ABSTRACT
In this chapter we demonstrate that technology is a human activity. Technological artefacts are extensions of our human capacities but also a shift in the way we observe, as the philosophers Ernst Kapp, Arnold Gehlen and Don Ihde have shown. To the question how far this extension may go, different answers are given. Lewis Mumford warns against the dominating influence of technology on the life of human beings. Donna Haraway sketches postmodern man mainly as a cyborg, a hybrid of organism and machine. Ray Kurzweil pleads for a radical integration of man and technology. According to him it will lead to infinite possibilities. Subsequently we go into the various human motives leading to technology. Finally we emphasise the human responsibility for technological activity.
