{"id":644,"date":"2025-10-26T21:43:55","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T04:43:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/?p=644"},"modified":"2025-10-26T21:45:01","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T04:45:01","slug":"bridging-the-gap-between-humanity-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/archives\/644","title":{"rendered":"Bridging the Gap between Humanity & Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Are technologies an extension of human beings? Do technologies uplift and support human actions, or do technologies influence and shape the environment of which human beings live? Technology is a human development where humans influenced the use. However, now technology is influencing the human experience. In this essay, there will be a critical analysis of Yoni Van Den Eede\u2019s appraisal of technology as an extension of humans and Alison Landsberg\u2019s concept of the prosthetic memory and how technology influences human experiences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Yoni Van Den Eede\u2019s chapter \u201cExtending Extensions\u201d, he defines technologies as an extension of humans. He dives deeper by defining both the human and our attraction and susceptibility to interdependence of technology, and technology as extensions that render themselves obsolete if put to its extremes, which establishes the dynamic of a feedback loop that is remedied with new media, repeating the cycle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Alison Landsberg\u2019s book Prosthetic Memory, <\/em>she defines the concept of prosthetic memories, which are memories not \u201cderived from a person\u2019s lived experience\u201d (Landsberg, 2004, p. 25); instead, it is formed through what individuals and communities consume through the propagation of mass cultural technology of memory and mass media, specifically cinema, and with how it “dramatizes or recreates a history he or she did not live\u201d (p. 28). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
From these two readings, an argument emerges of there being a didactic relationship between the human and technology as the human being is necessary to define technology, but technology acts as an extension to the human. Thus, they are constantly informing each other\u2019s perceived objectivity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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Technology an Extension of the Body & the Mind <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The increasing dependency on technology in a post-human culture has originated from the reflection of the human within the technology. Just as \u201cNarcissus falls in love with his reflection in the water\u2026 we fall in love with the extensions of ourselves in technologies\u201d (Van Den Eede, 2014, p. 157). However, Van Den Eede emphasizes that we do not view technologies as ourselves, but as foreign materials. Thus, this divisive perspective creates an illusion of separation between technology and body, but in actuality technology is based off of the human. Parallels drawn between railroads and the human\u2019s circulatory system represent the concept of \u201corgan projections\u201d (p. 154), where technologies are external representations of the human organs and processes. He contrasts the concept of organ projections with Marshall McLuhan\u2019s idea that technologies are extensions of the human senses, body parts, or capabilities (p. 157). Thus, creating a convergence of technology in the body. Many technologies have incorporated self-tracking statistics which quantify human biometrics which essentially objectifies human processes into data and exemplifies technology based off of human activity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, the existence of prosthetic memories implies that the human and one\u2019s subjectivity is deeply influenced, impacted, and perhaps even based on technology. Since \u201cpeople rely on their memories to validate their experiences, they draw on memories to structure their subjectivity\u201d (Landsberg, 2004, p. 25), and thus prosthetic memory, despite being \u2018artificial\u2019 and \u2018inauthentic\u2019, can be argued to just be \u201cas formative\u2026as other life experiences\u201d (p. 30), which then becomes part of the archive of experience that defines one\u2019s being. This is possible through the ability of media, such as film, to connect with the body sensuously through \u2018emotional possession,\u2019 where an individual can identify so much with a body of work that they are essentially carried away; hence, it evokes an \u201cexperience powerful enough to shape or construct identity\u201d (p. 30). Therefore, technology becomes an extension of the mind, in the sense that it becomes a new configuration of the human memory and experience.<\/p>\n\n\n
Technology has a profound impact on humans in how it amplifies senses and experiences, especially with its effects on actions and emotions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe wheel, as an extension of the foot\u2026\u201d (Van Den Eede, 2014, p. 158). Material objects amplify social practices and human senses; for example, money creates socio-economic practices through pictures as an extension of the eyes. These technological amplifications enhance \u201cthe capacity of the human organism\u201d (p. 158), yet also deteriorate the subject-object schema as it cannot recognize the processes of which the object and the subject are together. While separate entities, the extension is ingrained within the body. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Additionally, emotions are amplified by technology through how prosthetic memories are \u201ca crucial step toward learning how to experience empathy\u201d (Landsberg, 2004, p. 47). With the proliferation of mass-mediated images and culture, people are brought into contact with each other. Despite the emotions created through these memories being artificial, it remains to be a prominent site in the production of empathy with its ability to create cross-cultural emotional connections between individuals and communities as these prosthetic memories are shared and universal. Yet, it becomes troublesome when it starts to call into question notions of identity and authenticity. How can identity and authenticity be anchored into memories if these memories can be falsified? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hence, one sees that if technologies are pushed to the extremes, it results in a hindrance instead of an amplification. Marshall McLuhan theorizes that media and technologies are structured in four laws: what does the medium enhance? What does the medium obsolesce? What does the medium retrieve? All media are supposed to turn into their opposite when pushed through their extreme (Van Den Eede, 2014, p. 160). This can be exemplified with cars, which originally rendered horses and buggies obsolete by extending the feet, yet hindered human processes with the development of traffic. Ultimately, these hindrances are temporarily resolved and compensated for with further development, creating a cyclical feedback loop of new technologies replacing old technologies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Jean Baudrillard theorizes that media creates \u2018simulations\u2019 which has destroyed the separation \u201cbetween the real and the simulacrum, between the authentic and the inauthentic, between the natural and the artificial\u201d (Landsberg, 2004, p. 32). Thus, it calls into question the dichotomy between the materiality and immateriality of technology. Technology is immaterial in the sense that it exists only as an extension of the body (through amplifying actions), yet is profoundly material with its impacts on the mind (through amplifying emotions). These simulations create a bridge between the real and the simulacrum, creating a postmodern society where humanity and technology are deeply entrenched within each other. Postmodernity, as characterized by Baudrillard, is devoid of \u2018real\u2019 experience due to the extensions and amplifications afforded by technology (p. 32). However, because of rapidly developing technology, progress has lost its meaning and change is now miniscule, thus encroaching on human autonomy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Posthumanism opposes the notion that humans are autonomous creatures by arguing that humans are highly \u201cphysically, chemically, and biologically enmeshed and dependent on the environment\u201d (Keeling & Lenman, 2018). As technology and environment are inseparable\u2013technology is not only around us, but also on and in us\u2013, humans thus become dependent on it as lives are influenced by and are incorporated into technology. Humanity and technology are inherently intertwined and interdependent of each other. Technology cannot exist without humanity, as its primary function is to extend and amplify the human experience, which also highlights humanity\u2019s growing dependence on it. With these ever-expanding technologies that encompass our lives, the four laws of media are also being lost. What are we expanding, or retrieving? Is there anything that is being truly left obsolete?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Images by Bridghet Wood \/ Created on Canva <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Blogpost by Bridghet Wood and Xelena Ilon<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nReferences <\/strong><\/summary>\n
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