We say “technology” and mean modern technology. One likes to characterize it as machine technology. This characterization hits upon something correct. But what is correct about it still contains no truth, for it does not reveal anything of the essence of modern technology, and indeed it does not do so because the manner of representing that this characterization of modern technology as machine technology stems from is never able to reveal the essence of technology. One is of the opinion that modern technology, as distinct from all previous forms, would be defined by the machine. But what if it were the reverse? Modern technology is what it is not through the machine, but rather the machine is only what it is and how it is from the essence of technology. Thus one says nothing of the essence of modern technology when one conceives it as machine technology.
From the outset, positionality as such imposes upon all standing reserve that it only persist through the machine. To what extent? Positionality is the gathering of the drive’s plundering of the constancy of the orderable, which itself is solely imposed upon such that it would stand in place and at the ready. Positionality is the collected requisitioning of the orderable that circulates in itself. Positionality is in itself the reaping, impulsive circulation of the requisitioning of the orderable in the ordering. Positionality imposes this equality of the orderable upon everything, that everything constantly position itself again in equivalent form and indeed in the equality of orderability.
Positionality, as this circulation in itself of requisitioning, composes the essence of the machine. Rotation belongs to this, though not necessarily in the form of a wheel, for the wheel is defined by rotation, not rotation by wheels. Rotation is that revolving which courses back into itself, driving on the orderable (propellant) into the requisitioning of the orderable (propulsion). The rotation of the machine is positioned, i.e., challenged forth, and made constant in the circulation that lies in drive, the essential character of positionality.
Long before the end of the eighteenth century, when the first machines were invented and set running in England, positionality, the essence of technology, was already afoot in a concealed manner. This says: the essence of technology already