Gadget Consciousness

What Is a Gadget?

Before considering what “gadget consciousness” is, consider the gadget itself. Philosopher Martin Heidegger defined a “thing” as something “ready to hand,” embedded in the concrete collection of “equipment” that people use to interpret and build the world. 

Gadgets, like smartphones, are more complex than things. People carry them in their pockets, but their complex, modular interfaces make them more than simple tools. Integrated into people’s daily lives, gadgets form part of a “general system of social relations.”

Capitalism is the structural apparatus, or “dispositif,” in which the gadget has become a “strategic imperative.” Gadgets – like email, for example – expand work into all aspects of daily life. Capitalism made the gadget, and it reinforces capitalism’s logic. In unscrupulous hands, the gadget can dominate and control its users.

Gadgets are not objects outside of people; they are part of people. Historically, self-consciousness “locks” into dominant technologies and uses them to reflect humanity back to itself. With gadgets, it is philosophically important...