ABSTRACT
Don Ihde is one of the doyens of current philosophy of technology. In 1979 he published his first book on philosophy of technology, Technics and Praxis, which showed his philosophical orientation towards Heidegger and Husserl Ihde's interest in philosophy of technology came about especially through his study of the role of scientific instruments. Such instruments play an intermediating part in observations. This role remained the most important focus of his attention in all his work on philosophy of technology. This work is in the tradition of the phenomenology which was developed by, amongst others, Edmund Husserl. Heidegger, too, wrote about the role of technology in one's observation and experience of reality but often in a very critical vein. To him technology in particular meant a reduction of one's experience of reality. Ihde joins up with this in a sense when he emphasises that technology gives us a framed version of reality.
