Günther Anders saw it all coming. And by “it,” I mean your smartphone addiction, your existential dread on social media, and your slow transformation into a robot—but one who scrolls.
The man was ahead of his time, and it wasn’t by a little. It was by decades. The tech we now consider cutting-edge? Anders wrote its eulogy before it even arrived.
He was born Günther Stern in 1902, a German philosopher with a sharp tongue and a sharper brain. By the time he fled Nazi Germany in the ’30s, he’d already married Hannah Arendt (yes, that Hannah Arendt), divorced her, and become one of the most influential thinkers nobody talks about.
His masterpiece, The Obsolescence of Humanity (Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen, 1956), tackles a brutal question: What happens when technology evolves faster than our ability to emotionally and morally handle it?
It wasn’t just theory for Anders—it was a warning. And it was written in a post-World War II Europe in the shadow of industrialized death.
This wasn’t your “hot takes on iOS updates” kind of critique. This was “wake up, or we’ll annihilate ourselves” territory.
Let’s dive into five ways Anders saw your future (and ours) coming.
1. The “Promethean Shame” of Falling Behind Machines
Anders coined “Promethean shame,” a term so bleak it practically growls, like a dog too mean to wag its tail. It’s not just a phrase; it’s a body blow to the human ego, the sucker punch that comes when you realize your brain, your hands, your soul—everything you thought made you special—just got outclassed by a pile of circuits and code.
This isn’t about robots lifting heavier weights or running faster. That would be easy. You shrug, call them glorified forklifts, and move on.
No, this is deeper. It’s about machines being better at the things we thought were ours: painting pictures, writing poetry, driving cars, and predicting the weather. It’s about realizing you’ll never beat an AI at chess or compose music with its cold precision. And worst of all, the machine doesn’t even care. It just is.
Anders didn’t live to see your average Joe doom-scrolling through Instagram at 2 a.m., hypnotized by algorithms that know him better than his own mother.
But damn, he saw it coming. He called it Promethean shame, but he might as well have called it “the great surrender.” It’s the reason you trust Google Maps over your instincts, why you can’t stop checking how many likes your last post got, why you feel a little dead inside every time AI spits out a better essay in seconds than you could write in hours.
The machines are smarter, faster, cooler—and deep down, we know it. We don’t just admire them; we worship them, silently, reluctantly. And what does that make us? The audience. Clapping politely at our own obsolescence…
2. The Overproduction of Things That Outlast Us
Here’s the tragedy, boiled down: we make things that outshine us.
Things that don’t get tired, don’t complain, don’t bleed. They’re tougher, sharper, more efficient. And when we’re gone—buried, forgotten, swept under the rug of time—our creations stick around.
A toaster, a microchip, a plastic toy soldier. They’ll survive us, sitting smugly on the landfill of eternity, mocking us for daring to think we were the superior ones.
Anders saw it all, even back when factories were just black smoke and assembly lines. Sure, they churned out goods by the truckload—bread slicers, vacuum cleaners, bombs—but he looked past the machines and saw the disconnect.
The real problem wasn’t the production. It was the oblivion. We didn’t stop to think. We don’t. We build for speed, for profit, for progress, never slowing down long enough to ask, What’s the catch?
Nuclear bombs. AI. The toothbrushes you’ve thrown away every three months since childhood. Tools and trash, weapons and wonders. All built in the name of advancement, but advancement toward what?
Anders wasn’t waving a pitchfork at technology like some paranoid Luddite. No, his beef wasn’t with the machines—it was with us. Our blind ambition. Our refusal to ask the one question that matters: Should we?
But no, we barrel ahead like maniacs, like kids with new toys. The glow of possibility blinds us, the roar of industry drowns out the whispers of doubt.
And when it’s all said and done—when the tools we made are still here, long after we’ve turned to dust—will they laugh at us? Or worse, will they just forget we were ever here at all?
3. The Emotional Disconnect of Distance
Ever stop and think about how easy it is to fire off a nasty tweet? Hell, you don’t even have to know the person.
