Mapping The System
We are trying to determine the semantic boundaries of the linguistic concept of technology. Some might suggest we are questioning toward the essence of technology, but that would imply that the concept of technology existed as something else, and that if only we could find the name of this something else, then the mystery of technology would be solved. But the concept of technology, like all the other concepts, can only exist as such. We do not need to find what lies at its center, as if there were a pure soul of technology separated from the body of technology; rather, we need to discover the limits of technology; see not where technology starts, but where it ends.
The excitement exists at the borderlands, where confrontations and conversations happen. It is at the limits of a concept where we can see how it interacts with others. From these interactions, we can gain an understanding of its character, and see what kind of circles it runs in.
You’ll rarely find love, for example, running in the same circle as poster-board. Those two concepts just don’t interact very often. But love and hate! Not only do they interact often, but they’re always in conflict. We could even say that they are archrivals. Hate, for its part, runs in the same circle as concepts such as evil, violence, and revenge. We may not know the true meaning of hate, we may not know the essence of its character, but by investigating the limits of its interactions in the total social system of language, we can make (begin to make) safe assumptions about how it functions.
But is there a mistake in the metaphor we’ve chosen? That is, we must ask ourselves whether it is legitimate to treat language as a system, and even more specifically, as a social system. Systems, after all, seem to be directly related to the concept of technology, and if we are to find the limits of the linguistic concept of technology, perhaps it would be better if we didn’t structure the entire concept on one of its direct relations. The argument has some strange merit, but only if we are already thinking under the structure of the social system metaphor: as if there was such a thing as nepotism in metaphorical structures!
If we grant the argument, that it is unfair to treat the concept of language (and by extension, to investigate the linguistic concept of technology) as a system because systems are technological and investigating the concept of technology in a technological metaphor will necessarily result in a self-referential moment, then we have to explore some other possible metaphoric structure.
Unfortunately, we are quickly running out of non-technological metaphors for language. Perhaps the last possible non-technological metaphor for language was as a web, but technology has caught up to us there. It’s beginning to look as if language, itself, is linked within the web of technology — that it may be impossible, given our currently available metaphors, to construct a concept of technology that is not immediately dependent upon a concept that, in some way, depends itself upon technology.
We must ask ourselves what this means. If everything we can think of in relation to language is structured within a concept of technology, is language, then, a technology? If so, we must follow this thought to its conclusion.
For many individuals, technology is wrong. It may not be evil, as such, but it definitely is not natural. If language is a technology, and technology is not natural, then language is not natural.
Now, for many individuals, it is language that makes us human; it is language that defines us. If language is not natural, and we are defined by our facility of language, does that mean that we are not natural? And if we are not natural, then how did we get here?
It is this kind of thinking, of course, that leads to creation myths.
With our seeing the untruth of creation myths, we also accept the presence of a natural system that we call evolution. The concept of system, it seems, does not solely relate to technology; it also relates to nature.
To which someone might respond, “Yes, nature as defined by science, which is directly related to technology.”
But in this day and age, when science’s hand has reached so far into the bowels of nature, when technology has taken us to nature’s deepest trenches and loftiest peaks, when technology has shown us the core of the sun and the edges of our galaxy, when technology has, literally, placed a view of the world at our fingertips, how are we supposed to imagine outside of its realm?
It is at this point that we must recall Heidegger’s insistence that Western philosophy (as epistemology) is dependent upon the metaphor of visual perception. If our visual understanding of the world today is so dependent upon technology — dependent not only upon what we see through the lens of a camera, but also upon the maps and graphs and charts that show us the relations between things, then how probable is it for us to construct a metaphor that will illustrate the function of the linguistic concept of technology?
It seems impossible, provided we stay within the acceptable boundaries of philosophical communication; that is to say, it may be possible to discover a metaphor that exists outside the circle of technology, but we suspect that such a metaphor would suffer from its lack of logical coherence: it would not be philosophy; rather, poetry. This would not be, in and of itself, a bad thing, especially since the borderlands between philosophy and poetry seem to relate to the borderlands between technology and nature.
Philosophy and technology seem to fall into the category that we might call, with Heidegger, Ordering; nature (and more loosely, poetry) fall into the category of Being. Being seems to have a certain sloppiness to it; it is constantly spilling over. Ordering is straight lines; it draws the boundaries that Being ignores.
For Heidegger, it all comes down to these two concepts. In his social system of language, Being runs one gang and Ordering the other, and these two are forever at battle. For whatever reason, Heidegger seems to prefer Being — Ordering is the bad guy, it corrupts Being.
Some people have said that Western philosophy, at the same time as it is focused through the metaphor of visual perception, has been the attempt to answer the question of universals and particulars. When we see something, we don’t see it as itself, but rather, as one particular instance of a whole category that we’ve designated as that something. For example, when we see an individual chair, we are (usually) unable to see it without calling it a chair. Each individual chair does not get its own word (the only individual beings that we’ve designated as normally worthy of individual names are human beings — and our pets). Each individual chair belongs to the universal category. This relates, in a loose way, to Heidegger’s concepts.
For Heidegger, it is the Ordering that prevents us from experiencing each individual instance of Being; in fact, it is Ordering that restrains us within the very concept of instance, as if time came naturally pre-packaged in little instances! Ordering forces us to experience Being as something other than itself. Ordering regulates the line between universal and particular, and we have no other option but to obey that line (unless, of course, subversion is possible, but that’s a topic for another day).
The river of Being, on the other hand, does not suffer from this line, just as the Mississippi River does not suffer from its rendering on a map. The mighty Mississip’ will flow wherever it damn well flows, regardless of how we define it.
Notice the metaphors, even here. Ordering acts as a police force might act: it prevents, restrains, forces, and regulates us. Even here, Ordering is built on a systematically ordered, i.e., technologically ordered, foundation: police forces arise from the desire to preserve order. Our relation to Being, however, flows through a nature metaphor. This is not by design. Being naturally fits better into the structures provided by nature metaphors.
For Heidegger, technology is unnatural. The Ordering that is the essence of technology prevents the natural purity of Being from being realized in the world. It would seem, then, that his project would have us somehow remove the unnatural Ordering in order to reveal the more primal Being.
If we follow this thought, we are brought to a rather negative place.
Ordering is the essence of technology. Language is a technology. Ordering, then, is also the essence of language.
Language defines us. In some respects, it is our essence. To be human, then, is to be under the influence of Ordering.
If Heidegger would remove Ordering from out of the path of Being, then it seems as if he would eradicate human beings. How can such a misanthropic desire be possible?
Recall, for a moment, that Heidegger was a Nazi. We have to ask ourselves, of course, if it is fair for us to allow Heidegger’s political leanings to influence the way we engage his philosophical theories. But if we recall that we are, in part, operating under a metaphor of language as a social system, then we can point to Heidegger’s social theories as a Nazi to suggest that the very fact that one historical man held both theories at the same time gives us the right to combine them under one metaphor; that is, Heidegger’s social theory divided the world into pure and impure, and his technological theory divided reality into Ordering and Being; it seems legitimate, then, to map one theory to the other and utilize the similarities we find.
Unfortunately, it is this type of value-based system, in which impure technology is understood as causing harm to pure nature, that has ensnared the linguistic concept of technology into its web. The question, then, must be whether it is possible for technology to escape.
After which, the question must become: is such an escape desirable?