The Existential Import of Computer Technology

Abstract

The task of this essay is to reflect upon the non-technical experience of computer technology. In what is to follow I shall elaborate upon a number of theses which, in a general sense, apply to any technology, but in this context will be directed more specifically upon computers and their experienced results. The theses are: (1) Any use of technology is non-neutral. The term, non-neutral, is deliberately chosen to indicate that the use of technological artifacts transform experience in some way. I do not wish to imply either negative or positive values for the transformation as such, but wish to underline that there is a significant transformation of experience in the use of technologies. (2) Within overall experience, there are a number of primary categories such that the user of a technology may experience technological artifacts in several different ways depending upon how the artifact is related to the user. (3) Subsumed under the first two theses there may be discerned certain specific characteristics of the transformation of experience. Technologies organize, select and focus the environment through various transformational structures to be outlined. (4) From the variety and structure of transformed experience, the existential import of computer technology may be glimpsed. It takes the shape of what I shall call a world-reflexivity, a term which will be clarified en route.