The technique that builds confidence

Should we fear technique as a monster that devours our being and moves us away from our concern for ourselves, reducing ourselves to be nothing more than its objects? Should we fear it especially in the case of medicine, when it puts its trust in devices and calculations, without always imagining which operation of reduction it risks, doing so, to impose upon patients and diseases? But is not the technique first of all a gesture on our part, a temporary gesture that we make towards ourselves, as awkward as it may seem? This gesture, did we finish it? Are we confident about the meaning and the result we want to give it? Among all the places of technical medicine that call for a re-examination of these questions, there is one emblematic domain, that of brain imaging, with its claim to map our intimacy, its image-making reality, and our enjoyment to nourish our imagination with such representations. Should we be fooled? Can we not see technique as a means, not to freeze ourselves, but to seek and overcome ourselves? A way to reveal ourselves, a confidence we give ourselves for this company?