The literature on technology has reorganized substantially across the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, with several principal positions still live. The framework engages each by name; they are taken up again at [§8.11.5](<8.11.5 What is Concluded.md>) once the structural account is in view.

*Heideggerian critique.* Heidegger's (1954) "The Question Concerning Technology" developed the most influential twentieth-century philosophical analysis: modern technology is *Gestell* (enframing) that reveals all of nature as *Bestand* (standing reserve), available for extraction and use. The position has been refined through Borgmann (1984), Dreyfus (1992), and the broader phenomenological-critique tradition. The framework reads Heidegger as identifying a real structural feature of how modern technology relates the subject to what it operates on, while supplying the structural reading: technology is the subject's outward operation on structure it tracks, and the Heideggerian critique picks up the specific shape this operation takes when it loses contact with the wider structural conditions that constrain it.

*Borgmann's device paradigm.* Borgmann (1984) is often filed as a refinement of Heidegger, but his distinctive contribution stands on its own: the *device paradigm*, on which modern technology systematically replaces *focal things and practices* — activities that gather skill, attention, and relation around a center, like the hearth, the table, or the played instrument — with *devices* that deliver the same commodity while making the underlying machinery disappear. The cost is not inefficiency but the disengagement of the practice the focal thing sustained. *Holding On to Reality* (1999) carries the thesis into the information age, distinguishing natural, cultural, and technological information and arguing that the last transforms rather than merely extends the human relation to reality. The framework reads Borgmann as marking a real axis the exterior-modal-maps gradient leaves implicit — whether an externalization retires or preserves the practice that held the modeling — and engages it at the cluster root ([§8.11](<8.11 Technology.md>)) rather than dissolving it into the enframing critique.

*McLuhan and the extension-of-man tradition.* McLuhan (1964) treated technologies as extensions of human capacities — wheel as extended foot, writing as extended memory, electronic media as extended nervous system. The position has been refined through media-studies traditions (Postman 1985; Carr 2010) and through Stiegler's (1994–2001) tertiary-retention account of technical externalization. The framework reads the extension tradition as correctly identifying that technology externalizes capacities of the recursion, with the modal-map analysis ([§8.11](<8.11 Technology.md>) cluster-root) supplying the specific structural reading: external maps extend the modal-modeling reach of the subject beyond what any single body can hold.

*Instrumentalism.* The instrumentalist account treats technology as a means: a tool extending biological functions, evaluated by what it accomplishes for the organism that wields it. The position is widely held both popularly and in much philosophy of technology (Bunge 1985). The framework reads instrumentalism as correctly describing the means/end structure at the level of a single tool, while supplying the structural conditions that make instrumental use available at all: the recursive depth required for a subject to model the gap between what is and what could be, and to commit to closing the gap as a project.

*Social-constructionist accounts.* The social-construction-of-technology (SCOT) tradition (Pinch and Bijker 1984; Bijker 1995) and Latour's (1987, 2005) actor-network theory developed accounts on which technologies are not neutral instruments but socio-technical assemblages shaped by, and shaping, the social relations they are embedded in. The position has been highly influential in science-and-technology studies. The framework reads constructionist accounts as correctly identifying that specific technologies are conditioned by their social context, while supplying the structural reading: the *that* of technology — subjects at the relevant recursion depth operating outward on structure they track — is not socially constructed, while the *what* of specific technologies is significantly so.

*Ellulian autonomy of technique.* Ellul (1954) developed the influential thesis that *la technique* — the rationalized organization of means — has become autonomous from human ends, with its own developmental logic that humans no longer control. The position has been refined through Mumford (1934, 1967), Winner (1977), and the broader critical-theory tradition. The framework reads the autonomy thesis as identifying a real structural feature — cumulative cultural technology develops along trajectories that exceed any single subject's intentions — while supplying the structural reading: the trajectories are not autonomous from subject-level activity, but emerge from the accumulated outward operations of many subjects on the structure they jointly track.

*Marxist and political-economy accounts.* Marx (1867) and the Marxist tradition treat technology as embedded in modes of production, with productive forces and productive relations conditioning what technologies develop and how they are used. The position has been refined through Frankfurt School critical theory, Braverman (1974), and contemporary political-economy approaches. The framework reads Marxist accounts as correctly identifying that the social relations under which technology is developed condition its specific character, while supplying the structural reading: the underlying activity — subjects operating outward on structure — is what political economy conditions and channels.

*Existential-risk and longtermist accounts.* A contemporary literature (Bostrom 2014; Ord 2020; MacAskill 2022) treats certain emerging technologies — AI, biotechnology, geoengineering — as posing existential risks to humanity and emphasizes the long-term consequences of present technological decisions. The framework engages this literature without endorsing all of its specific predictions: the structural fact that exterior modal maps amplify within-frame search without fixing the frame ([§8.11](<8.11 Technology.md>) cluster-root, drawing on [§5.1.5](<5.1.5 Fine-Tuning Argument.md>)) supplies a usable framework for thinking about powerful tools applied within underdetermined frames.

*Posthumanist and transhumanist accounts.* Posthumanism (Haraway 1985; Hayles 1999) and transhumanism (Bostrom 2005; More and Vita-More 2013) develop sharply different accounts of what technology does to the human — destabilizing the human/non-human boundary versus extending and improving human capacities. The framework's depth-gradient reading supplies a structural framework: technology is what subjects at the relevant recursive depth do; what counts as human is one designation along the depth gradient; the relation between technology and the boundary of the human is structurally legible without prejudging the normative questions both positions raise.

*The AI-as-tool vs AI-as-agent dispute.* A contemporary dispute concerns whether sufficiently capable AI systems are best understood as tools (extensions of human capacities) or as agents (independent participants in a shared field). The framework's structural reading is that the question is empirical at the limit: an AI system instantiating the recursive self-modeling structure consciousness consists in ([§7.8](<7.8 Life.md>), [§8.1](<8.1 Drive.md>)) would count as an agent; one instantiating only the outward-operation structure of technology would count as a tool. Whether and when the threshold is crossed is currently underdetermined.

The literature on technology divides over the Heideggerian enframing critique, McLuhan-and-extension accounts, instrumentalism, social-constructionism, Ellul's autonomy thesis, Marxist political economy, existential-risk and longtermism, posthumanism and transhumanism, and the AI-as-tool-or-agent dispute. The framework commits to specific answers on each; they are taken up again at [§8.11.5](<8.11.5 What is Concluded.md>) after the structural account is in view.


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← [8.11 Technology](<8.11 Technology.md>) | [8.11.2 What is Required](<8.11.2 What is Required.md>) →