Just a couple of quick taps, a snide comment, and boom—you’re untouchable. No eye contact. No trembling lips. No real consequences.
You just lob your venom into the ether and walk away, smug, safe behind the glow of your screen like a coward in a basement. And the worst part? You don’t even feel it. You don’t feel them—whoever the hell they are on the other side. The human cost? Doesn’t even register.
Anders knew this long before social media took over. He wasn’t blind to technology’s seductive promises. What he saw was the distance it created.
A gap so wide, it’s like we’re living in separate worlds. It’s not just that we’re sending words across wires—it’s that those words don’t mean anything anymore.
When you insult someone face to face, you see the flicker in their eyes, the quick breath they take, the muscle tightening in their jaw. There’s something real there. Something human. But through the screen? All you get is a username and a profile picture. A shadow in a digital void. And the more we do it, the less we care.
In Anders’ world, this wasn’t progress. It was alienation. You don’t grow by pulling away from people. You rot. And that’s what happens when you disconnect from the consequences of your actions—when you can treat a stranger like shit without the weight of it pressing down on your chest.
That’s when you lose your humanity. When you can hurt someone from miles away and not lose a wink of sleep over it.
We’ve gotten real good at pushing people away, haven’t we? The more we hide behind screens, the more we forget what it means to be human.
To be alive. To face someone and say something you can’t unsay, and feel the weight of it. Anders knew this: the machines are making us forget how to feel. And without that? Without the sting of real interaction, without the messiness of real consequence?
We might just forget what it means to be alive altogether.
4. The “Ready-Made World” Problem
Anders saw a future where everything we need is prepackaged and pre-decided. Sound familiar? Today, we live in the age of UberEats, curated playlists, and AI assistants who tell us what to watch, listen to, and buy.
His critique was existential: if everything’s pre-made, what happens to our agency? If the world hands us answers, do we even bother asking questions anymore?
This wasn’t a simple rant; it was a philosopher’s plea. Anders wanted us to stay curious, to challenge systems, to avoid becoming passive consumers of a world that’s too convenient for its own good.
5. The Desensitization to Catastrophe
Anders believed technology wouldn’t just overwhelm us—it’d sedate us. Not because we’re cruel or apathetic, but because we’re drowning.
The sheer scale of what we’ve created, of what we keep creating, is too big for us to hold. So, we go numb. Not because we don’t care, but because caring would crush us.
A starving polar bear here, a burning rainforest there. It should be enough to knock us out of our chairs, but it isn’t. We compartmentalize it, tuck it into the background noise of our lives, because letting it all in would break us.
Anders saw this coming. He understood that when technology expands faster than our ability to comprehend it, we don’t rise to meet the challenge. We shut down.
The bigger the problem, the smaller we feel, and the only way to survive that imbalance is to tune it out. Industrial pollution? We’ve got filters on Instagram to make the sunsets look nice. Exploited workers in factories halfway around the world? Add to cart, free shipping.
It’s not indifference; it’s overwhelm. The sheer magnitude of what we’ve built makes it impossible to hold it all in one place in our heads.
So, we break it into little pieces, make it bite-sized, palatable. The news cycle moves on. The gadgets keep coming. The world keeps spinning, and we keep pretending everything’s fine, even as the walls close in.
Anders’ fear wasn’t just about what the machines would do—it was about what we’d stop doing.
Stop caring, stop feeling, stop noticing. He knew that when the problems get too big, we don’t fight harder. We shut down. And once that happens, it’s not the machines we need to worry about. It’s the hollow people they leave behind.
Final Words
Günther Anders wasn’t here to hold your hand. He wasn’t selling hope or optimism. He was lighting a cigarette and telling you to get your act together before the machines do it for you.
And here we are—living his nightmare and laughing nervously about it. The distance, the shame, the numbness—it’s all here. Anders didn’t just predict the future; he nailed it.
The machines can outthink us, outperform us, outlast us—but they can’t outfeel us. Not yet. That’s still ours, for better or worse.
So, what do we do? Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Or maybe, just maybe, we pour another drink, read Anders, and remember that we’re still human—even if it feels obsolete.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.