Heidegger on Technology as a "Mode of Human Existence"

Most of the modern world thinks of technology as a tool, or merely as a means to make life better, more comfortable, or more efficient. This perspective is common to modernists or anyone who believes in a mind/body dualism. For these modernists, even the body is like a technology, or an instrument that the mind chooses to use at it's own discretion.

Heidegger thought differently. He did not see a split between the mind and body and therefore, his conceptions on technology were different as well.

For him, technology wasn't just a means to an end, but rather, a mode of human existence.

As other non-dualists have suggested, technology or media can be seen as "extensions of man" (McLuhan). Just as people who have lost a limb can feel phantom vibrations even though its gone, so do moderns when they are left without their cell phones.

Niel Postman once said that "with every new gadget, you destroy a previous way of life." That is how Heidegger sees technology. It creates a new way of life or a new mode of human existence.

We can see this with social media and all the different devices we use to access it. It has created a new way of living and operating in the modern world. If you don't get with the times, you can easily become disconnected, because social media for some is the only way they connect.