Tracking Technological Thinking in Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time

While Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time remains one of the most significant explorations of existential phenomenology, much of the secondary literature separates this book from his later considerations of the philosophy of technology. Heidegger’s writings in the mid-1900s introduce terms related to enframing (or Gestell), modern science, and machination that explicitly address technology, advancing the notion that, for Heidegger, technology was a later fascination. Scholars like Hubert Dreyfus and Mark Zimmerman read Being and Time as an analysis of everyday existence and clearly mark a “turn” later in shifting from existential phenomenology to the philosophy of technology. In this essay, I argue against that split: Being and Time is already a work in the philosophy of technology because it diagnoses the ontological conditions that make a technological age possible. It shows how the forgetting of the ontological structures of Being prepares the ground for technological modernity. This is evident in how the present-at-hand mode of encountering beings, in which things are measurable objects with properties, is actually derivative of the ready-to-hand, a simpler mode in which things show up within practical contexts of use. The forgetting of this order manifests in how we use equipment, fall into everydayness (das Man), narrow rich conceptual disclosures into categories, and reduce time to a calculable sequence: interpretations that have solidified over millennia of Western metaphysics. Together, these analyses reveal the ontological structure that enables technological thinking, making it possible for beings to show up primarily as resources constantly available for measurement, calculation, and control. 

Heidegger writes within what is later named “the history of Dasein,” attempting to recover authentic temporality. He eventually abandons this framework to discuss the “history of Being,” suggesting that Being and Time still remains trapped within the metaphysical assumptions it seeks to overcome. The tension between revealing the technological age and being unable to escape its logic is a crucial component of the text that goes unanswered.

In what follows, I first turn to Heidegger’s analysis of equipment to show how the present-at-hand is ontologically derivative but can appear basic. Second, I examine falling and “das Man” to show how this derivative mode is socially stabilized. Third, I analyze Heidegger’s distinction between the hermeneutic and apophantic “as” to argue that technological thinking narrows the scope of a richer conceptual disclosure. Fourth, I turn to temporality and Being-toward-death to show how the reduction of time to a sequence of “nows” completes the ontological structure of the technological age and has solidified over the course of Western history. Finally, I briefly mention how Heidegger's later writings, particularly “The Age of the World Picture,” emphasize the limitations and possibilities of subjectivity and the essence of modern metaphysics.

Heidegger’s opening sections reveal how an interpretation of Being becomes hegemonic: it rules precisely by not appearing as an interpretation at all. Heidegger describes a “dogma” that treats the question of Being as “superfluous,” while at the same time regarding Being as “the most universal and the emptiest of concepts” that is never clarified. This paradox shows how an interpretation becomes primary or dominant: it operates invisibly. In connecting Being with constant, unquestioned presence, this becomes what is “real” even before any theorizing begins. This will be the basic pattern of the essay: derivative modes of access to beings become invisible, are taken as basic, and thereby prepare the way for a world in which beings show up as present objects that can be controlled: what Heidegger’s later writings will explicitly call a technological age.

Heidegger’s analysis of equipment provides the first concrete example of this pattern: it shows how the present-at-hand, a derivative mode of access, can come to appear foundational. Heidegger writes that "the hammering itself uncovers the specific 'manipulability' of the hammer." In its practical use, the hammer “appears,” but in relation to the task at hand. Heidegger defines this as ready-to-hand. When equipment functions, it withdraws to be ready-to-hand quite authentically. Heidegger reveals that when we hammer, our focus is on the work, not the hammer itself. This, however, changes through breakdown, in which equipment becomes "conspicuous" and "obtrusive." It appears differently: "The modes of conspicuousness, obtrusiveness, and obstinacy all have the function of bringing to the fore the characteristic of presence-at-hand in what is ready-to-hand." When the hammer breaks, for instance, it is no longer withdrawn into use. The properties of the broken hammer actually emerge as properties, like weight or color. This is the mode of the present-at-hand. This structure is temporal: breakdown reveals both the equipmental context that was operative but unthematized, and the present-at-hand mode that later emerges when that context breaks down.

