Brave new digital world

Abstract

The paper points out that Heidegger's perspective on the dominance of technology in industrial capitalism goes beyond the usual framework of problematization. According to Heidegger, the civilizational misstep of the technical model of the world is in the reduction of thought to its instrumental role of machination and calculation. Just as the planet Earth and its atmosphere become raw materials within the technological discourse of reality, so too does man become human material that is determined for assumed goals. Thanks to the further unbridled development of technology, we are today faced with a new mutation of capitalism, as dangerous for man as previous forms of capitalism. It is surveillance capitalism, a transformed capitalist order created by the discovery of behavioral surplus. Surveillance capitalism lays claim to human nature as a new commodity invention. Today, the essence of man himself is being usurped for the needs of the market project of the new century.