ABSTRACT
When he first saw photographs of the earth, Martin Heidegger was frightened. He was frightened because, for him, the photographs suggested that now the world could function efficiently more or less independently of the designs and ambitions of humanity: ‘everything is functioning and…the functioning drives us more and more to even further functioning, and…technology tears men loose from the earth and uproots them’ (Heidegger 1993:105). Heidegger continued to emphasize the impact of the photographs upon him: ‘I do not know whether you were frightened, but I at any rate was frightened when I saw pictures coming from the moon to the earth’ (Heidegger 1993:105).