It is thus understood that present-at-hand is ontologically derivative, appearing through the disruption of practice. Science, however, systematizes this derivative mode. To look at something scientifically is to undergo a “change-over” (Umstellung), in which what is ready-to-hand is deprived of its worldhood and freed to exhibit its presence-at-hand purely. In this mode, access to beings presupposes a suspension of concernful use in favor of detached observation and measurement. The scientist does not use a hammer to build; instead, they calculate its properties: weigh it, measure it, and analyze it qualitatively. This is what makes scientific investigation possible, though it remains a derivative mode, emerging from the ready-to-hand involvement that is purposefully suspended. 

 Once we forget that this stance grew out of breakdown and the forced refusal of involvement, the present-at-hand can appear to reveal beings “as they really are.” The derivative mode now presents itself as foundational. Calculation and control no longer look like one possible relation to beings but like the very recognition of their reality. This forgetting of the priority of the ready-to-hand is, on Heidegger’s account, the first ontological step toward a technological view of the world; that is, a world organized around measurement, prediction, and control. 

The following puzzle emerges: is the ready-to-hand entirely forgotten in the age of technology, or is it modified in some way? This question becomes more difficult when considering Heidegger’s shift from the history of Dasein to the history of Being, which I will briefly discuss in the conclusion of this essay. The ready-to-hand in Being and Time characterizes Dasein’s practical engagement with equipment, but he later describes a world in which everything can show up as standing-reserve, as a resource to be ordered and used. It is evident that the ready-to-hand has changed, but how? The ready-to-hand appears to be modified, and the structure of practical involvement itself is transformed. Despite sharing qualities, enframing, the unconcealment mode in which Being itself comes to presence as standing-reserve, and the ready-to-hand are not exactly the same thing. The technological age does not altogether abandon practical engagement but restructures it in relation to the logic of measurability. This is precisely why the age of technology is so inevitable: it colonizes practice from within, rather than opposing it.

It is also worth noting that the “ready-to-hand” and “present-at-hand" do not name two classes of objects (tools versus neutral stuff); they name two modes of encountering any being. The same hammer that is ready-to-hand in use becomes present-at-hand in measurement. Technology is not about a special set of gadgets; it names a transformed mode of disclosure that can apply to everything. Technology becomes a modified version of the ready-to-hand, transforming disclosure into something that exceeds the binary distinction between ready-to-hand and present-at-hand. 

If the analysis of equipment shows how a derivative mode of access can arise, Heidegger’s account of falling (Verfallen) explains how this mode is socially stabilized and made to seem obvious. Falling describes the way beings are encountered within an already operative, largely invisible framework. This matters because it clarifies how a technological ordering can operate through everydayness rather than through explicit imposition. In a way, falling is a losing of oneself: “idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity” characterize how Dasein is ‘there’ in an everyday manner, constituting “the ‘falling’ of Dasein.” Yet falling does not express an overly negative evaluation; it describes the way Dasein exists “proximally and for the most part alongside the ‘world’ of its concern” with “the character of Being-lost in the publicness of the ‘they.’” Das Man (the “they”) is a mode of being in which everyone is the other, and no one is himself, and thus constitutes “he ‘who’ of everyday Dasein.” “Being-with-one-another” in this mode involves an ambiguous, intent watching of one another, revealing that we do not freely choose how beings are encountered; rather, they are often prearranged. One’s state of mind is shaped by the “they,” which changes how one sees. Our basic way of encountering beings is therefore always already structured by the publicness of the “they,” which presents its interpretation of the world as simply how things are.

Note that falling can be both about getting absorbed in practical activity and “getting theoretical.” When a plumber is absorbed in a repair, they can be lost in practical absorption; when the equipment breaks, they can equally fall into a merely objectifying gaze. Both are forms of falling and ways of avoiding a more fundamental confrontation with one’s own existence. Given that our experience with the world is already bounded by these socially inherited interpretations, the influence of the “they” does not show up as interpretation at all but as the apparent way reality is. When such socially shaped falling coincides with the forgetting of the derivative status of the present-at-hand, technological modes of encounter no longer appear as one possible way of understanding among others, but as the self-evident way reality must be.

