CONCERNING QUESTIONS

• The progress of human civilizations throughout history mirrors the development of science and technology
• The human person, as both the bearer and beneficiary of science and technology, flourishes and finds meaning in the world that he/she builds
• In the person's pursuit of the good life, he/she may unconsciously acquire, consume, or destroy what the world has to offer
• It is necessary to reflect on the things that truly matter
• Science and technology must be taken as part of human life that merits reflective and meditative thinking
• Science and technology, despite its methodical and technical nature, gives meaning to the life of a person making his/her way in the world
• Gadgets, machines, appliances, and vehicles


  Tools that make human lives easier by serving as a means to an end
• Utility of tools


  Providing people with a certain good, convenience, or knowledge
• Medical research employs the best scientific and technological principles to come up with cures for diseases and ways to prevent illnesses to ensure a good quality of life
• Technology


  A means to an end and a human activity
• The "true" entails so much more meaning and significance than the "correct"
• Heidegger urged people to envision technology as a mode of revealing as it shows so much more about the human person and the world
• Aletheia


  Unhiddenness or disclosure
• Poiesis


  Bringing forth, making or producing something for a purpose
• Techne


  Skill, art, or craft, a means of bringing forth something
• In Heidegger's work, technology is a poiesis that discloses or reveals the truth
• Thinking of technology as poetry takes a different mindset, a more reflective and sensitive way of looking at the world
• Heidegger characterizes modern technology as a challenging forth since it is very aggressive in its activity
• Modern technology challenges nature and demands of it resources that are, most of the time, forcibly extracted for human consumption and storage
• With modern technology, revealing never comes to an end as everything is on demand
• We no longer need to work with the rhythms of nature because we have learned to control it
• Standing-reserve


  Everything is ordered to stand by, to be immediately on hand, indeed to stand there just so that it may be on call for a further ordering
• Questioning is the piety of thought
• Piety means obedience and submission to one's thoughts and reflections
• Questioning leads one to search for his/her place in the universe and in the grand scale of things
• Enframing


  The way of revealing in modern technology, a way of looking at reality where nature is put in a box or frame so that it can be better understood and controlled according to people's desires
• Poiesis is concealed in enframing as nature is viewed as an orderable and calculable system of information
• Calculative thinking


  Ordering and putting a system to nature so it can be understood better and controlled
• Meditative thinking


  Letting nature reveal itself without forcing it
• People want control and are afraid of unpredictability, so calculative thinking is more often used
• Enframing is done because people want security, even if the ordering that happens in enframing is violent and even if the Earth is made to suffer
• Enframing


  A way of looking at reality where nature is put in a box or frame so that it can be better understood and controlled according to people's desires
• Poiesis


  The concealed revealing of nature as an orderable and calculable system of information
• Calculative thinking


  Ordering and putting a system to nature so it can be better understood and controlled
• Calculative thinking is more often used because people want control and are afraid of unpredictability
• Enframing is done because people want security, even if the ordering that happens in enframing is violent and even if the Earth is made as a big gasoline station from which we extract, stockpile, and put in standing-reserve, ready to be used as we see fit
• If we allow ourselves to get swallowed by modern technology

  We lose the essence of who we are as beings in this world
• If we are constantly plugged online and no longer have the capacity for authentic personal encounters

  Then we are truly swallowed by technology
• If we cannot let go of conveniences and profits brought about by processes and industries that pollute the environment and cause climate change


  Then technology has consumed our humanity
• Essence of technology


  The way in which things are, as that which endures