ABSTRACT
In writing about technology, Heidegger formulates his goal as gaining a free relation to technology — a way of living with technology that does not allow it to “warp, confuse, and lay waste our nature.” 1 According to Heidegger our nature is to be world disclosers. That is, by means of our equipment and coordinated practices we human beings open coherent, distinct contexts or worlds in which we perceive, feel, act, and think. The Heidegger of Being and Time called a world an understanding of being and argued that such an understanding of being is what makes it possible for us to encounter people and things as kinds of beings. 2 He considered his discovery of the ontological difference — the difference between the understanding of being and the beings that can show up given an understanding of being — his single great contribution to Western thought.
