Wisser: And what do you mean, secondly, when you say that greater than the danger of the atomic bomb for humanity today is the law [Ge-setz] of technology, the ‘Enframing’ [Gestell], as you call the fundamental character of technology, which discloses the real in the mode of ordering as standing-reserve [Bestand]—put differently: making everything and everyone instantly retrievable at the push of a button?
Heidegger: As concerns technology, my determination of the essence of technology—which up to now has nowhere truly been taken up—is, to put it concretely, that modern natural science is grounded in the unfolding essence of modern technology, and not the reverse.
First of all, it must be said that I am not against technology. I have never spoken against technology, nor even against the so-called demonic character of technology. Rather, I attempt to understand the essence of technology.
When you cite this thought concerning the danger of the atomic bomb and an even greater danger belonging to technology, I am thinking of what is today developing as biophysics: namely, that in the foreseeable future we shall be in a position to fabricate the human being—that is, to construct him purely in his organic essence exactly as needed: dexterous and inept, intelligent and foolish. It will come to this! The technical possibilities are already prepared today, and Nobel Prize winners themselves stated this at a conference in Lindau—something I had already cited years ago in a lecture in Meßkirch.
Thus, above all, the misunderstanding must be rejected as though I were against technology.
What I see in technology—namely in its essence—is that the human being stands under a power that challenges him forth, in relation to which he is no longer free; and that here something announces itself, namely a relation of Being to the human being—and that this relation, concealed within the essence of technology, may one day come to light in its unconcealment.