Heidegger characterized technology’s danger as ontological rather than merely catastrophic

Evidence

For Heidegger, the threat of technology goes beyond the practical fears of the post-war years: machines running out of control, atom bombs exploding, radiation leaks, epidemics, chemical contamination. Instead, it is an ontological threat against reality, and against human being itself. We fear disaster, but the disaster may already be under way. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 584

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Heidegger held that modern technology erodes intentionality itself, dissolving subject-object distinction — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 583; Heidegger contrasted traditional farming with modern technology as unforced versus forced extraction of nature — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 581; Forster’s Machine Stops anticipated Heidegger’s critique of technology in 1909 — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 1950 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Heidegger held that modern technology erodes intentionality itself, dissolving subject-object distinction #expands (0.82) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 583
• Modern technology extends action beyond the moral vanishing point, enabling harm #expands (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 548
• The technical model of infallibility now governs the social, not the actual threat #expands (0.78) — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 125
• Heidegger contrasted traditional farming with modern technology as unforced versus forced extraction of nature #complicates (0.75) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 581
• Forster’s Machine Stops anticipated Heidegger’s critique of technology in 1909 #corroborates (0.72) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 1950
• Modern fears now center on runaway technology rather than genocide #complicates (0.72) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 622