Blog 5: Program One: A Phenomenology of Technics

This chapter begins with some of the same ideals mentioned in the previous chapter. It discusses the idea of transparency and whether wearing glasses will adjust our perception of the world. In order to be “connected” with the world the glasses must be transparent; just like with the window. They are merely a means to looking out. As stated by Ihde, there is “a wish for total transparency, total embodiment, for the technology to truly ‘become me.’” You want to experience that face-to-face interaction you would experience without technology. One idea that really sparked my interest was the idea of what if life as you knew it was always through a lens system to begin with? You would know no different. We could in fact be blind to something that we have no knowledge to at this point. We could be in a mediate experience at all times.
The next idea that was interesting to me was the idea of the hermeneutic technics, which related to interpretation and therefore reading. There was talk about whether speech was primary or whether writing was in fact primary. Was language developed from the written word? Or was the written word developed from speech or linguistics? Which in fact came first? It reminds me of the chicken and the egg. The book then goes into a story about sitting in a warm house looking outside and knowing that you can see that is cold outside. However, as noted in the book, you cannot feel that it is cold outside until you are physically outside (a face-to-face interaction). You can read a thermometer (hermeneutics) and know that below zero is cold, but still have not felt that it was in fact cold. “Text has hermeneutically delivered its ‘world’ reference, the cold.” What must be considered with reading technology is the chance for a misreading by your part or even a malfunction by the technology itself. They call these enigma positions in the book. There are three different types of variants discussed in the books. The first is (I-technology) à world, which is an embodied relation between us and the technology. The enigma position is then in between the person and the technology. The person can’t understand the text or technology. The second is I à (technology-world), which is a hermeneutic relation. The enigma position is then upon the instrument itself. The third is I à technology –(-world), which is alterity relations. This is the relations to or with a technology. There may be a relationship between technology and the world but there doesn’t need to be. The world itself may in fact be a background to the technology. Technology can also be the background, as mentioned in the book. Semiautomatic appliances are an example mentioned in the text. They are “absent” or put “to the side” but still play a role in our everyday behavior. What would we do if we didn’t have lights or heat? This chapter is very in depth and covers a lot of information. This continual look at the difference of human face-to-face interaction and that of a mediated or “interrupted” interaction is interesting in itself, but now we add on different implications. As long as the interruption is in fact transparent does that make up for a face-to-face interaction. Can we read a text and thus understand what it is like to be outside? Every experience seems to have a downfall attached to it.