The Empty Cart

A Heideggerian Diagnosis of Digital Nihilism

Abstract

This article challenges the prevailing sociological and psychological analyses of online shopping in Indonesia, arguing they overlook its ontological root: a "forgetting of Being" (Seinsvergessenheit) actively produced by the technological interface itself. Using Martin Heidegger's later philosophy and the "Empty Cart" as a heuristic device, this analysis demonstrates how technology's essence—Gestell (Enframing)—reduces the world to disposable standing-reserve (Bestand), fostering a nihilistic crisis of meaning. Tracing this condition's metaphysical genealogy from Plato to Nietzsche, the article culminates by exploring art, understood as poiesis and Ereignis, as a potential "saving power" that offers a radical response to the digital nihilism embodied by the Empty Cart.