ABSTRACT
Technology stands for humanly initiated causal processes. Some have very detailed knowledge of how such processes unfold. Others can represent to themselves only the turn of a switch and a resulting action. In both cases, technical intervention is accompanied by an act of the imagination. But what happens when technologies elude the grasp of imagination? — The term ‘noumenal technology’ refers to envisioned nano- and biotechnological applications that revert from the domination, control, or rationalization of nature and produce instead a form of technology that is as uncanny as brute, uncomprehended nature itself. This perspective helps us understand some of the arguments and supposedly irrational anxieties that are associated with these technical developments.
