‘Torturing things until they confess’: Günther Anders' critique of technology

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1Here, Anders is referring to the seers of antiquity. As they once read the future from the entrails of sacrificial animals, so too must we learn to read from today's devices. They will reveal to us the shape of the world to come and the type of our children's children. 'And if they [the devices] won't do it on their own', he emphasizes, 'then we'll have to make them do it' (2002b, p. 428). With this rather pointed formulation, Anders attempts to express the necessity of a consistent, wholehearted 'thing-analysis' in order to get to the truth.