To understand how technological thinking narrows our access to beings, Heidegger’s distinction between different modes of conceptuality becomes crucial. Heidegger’s account of conceptuality shows a third version of the same pattern. Concepts already shape everyday understanding, but in a different way from the objectifying categorizations of science. A technological view of the world arises not only by adding concepts to a neutral reality but also by narrowing already-rich conceptual disclosure. In other words, a technological attitude treats the world as if it were composed of neutral data to be processed, whereas Heidegger insists that our primary access is already meaningful and contextual. This point is illustrated in the example of hearing: what one first hears is “never noises or complexes of sounds, but the creaking wagon, the motorcycle." If one were to hear the "pure noise,” it would require "a very artificial and complicated frame of mind." We hear things in the context of significance: Dasein, as Being-in-the-world, already dwells alongside what is ready-to-hand within the world. Our understanding entirely influences our experience in the world. In our everyday consciousness, we hear the motorcycle, not the simple sensory input of sound. Heidegger’s "hermeneutic 'as'” articulates the way in which beings appear within contexts of significance. This is different, however, from the “apophantic 'as'" of theoretical assertion. In the case of a theoretical statement, what is ready-to-hand becomes veiled, causing entities to be understood as something merely present-at-hand. We still understand beings as something, but not simply as things in contexts; rather, as objects with properties. The sequence is important: the apophantic “as” emerges through modification, showing up as objects for determination. In the dominance of this mode, beings are then disclosed in terms of properties when disclosure is narrowed from the hermeneutic to the apophantic “as,” objectifying conceptuality is given priority over a richer, contextual understanding.

The hearing example further frames what Heidegger means by objectifying conceptuality: one does not hear "sound data" and then conclude that it is a car; one simply hears that there is a car outside—already conceptual, already understanding, but not objectifying. In this way, Heidegger does not claim that authenticity is non-conceptual while inauthenticity is abstract; instead, he seems to assert that modes of conceptuality exist that aren't necessarily objectifying. This is related to the forgetting of Being, insofar as Western metaphysics increasingly privileged the apophantic over the hermeneutic “as,” making objectifying conceptuality the paradigm of understanding itself. Forgetting the hermeneutic “as” and treating the apophantic “as” as basic is the conceptual analogue of treating the present-at-hand as fundamental: both are derivative modes that have displaced richer, more primordial ways of disclosure. This forgetting means forgetting that measurement and calculation are derivative modifications. When objectification appears foundational rather than derivative, technological thinking seems to reveal beings "as they are" rather than as one limited mode of disclosure.

Heidegger’s account of temporality exposes the deepest condition for a technological understanding of the world. Everyday understanding of time, in which it is reduced to a series of calculable “nows, ” both arises from and obscures an “ecstatic” or primordial temporality. Here again, a derivative mode of disclosure, the time of public “nows” that can be measured, comes to appear basic, while the more originary ecstatic temporality is forgotten. This presents everyday time as datable, spanned, and public, which can be calculated and managed. Authentic temporality, however, exhibits the unified "stretching-along" of future, having-been, and present. Different from objects in containers, Dasein does not exist “in time”; moreover, "temporality temporalizes, and indeed it temporalizes possible ways of itself." We don’t have time; we are it: our existence spans from birth to death, consuming the past while simultaneously shaping the future. 

When we flee being-toward-death, we continue to interpret time as an endless succession of present moments to be filled, optimized, and controlled. Understanding time in this way makes it measurable and optimizable, just as present-at-hand entities can be. If we think that what is actually real must be stable and ever-present, not coming-into-being or passing-away, but constantly available for measurement and use, technology is then the final metaphysics: the full realization of equating Being with constant presence. Time becomes a resource, just like beings become resources. This is the ontological pattern that culminates in the technological age. 

