Inhuman development? Technics as enframing or poiesis?

This paper will examine some of the ways in which development has been influenced by the body of ideas known as techne, or technics. This body of ideas focuses on a central theme that envisages technology broadly defined as developing its own impetus that removes it from the control of human agency and that begins to circumscribe and even control human agency. This can be seen as having various impacts on development, notably a subsumption of any concern for human development to issues concerning process and production of outputs. The paper focuses on the approach of Heidegger as he provides an account that places technology at the centre of human being, whilst helping to distinguish both the negative (enframing) tendencies and the emancipatory (or, as Heidegger might have it, poietic) possibilities of technics. The paper concludes by identifying some of these negative and emancipatory influences in the development context.