Abstract: When Heidegger employs time to observe Dasein (being-there), Stiegler moves towards the theoretical framework of employing time to observe technology. By emphasizing technology as the second origin of human nature, he explains the ontological relationship between technology and human beings in time—this is just what technological phenomenology studies. Through the three-level structure of technological phenomenology, Stiegler reveals the representational characteristics of human nature structure in the ontological sense, as well as the persistence characteristics of memory structure at the technical level, and thus explains the principles of temporality and historicity of how Dasein exists. However, due to the externalization and objectification of the third memory, memory, while achieving a transition from primary perception to temporal retention, also presents a contradictory relationship between subjective perceptual ability and objective memory system. And this contradiction runs throughout the evolution from tertiary retention to digital persistence. The former, as a representative of consciousness, once played a role in supplementing cognitive structures, while the latter became a representative consciousness, reshaping an externalized consciousness subject while emptying the internal intellectual structure. Therefore, in the theoretical perspective of Stiegler’s phenomenology of technology, the core issue of thinking about digital preservation is how to find possible opportunities for the transition from digital preservation to “digital medicine”.

Key words: technical phenomenology, memory retention system, tertiary retention, digital retention, Stiegler