Finally, this trivialization and forgetting of the question of Being has solidified over millennia. The Greeks, particularly Plato and Aristotle, understood Being as ousía: an enduring present substance that persists through change. To elevate a stable presence above a temporal becoming, a framework was created that shaped the trajectory of Western thought. Even as medieval and modern philosophy introduced concepts like divine creation or subjectivity, all this was based on the ontological framework that Being means presence. This prepares the conditions for technology to treat beings like time or Dasein itself as constantly ready and present to be used. The basic ontological orientation remains, as it was the culmination of decisions made in Greek philosophy that, over centuries, made technological thinking inevitable, and thus is deeply implicit in Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time.

In “The Age of the World Picture,” Heidegger argues that the fundamental event of the modern age is the conquest of the world as a picture and that the “essence of modern technology” is an “essence which is identical with the essence of modern metaphysics.” This further supports the argument that the analysis of beings disclosed as constantly present in Being and Time is already a commentary on technology. Modern metaphysics is the age of subjectivity, and that subjectivity is grounded in the essence of technology; however, in Being and Time, Heidegger shows how that grounding was prepared over millennia through Greek philosophy’s ontological decisions that formalized the unquestioned framework of Western thought. The age of technology is thus deeply inscribed in the diagnosis in Being and Time: it marks the beginning of the ultimate “working-out” of ontological decisions made in the centuries prior. As Heidegger will go on to shift from a history of Dasein to a history of Being, it becomes evident that he recognizes that there are things Dasein does and things that happen to Dasein. The latter structures how beings (including Dasein itself) can show up. Technology’s essence is Gestell (enframing), and it does not merely name a way that Dasein has fallen into inauthenticity but names the Being-disclosed itself. Despite the lack of explicit “technology language” compared to later essays, Being and Time begins the critique of technology, this time in vocabulary more closely associated with Dasein and phenomenology.

These major sections of Being and Time each illuminate a different way in which beings come to be encountered. The analysis of equipment first shows how breakdown makes the present-at-hand emerge from the ready-to-hand and how, once this origin is forgotten, the derivative mode (presence-at-hand) can present itself as basic. Falling then amplifies this: shared yet unexamined interpretations make specific ways of encountering beings seem obvious and inevitable. With the shift from the hermeneutic “as” to the apophantic “as,” disclosure is further narrowed into objectifying categorization, and Heidegger’s account of temporality completes the picture by showing how time itself can be flattened into a calculable sequence of “nows.” Finally, he reveals the apparent historical depth of this forgetting over centuries, starting with the equation of Being with ousía by Greek ontology.

None of these analyses identifies a regional phenomenon that could be labeled “technology.” Instead, they expose the ontological conditions under which a technological worldview can arise. In a world dominated by the present-at-hand, where beings are encountered under the sway of the public “they,” where understanding is funneled into clear-cut categories, and time is treated as a series of discrete now-points, beings can no longer appear in their multiple meanings but are disclosed primarily as standing-reserve. When the derivative is mistaken for the foundational, public norms sink into invisibility, rich disclosure is simplified, and presence is equated with being itself. Beings then demand measurement and control not because we consciously impose a technological framework, but because the structures of disclosure have already been oriented toward presence and availability. In this sense, Being and Time is not merely a prelude to a later philosophy of technology; it already is that philosophy, insofar as it lays bare the structures of disclosure that make technological thinking possible at all.

Jedd is a third-year student studying fundamentals (Issues and Texts, Philosophy) and molecular engineering in the tech and innovation track.

Bibliography

Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and Time (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, Trans.). Harper & Row. (Original work published 1927)

Heidegger, M. (2002). "The Age of the World Picture." In Off the Beaten Track (J. Young & K. Haynes, Trans.). Cambridge University Press.

Dreyfus, H. (1991). Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division I. MIT Press.

Zimmerman, M. (1990). Heidegger's Confrontation with Modernity: Technology, Politics, and Art. Indiana University Press.

Heidegger, M. (1977). The Question Concerning Technology (W. Lovitt, Trans.). In The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Harper & Row. (Original work published 1954)