n philosophy proper, thus far, technology and technics have been rather poorly represented. Their stature is low because of a tendency to class them amongst merely practical things in merely practical realms—while "real philosophy" is thought of as dealing with fundamental, primarily theoretical problems. And this is so despite a respectable tradition in the modern era, notably highlighted by Immanuel Kant, of granting primacy to practical philosophy (unfortunately, most often only in principle or in theoretical terms).
With the exponentially-increasing growth in the realm of industrialization, it has become clear that technology will inevitably gain a prominent and important place in the modern world. Nonetheless, problems of technology have been largely ignored by philosophers. Although a few specialized books on philosophy of technology were published in the nineteenth century (for example, by Beckmann in 1806 and Kapp in 1877), they were largely ignored by mainstream philosophers. Only relatively recently have philosophers with international reputations begun to emphasize the importance—indeed, the central role—of technology in the history of humankind, and notably in the modern era.
Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger have stressed technology as the fate of humankind. Jaspers called technology "the main problem" (Hauptproblem) of our modern situation. And Heidegger (in Vorträge und Aufsätze, 1967, p. 72) called "technique," or technology, our "perfected metaphysics" (vollendete Metaphysik). According to Heidegger, technology is "essentially" identical with modern metaphysics, providing for us a kind of metaphysical constitution of the world that is presupposed as the fundamental core of any human possibility or opportunity of action or potentiality of w ...