Saturday, January 27, 2007

Micro/Meso/Macro Analysis in Modernity and Technology

I started to think about the theme of micro/meso/macro level analysis and the relation to modernity theory, technology studies, and Heidegger's ideas of Dasein and resoluteness.

It seems to me that often the micro level and technological disturbances of modernity theory are caused by dasein that have achieved a greater level of resoluteness. That is, those that have realized that a piece of their reality is ungrounded and that there is no reason for it to be the way that it is. Actors that have realized that certain technologies can be radically rethought have altered the Dasein of our existence by working along the frays of intelligibility.

Likewise, the reverse could be true. Modernity theory could be explained as the appropriation of Dasein by theorists exerting control over the whole of existence. That is, the categorizations, correlations, and causalities that have been described as harbingers of the modern age are just the work of dasein who have become resolute enough to describe a previously unfounded depiction of reality and re-align the entirety of the collective Dasein.

So are we seeing incommesurability between those dasein that work at the edge of ungroundedness in theory and those in technology?

I'd be interested in talking about this in class, as I don't think a blog post is the best platform for this idea.

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