Abstract

The nominal topic of this work is those new electronic and computer technologies that have come to be called "high technology" or "high tech." Yet high tech is not simply a matter of "technology." High tech, in other words, marks a change not only in "technology," but in our conception of technology. And given the extent to which modern, western society has defined itself in terms of technology, such a conceptual shift suggests that a major change has also taken place in how we view our culture and ourselves. ;Understanding this shift, however, requires an examination of the connection between technology and modernity, a connection that can be taken to begin with the inception of modern science--and modernity itself--in the Renaissance. Yet if modern technology has come to be defined as instrumental, as "applied science," it also bears, as Heidegger has observed, a relation to art--a relation that is founded in its Greek root, techne. This relationship will be the primary focus here. For it is only by understanding the shifting relations of modern technology and art that one can understand the conceptual shift that has taken place in high tech. And indeed, high tech is precisely a technology in which a technological style or aesthetic has become as important as technology's instrumental or functional status. In high tech, technology has become an explicitly simulacral techne, an "art" of technological reproduction. Indeed, high tech is always, by definition, "state-of-the-art." ;Thus, it will be necessary, in examining how the conception of technology has changed over time, to consider also the relationship of technology to art. Thus, Kant's non-technological aesthetics, aesthetic modernism's alternating fascination with and fear of technological form, and the avant-gardes' interest in a functional technological form will all assume a crucial importance in understanding how a modern, instrumental techne becomes a "postmodern" high techne