"Humans are inherently technological beings or tool users. We are deficient beings who use technology to complement, enhance, or disburden ourselves" (Human-Technology-Relations)
There are many in today's world that are under the impression that technology is an augmentation of humanity. That humanity was perhaps better in the past. I don't want to make this a long academic research so I'll be brief.
As the first paragraph taken from the homepage of human technology relations research strand reads; we are incapable without technology.
If we think about a primitive caveman, he doesn't have sharp claws, or teeth, or an excellent eyesight nor can he run very fast or withstand extreme cold and heat. The way they overcame these inconveniences was by making tools that would help them survive. A spear instead of claws and teeth, clothes made of animal skin, traps for capturing fast preys and etc...
We may not regard these tools as technology now but indeed they were and perhaps still are, forms of technology (try to make a working spear and you'll see how much craft goes into something so mundane)
Fast forward to 2022 and you'll see that those weaknesses are still present in us. Of course we don't need to hunt or survive cold winters in caves anymore but you can see how we still need technology to help us live our daily lives.
One thing that these anti-technology idealists seem to put too much stress on are smartphones. A smartphone is "intelligence" (and a Stalinist dream). Our phones connect us to vast oceans of knowledge and information. We are intelligent through our hand that is connected to this ocean of wisdom (a notion that I might have read somewhere from Reza Negarestani)
I admit that there is much garbage online and in this ocean as well but as humans, we learn the ability to discern and to cleanse and to choose.
If you ever experience a total internet shutdown (I have!) you'll find yourself utterly incapable of doing the simplest things. You can't navigate the city, you don't know whats happening around you, you cant communicate with a lot of people, you may not even remember the emergency numbers!
So the question is: Is it alright to be this dependent on technology?
and there is no short answer to that but one that makes sense to me at the time of this writing is 'yes if you are conscious'.
By conscious I mean not letting your brain shutdown when you drive while following directions from whatever map app. Our memories seem drastically compromised due to the ability to always look something up.
So if we practice, and train our brains to remember and not rely on a search engine to be at hand in any given moment, perhaps we can say that we are sailing the ocean and not being taken by its waves unwillingly.
The point that I forgot to make due to tiredness was that "technology is not an augmentation of humanity" but it is so tangled with humanity that we can safely say that it 'is' humanity!
> If we think about a primitive > caveman, he doesn't have sharp claws, > or teeth, or an excellent eyesight > nor can he run very fast or withstand > extreme cold and heat. The way they > overcame these inconveniences was > by making tools that would help > them survive.
I could be missing some key science/information, but you've got me wondering how evolution led to so sorry-assed a beast appearing so late in the game.
Same way that people with sickle-cell anaemia still exist: being a carrier of the ailment protected you from other ailments (malaria in this case), and so it was never selected out of the gene pool by Nature
The human mind seeks answers, but is burdened with the tasks of the body. Technology has freed this burden somewhat and set the mind free so to speak, but now the mind is burdened with arbitrary rules set by technology to empower only a few. I'm not afraid of technology, I'm afraid of what capitalism does with it.
I think it's even worse than that when admitting that capitalism isn't so much some physical force inherent in the world/universe as it is a euphemism for people behaving sufficiently self-centrically to jeopardize the entire species - which, of course, implies self destruction as well.
Seems to me Webster ought update its 'folly' entry....
Technology is part of humanity, as is capitalism (and the other "ism"s). We created this world. It couldn't be any other way, no matter our opinions of it. You would have to rewind back a lot of years to undo all this evolutionary influence, and I'm not sure playing it back would create anything much different. Technology is simply a reflections of us, and our priorities.
Sounds reasonable, although it occurs to me our opinions are part of said world we've created, too, so there's a sort of self-referentiality to its playing out.
Good point. "It is what it is" is true but also severely mundane. I suppose my intent is just that the world is the way it is because people are the way they are... which again isn't saying much. Oh well. Bartender, I think its time for another drink.