Fourfold Technology

As I read this week's essays, Heidegger's writing style made the concept of the fourfold a bit confusing to me (e.g., "the thing things world"). The final essay by Jennifer Bay and Thomas Rickert, however, related Heidegger's fourfold to New Media. The authors use the fourfold (earth, sky, divinities, and mortals) to understand Heidegger's idea of dwelling as a way of "staying with things" (216). This concept is important because Heidegger is concerned with the complexity of our relationship to technological things. The end of such as relationship, dwelling, cannot exist through mere mastery (217).

The author's description of Heidegger's "dwelling" is then applied to both iLife and Facebook. Both of these examples, while perhaps not what Heidegger originally had in mind, show how our relationship with technology constitutes our modern existence and blurs the lines between "real" and "virtual" life. Our "responsive attunement" to these things brings about the fourfold and, by extension, our home (220).

This essay made me consider the role certain technological things play in my own life. Over Christmas break I am flying to MN to visit my parents for an extended weekend and will be traveling with a number of devices (Kindle, smartphone, laptop) to make my layovers easier (or, perhaps, more "home"-like). My dwelling within the place created by these things is its own reality where networks of relations are affected by the interaction and creation of technology.

In occupying this place, my relationship with these things reflect various components of the fourfold. I look to my things for finding information about flight times, traffic, news (earth); relaxing with music, movies, books (sky); prioritizing e-mails, itineraries, projects (divinities); and connecting through social networks, text messages, calls (mortals). The technological devices that I take with me "brings [me] into communication and relation, affords tremendous creative opportunities, spurs new forms of community, connects other technologies, manifests values and concern for the future, and places [me] in ways that secure a home" (227). Thus, although I will be occupying a no-man's land within Chicago Midway airport for three hours, I am able to negotiate new forms of being within the dwelling place of technology.

By extending our sense of dwelling to things, we form a complex relationship with the things that "open up and disclose" our world (237). This opportunity has vast and unexplored possibilities for networking, growth, and creation. However, this deepened relationship with things possesses potential dangers, as any relationship does. Hence, we must continue to rethink the ways we interact with and through new media as it continues to shape our modern existence.