"He who can open the bud, does it so simply'' said Ravindranath Tagore. Technology, however, is about making the buds open.
''Technology coerces beings, which are governed by a hidden law of emergence and withdrawal, into perpetual presence." said Heidegger
Animus, 'a philosophical journal of our times' makes interesting reading on the net. Its volume 8 of 2003 is devoted to aesthetics. I particularly liked Sean McGrath's article on Heidegger's thesis.
Interestingly, he discusses technology that allows the beautiful to occur. He has summarized his contention as :
For explaining fittingness he quotes Robert Grosseteste as: “Beauty is a concordance and fittingness of a thing to itself and of all its individual parts to themselves and to each other and to the whole, and of the whole to all things [italics mine].”
Putting forth the criterion of transparency, he argues thus, " To be beautiful in a technical way is to let nature show itself through technology.."
Describing self-containment, he aptly explains Heidegger's notion of "sparing":
"A self-contained technology lets form shine without eclipsing nature. Like the painter who knows when to leave a detail at the level of suggestion, the writer who knows when to leave something unsaid, the architect who resists the inclination to ornamentation, a technology that allows the beautiful to occur holds back and lets be. Heidegger calls this “sparing.”
Those who have had even a slight brush with Philosophy, will enjoy the article immensely.
