humanity. The bearing to technology remains confused and thus at variance with itself. Without risking the step of thinking that exposes our human essence to the essence of technology (not only to its manipulations and uses), one struggles through these conflicts from case to case, situation to situation. And precisely through this mess one misses the possibility for which one in principle strives, the mastering of technology through human action and the directing of it in a manner befitting humans. But how is this supposed to ever be able to occur for all humanity, in the grand style, and in a historical sense, so long as the question concerning the essence of technology and its essential relation to the human essence has not even once been taken seriously? As long as we do not yet notice in the least bit that we must first thoughtfully enter into and open up the essential region of technology in order to then act and reflect within this essential space in an expressly technological manner, that is how long we will not be able to find any befitting decisions concerning technology.
Yet there are indeed doctrines concerning technology that pronounce it to be neither something evil nor something good. One says technology would be neutral, everything depends on what the human does with technology and makes of it; everything would rest upon whether the human is in a position to take technology by the hand and is willing to assign technology to loftier goals; everything would be decided by this, whether the human is able to master technology morally and religiously or not.
No one will deny the seriousness of the responsibility in this position on technology. And nevertheless, even this consideration of technology thinks technology just as little in its essence as the previous ones, for whoever presumes technology to be something neutral first rightly conceives it merely as an instrument by which something else is effected and arranged. Whoever takes technology as something neutral conceives it once again only instrumentally, and that means technologically. Indeed, technology does not consist in the technological, but only conceals its essence there.
The essence of technology is itself nothing technological. Admittedly, for those who hold technology to be something neutral, there arises the misleading appearance as though they