TECHNOLOGY AND CRAFTSMANSHIP - HEIDEGGER
Here is Heidegger, talking about the techné of the craftsman as opposed to 'modern machine-powered technology':
'If we inquire step by step into what technology, represented as means, actually is, then we shall arrive at revealing. The possibility of all productive manufacturing lies in revealing.
'Technology is therefore no mere means. Technology is a way of revealing. If we give heed to this, then another whole realm for the essence of technology will open itself to us. It is the realm of revealing, i.e., of truth.
'This prospect strikes us as strange. Indeed it should do so, as persistently as possible and with so much urgency that we will finally take seriously the simple question of what the name "technology" means. The word stems from the Greek. We must observe two things with respect to the meaning of this word. One is that techné is the name not only for the activities and skills of the craftsman but also for the arts of the mind and the fine arts. Techné belongs to bringing-forth, to poiesis; it is something poetic.
'The other thing we should observe with regard to techné is even more important. From earliest times until Plato the word techné is linked with the word epistémé. Both words are terms for knowing in the widest sense. They mean to be entirely at home in something, to understand and be expert in it. Such knowing provides an opening up. As an opening up it is a revealing. Aristotle in a discussion of special importance (Nicomachean Ethics, Bk VI, chaps 3 and 4), distinguishes between epistémé and techné and indeed with respect to what and how they reveal. Techné is a mode of alétheuein. It reveals whatever does not bring itself forth and does not yet lie here before us, whatever can look and turn out now one way and now another. Whoever builds a house or a ship or forges a sacrificial chalice reveals what is to be brought forth ... Thus what is decisive in techné does not at all lie in making and manipulating, not in the using of means, but rather in the revealing mentioned before. It is as revealing, and not as manufacturing, that techné is a bringing-forth.
[...]
'Technology is a mode of revealing. Technology comes to presence in the realm where revealing and unconcealment take place, where alétheia, truth, happens' (ibid., pp.318-9). But
'the revealing that holds sway through modern technology does not unfold into a bringing-forth in the sense of poeisis. The revealing that rules in modern technology is a challenging, which puts to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy which can be extracted and stored as such. But does this not hold true for the old windmill as well? No. Its sails do indeed turn in the wind; they are left entirely to the wind's blowing. But the windmill does not unlock energy from the air currents in order to store it.
'In contrast a tract of land is challenged in the hauling out of coal and iron. The earth now reveals itself as a coal mining district, the soil as a mineral deposit ... The work of the peasant does not challenge the soil of the field. In sowing grain it places seed in the keeping of the forces of growth and watches over its increase. But meanwhile the cultivation of the field has come under the grip of another kind of setting-in-order, which sets upon nature. It sets upon it in the sense of challenging it. Agriculture is now the mechanised food industry. Air is now set upon to yield nitrogen, the earth to yield ore, ore to yield uranium, for example; uranium is set upon to yield atomic energy, which can be unleashed either for destructive or for peaceful purposes.' (p.320)
TECHNOLOGY AND CRAFTSMANSHIP - GLEIZES
And here is Gleizes talking about technology:
'At other times, the tools, and the techniques that corresponded to them, were only MEANS. The AIM was the product, whose end was the reality of Man. A miserable concept compared to what has replaced it. Nowadays the aim is the tools and the technology themselves. That is all that can be seen. all that counts, the only thing that delights, that captures our attention, the only thing worthy of our imagination. It takes up all our energies, it gives to the word ‘Progress’ its meaning, and a certainty that cannot be questioned. Our habits have been formed on the basis of our unlimited commitment to tools and to technology. We see them change continually, adapt themselves to superhuman tasks, overwhelm the world about us, disturb it with sounds, smells, effects of light that are disproportionate to the capacities of our senses, encouraging us to develop vague ideas as to the relativity of time and space ...
'I cannot see what we have gained through this supposed perfecting of the technical means, in this taking the effort which used to be devoted to the product, the effect, the result, and devoting it instead to the tool, the means, the intention. What physical effort does the individual escape if all his strength and his time goes to constructing splendid instruments, each one cleverer than the last, if he loses his intelligence in making them work by means of a monotonous series of predetermined gestures, if he has to develop needs that are ever greater and more complicated, merely to justify, through an excessive degree of consumption, the speed and size of machines which do not, and never can, correspond to his own nature, determined by its own scale of proportions. What sort of freedom can his faculties enjoy, if the act which Man performs all his life — and it is the total act which is necessary, since that is where we acquire the experience that enables us fully to understand the meaning of the words we use — never goes as far as he can go, never reaches any fulfilment? ...
'What makes the good quality product rich and nourishing for our intellectual faculties is, precisely, that it is an indispensable act projected into the external world, a liberating experience. It brings things to a conclusion, by giving to the man who has done it and who understands it, a feeling of ability and of accomplishment. What makes the quantity based product of the machines deadly is that, with regard to what is required for life, it is not ‘a product’ in any meaningful sense of the word at all. That is where the terrible misunderstanding that is destroying us lies. Despite all the agitation around us, we have lost our capacity to move, we are without ability and are forbidden to act. In our midst we maintain, like a dazzling piece of orthopaedic equipment suitable for the needs of people who are equally impotent in mind and body, a technical means which overwhelms us, which goes far beyond the scale which our means of production would require if, under the inspiration and control of the intelligence, they were to be allowed to create, humanly, the host of things, of objects, of foods, which nature has made necessary to us.' [11]
[11] From 'Art and Production' in Albert Gleizes: Art et Production, Sablons, Moly Sabata. English translation (by me) in Art and Religion, Art and Science, Art and Production, Francis Boutle publishers, London, 1999.