Phenomenology, the life-world and digital technology: revisiting Husserl, Heidegger and Arendt

In this presentation, the central intuition I pursue is that the phenomenological concept of the life-world can shed new light on the disruptive nature of digital technologies. The central aim of this presentation is to bring into view the ways in which the ubiquity of digital technologies – such as e.g. generative AI, social media and digital twins – in everyday life is influencing our experience of the life-world. I will turn to the work of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt to philosophically reflect on the nature of technological disruption and how (digital) technologies can be said to constitute a new phenomenon, namely the disruption of the life-world. All three thinkers, each in their own way, address this phenomenon. For each thinker, I will highlight and discuss a particular technology – respectively writing (Husserl), the hydraulic power plant on the Rhine (Heidegger) and the telescope (Arendt) – in order to bring to light three different levels at which technology operates and thus can be said to be disruptive of the life-world. Whereas Husserl foregrounds technization, i.e. the tendency of any method to become a mere technique [Technisierung], Heidegger locates technological disruption exclusively at the ontological level as a change in the way in which technology reveals the world to us. However, for Arendt, individual technologies themselves can effect a change at the ontological level as her discussion of the telescope will make clear (thus coming into conflict with the Heideggerian position). My hypothesis is that these examples can be taken as the starting point for a critical reflection on the phenomenon of the disruption of the life-world beyond technologies’ immediate impact on users and specific contexts in the here and now.