We have a new kind of overlord. This overlord appeals not to excellence. Rather his fitness to rule purportedly derives from his ability to render the entire planet as “standing-reserve” for a universal project. Everything just standing there, waiting, so it may be called upon at any time.
In 2020, masks, tests, people, arms, needles, hospital beds, lives and deaths themselves became “standing-reserve” – on standby and ready to be put on order, available on demand. Even health came to mean supply. All this could not have happened if it weren’t for technology.
Technology in the modern sense is not neutral at all. Our technology is a great challenging of nature and man is the ultimate “standing-reserve” in the battle of ideology. What emerges from this technology is humanity made inhuman by the cult of technology.
“Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral; for this conception of it, to which today we particularly like to do homage, makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology.” – Martin Heidegger
Hellbound and Down 