Seeing Through Technology: Heidegger, Turing, and the Ontological Limits of Information Technology Law

المؤلفون

  • Shivam Kapoor Himachal Pradesh National Law University, Shimla image/svg+xml المؤلف
      المصالح المتضاربة

      No Competing Interests

    DOI:

    https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23101069

    الكلمات المفتاحية:

    philosophy of technology، Heidegger، Enframing، algorithmic governance، information technology law، datafication

    الملخص

    This article argues that contemporary information technology law confronts a foundational philosophical problem which most regulatory frameworks have not yet adequately acknowledged. Drawing primarily on Martin Heidegger's philosophy of technology, particularly his concepts of revealing (aletheia), Enframing (Gestell), and standing-reserve (Bestand), and supplemented by the philosophical implications of Alan Turing's Imitation Game, the article contends that modern digital systems do not merely assist human activity. They actively structure the conditions under which human beings understand themselves, others, and social reality. Contemporary legal systems, by focusing predominantly on harmful outcomes - privacy violations, algorithmic bias, and data misuse - risk regulating only the surface effects of a far deeper transformation: the ontological enframing of human life through digital infrastructure. The article examines how algorithms determine visibility, how datafication converts persons into standing-reserve, how Turing's Imitation Game has been realised at scale in digital systems that blur the boundary between representation and reality, and how law itself increasingly operates through the same technological logic it seeks to govern. The central argument is that effective regulation of technology cannot remain blind to the question of what technology reveals, and what it conceals, about human beings and social life.

    527 58

    التنزيلات

    تنزيل البيانات ليس متاحًا بعد.

    المراجع

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    Searle, JR (1980) 'Minds, Brains, and Programs' 3 Behavioral and Brain Sciences 417.

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    التنزيلات

    منشور

    2026-10-02

    خطاب توفر البيانات

    This article does not report original empirical research and accordingly no research dataset was generated or analysed in the course of this study. The article draws entirely on published secondary sources, primary philosophical texts, and publicly available legal instruments, all of which are fully cited in the Reference List. No supplementary data is associated with this submission.

    URN

    كيفية الاقتباس

    Kapoor, S. (2026). Seeing Through Technology: Heidegger, Turing, and the Ontological Limits of Information Technology Law. Oxford Law Review, 1(2), 50-59. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23101069

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