Critical Discourses on Technology in the Era of the Anthropocene

Abstract

This paper attempts to unravel and explore the stark contradiction between the quest for technological advancement and the struggle for human welfare and well-being. In the frame of Hegel’s master and slave dialectic, the author tries to present the notions of humanity and technology as thesis and antitheses by which the dawning synthesis of technological sensitivity to nature and an ecologically friendly human innovation and emancipation can be made possible. The paper draws heavily from the concepts introduced by notable philosophers, such as, Bernard Stiegler, Donna Haraway, N. Katherine Hayes, Andrew Feenberg, Douglas Kellner, Herbert Marcuse, George Lukacs, Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel, Karl Marx, Martin Heidegger, Karl Popper, Aldo Leopold, and Enrique Dussel. Out from the brilliant concepts of these thinkers, altogether their ideas had served as the building blocks in tracing the origin, nature, history, development, and the future of both the humankind and technology, and its impact to the natural ecology. The author attempts to work out a coherent synthesis of these prevailing thinkers. Their ideas aimed to lead, support, enhance, or give way to the possibility of the notion of an ecologically, environmentally, nature and human-friendly technology.