intelligence research at universities. Today, most people have considerably lowered their expectations of artificial intelligence and computers in general. However, the challenging from computers to reveal the real as standing reserve is still pervasive. Clifford Stoll points out in his book, Silicon Snake Oil, that there are only two industries that refer to their customers as "users," and the computer industry is the only one which is legal. By positioning ourselves as computer "users," we define ourselves in terms of computers. The object is prime, and the subject disappears. Heidegger himself discussed computers as modern technology in a 1962 lecture entitled, "Traditional Language and Technological Language." His analysis of computers centers around the idea that language is information, a concept he calls "a consolidation and a unilateral ascent to the extremes with the reign of modern technology." (p137) Heidegger compares physical technology's transformation of nature to energy to the computer's transformation of language to information. But language is not mere information. Heidegger points out that language is as much about what is not said as it is about what is said. Technology -- specifically computers -- constrains language to fit its needs, which includes the wide, unambiguous exchange of information. In this way, the essence of language is lost, which in turn threatens the essence of human beings. As evidence, Heidegger cites the cybernetics movement, which frames life as information and the world as a system that we manipulate. (p141) Here we see a worldview centered around computers, where the human subject becomes a slave to the machine. Engelbart and Augmentation Douglas Engelbart served in World War II as a radar technician, and had just graduated from college with a degree in electrical engineering when he began thinking seriously about the world, its problems, and what he wanted to do about them. He shared Heidegger's observation that there was something essentially unique about modern technology, which he attributed to scale. As machines increasingly became bigger, faster, and more powerful, they induced radical societal change, resulting in a new set of problems and benefits. Once that threshold was passed, there could be no turning back. If humans were to address these problems capably, then they needed to become collectively smarter, faster. Engelbart wrote in 1962: Man's population and gross product are increasing at a considerable rate, but the complexity of his problems grows still faster, and the urgency with which solutions must be found becomes steadily greater in response to the increased rate of activity and the increasingly global nature of that activity. Augmenting man's intellect, in the sense defined above, would warrant full pursuit by an enlightened society if there could be shown a reasonable approach and some plausible benefits. Engelbart's emphasis on augmenting humans ran directly counter to the more common goal of replacing humans. Engelbart was trying to prevent the human from disappearing in relation to computers. One area where his human-centric approach was apparent was in the invention of hypertext. Engelbart was fascinated by Whorf's thesis that language affected worldview. While most of the computer language research at the time focused on improving how humans communicated with computers, Engelbart wanted to know if computers could enhance the human ability to communicate with each other. Enhancing human language could also enhance human thinking, which was his ultimate objective. With hypertext, computers represented connections between different ideas to humans. Computers did not need to understand the human semantics underlying the hyperlinks. Throughout his career, Engelbart fought against the forgetfulness of Being that computers seemed to cause. Because he invented windowing systems, the mouse, and other technologies that made computers more accessible to people, many associate him with the philosophy of "user-friendly" design. Engelbart, however, rejected that movement, largely because "user-friendly" meant that one did not have to think to use it. Engelbart did not want humans to stop thinking, he wanted humans to become better thinkers. Conclusion Towards the end of his essay on technology, Heidegger quotes Holderin: But where danger is, grows The saving power also. (p28) In many ways, Engelbart's work and philosophy reflects both the danger and the saving power of modern technology. Engelbart was an engineer, not a philosopher, and his orientation was naturally technological. Heidegger would have criticized Engelbart's reliance on the instrumental definition of technology and his attempt to engineer humans as one would machines. Engelbart's approach to augmenting human intellect was to think about humans as technological systems, which was exactly the kind of thinking Heidegger rejected. At the same time, that Engelbart reflected on the essence of humans in the first place demonstrates the bringing forth that Heidegger explains comes hand-in-hand with the dangers of modern technology. In this sense, Engelbart's work seems to confirm Heidegger's claims, both negative and positive, about the essence of modern technology. References Edwards, Paul. The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1997. Engelbart, Douglas C. "Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework." 1962. http://www.bootstrap.org/augment/AUGMENT/133182-0.html Heidegger, Martin. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1977. Heidegger, Martin. "Traditional Language and Technological Language." Journal of Philosophical Research, 1998. pp129-145. Stoll, Clifford. Silicon Snake Oil. Anchor, 1996.