Week 09- The Question Concerning Technology

Comment on:

What is humanity/ What makes us human? How are Technology and humanity connected?

15 comments

  1. I see technology as a product of human interaction with the world. We then become dependant on it for the ease of life it provides.
    But what makes us distinctly human beyond out physiology? Some argue it is the ability to have/show empathy, as in “show some humanity” or other common coined phrases. It is not technology itself, as other sapiens and animals are able to create tools (technology) to aid in everyday life. Is it then not just the ability to carry effective communication between individuals and whole groups, but the ability to consciously adapt, problem solve, and utilize/create technologies to bend the world around us, to create new worlds and whole new environments tailored to ourselves and social structures.
    I think in the biblical sense, what makes us human is that we are flawed. We are not the most powerful or the largest creatures on the planet, but we are efficient, ‘high functioning’, and therefore can alter the world around us physically to support our constructs and desires. We have more effect on the entirety of the planet then any other one species. That’s what sets us apart and makes us human; the ability to destroy, and the ability to create.

  2. I believe that humanity as a whole is just a word describing a specific species of primate on this earth. However, the question of “what makes us human?” is an entirely different topic. What makes us human is the desire for more, in particular the desire for things that go beyond the physical needs ingrained in a living being’s instinctual requirements for survival such as Food, water, and shelter. Nourishment and a place where one can be safe from danger are the only requirements for a living being to physically exist.
    Humanity is different due to the fact that we, as humans, want more than just to exist. We want things that are not required for survival. In the case of some animals, the desire for material things can be found, but often for a purpose. Such as attracting a mate, luring food, or some other practical, physical use. A book for instance, has no practical use for survival, for procreation, or for anything necessary for staying alive, as a species. But humans still want it: why? Because it has a spiritual use, a stimulative use. A use that stems from humanity’s desire for more, which has resulted in this thing we call Technology.
    Technology and Humanity are connected as a result of humanity’s desires given form. Technology is a result of knowledge and creativity. Both of which can be tied to desire. We desire to know more, the truth of what makes things what they are. Creativity also comes with desire, in that the imagination tied to creativity is based off of the knowledge and experiences that a person has. Ultimately, technology is there to solve problems. Specifically the problem of how do I get what I want?
    People want to live longer, want to not be sick, want to have more food, want to have more space, and/or want to have more money. These are just a few of the desires that drive people forward. Often it is for the sake of others, but just as often it is for the sake of one’s self. Regardless, technology makes these things easier to obtain, bringing us to the point of slowly becoming reliant on technology for a great many needs as well as wants.
    It has gotten to the point where technology and humanity are an almost symbiotic existence. Technology needs humanity for upkeep and improvement, just like humanity needs technology for essentially the same reasons.

  3. In Chinese myth, what differentiate ordinary people from god is their so-called “seven emotions and six desires” (七情六欲) The “seven emotions” refers to happiness, anger, sadness, fear, love, hatred, and desire. The ” seven desires” is desires to survive, to know, to express, to perform, to comfort and the sexual desires. The are many versions of the “seven emotions and six desires” (the one in Buddhism is slightly different). Generally speaking, I think what make human “human” is emotions and desires. Another thing that makes us human is empathy. We are able to feel how other people feel and provide feedback. Human have more complicated mind than other species, we always have a lot of thoughts and everyone’s thought is different. All these features result in “humanity” make us different from other species and robot.
    Human and technology have a close relationship – we need technology to help solve problems, but technology depends on human operations. The desires of human are what motivate us to create technology. However, in my opinion, technology can never replace the humanity of human. Technology might able to solve the most difficult math question on the world, but it can never tell us how to love. I usually don’t talk to AI like Siri because I found it awkward. The responds like Siri provide is very wierd, the sentence they reply can be used as the reply to anythings you ask or say. In short, robots only do what we tell them to do or say, they don’t have “robotity”.

    1. I would like to agree with your views expressed here. They are romantic and this is what makes life and our existence beautiful; to love, to know, to comfort etc. Humans have many needs/wants/desires and they lead us to experiences that are solitary in their existence but I wonder how much this sentimentality may be slowing/weighing us down. I, too, tend to search out these feelings and look for energy everywhere but perhaps the fact that ‘robots’ don’t do this sort of thing is what could make them more superior, more efficient at survival.

      I don’t intend for this to be a negative response, just something to think about possibly 🙂

      1. For me, I treasure every sensitive emotion I have, and yes they make life beautiful. And yes sometimes these sentimentalities could slow us down. But I think these “flaws” make life beautiful too! What is our goal of living? For me, it is not to survive or to be efficient. I will die anyway so I just want to feel the beauty of life. Robots might live forever and be productive, but to live forever is not what I want. Maybe that’s why I am not too worried about robot taking over the world.

        Thanks for reading through and bringing the thoughts!

  4. Humanity is that unique quality that makes every single individual different. Humanity can be considered this independent consideration and choice to be accorded to an individual. A certain moral compass that a human being has, that morality can be good or evil. The concept of humanity has often been attached to this idealism of “good” and “humanitarian”, however, we should not conform to this bias. We should not exclude the fact that our ethics, morals and hence humanity can be narrow-minded, shallow. Some may argue that this humanity is one of the key components of what makes us human. More importantly, our ability to recognize both our positive and negative sides of our humanity. Apart from being physically different from our prior evolutionary states, what makes us human, I believe is the ability to make decisions, decisions that have deeper purposes than just survival, but sustainability. It’s the ability to have opinions, beliefs and act on them. Uniquely, I believe that it’s the ability to go against what we consider our morals and ethics to be, choice, free will and strategic thinking.
    Our personal lives are very dependent on technology. I see technology as a means for people to communicate their humanity (e.g. social media personalities), find people who share the same values. On the creator’s side, technology was a product of human strategy for not only survival but also for development and generation of wealth.

  5. Initially, when pondering the question ‘what is technology?’, I thought that it was a creation of humanity to solve its problems and evolve further as a species. I don’t think this is overtly incorrect but I am beginning to posture that technology may have gained more substance now that it is quite possible for autonomous robots to exist. They may not yet (do they??) but as something created by humans it would shed it’s need for them and exist as it’s own entity. Humans use technology and it’s associated creations to advance the species but has it reached a point where technology surpasses humanity; essentially solving the last problem. Humans now have the ability to destroy the planet but we have not yet discovered how to leave it as a species and as we attempt to balance this scale we only further the probability of being left behind.

    Humanity and technology are forever linked as it was technology that allowed for our evolution to occur but will we add another binding tie in that technology was also the cause for our demise…?

    While creating the small edit that I have attached below I was sure to be cognizant of how I interacted with my computer; I was most definitely at its mercy and this may explain a little of the pessimism above. Working with an extremely complex software to attempt a display of my thoughts on the subject of humanity & technology, I found myself struggling to execute the images and sentiments I hoped to be able to present. Not only was the software quite difficult to use with mastery but, somewhat ironically, my computer also struggled to perform at a high enough level for the software. I am aware of the possibilities that I can create, that I wish to create but instead I flounder and settle for a product of lesser desire.

    With technology’s capabilities improving much faster than beyond the majority of humanity’s ability to utilize it what future do we see for ourselves?? I don’t mean to extrapolate too much on a failed battle with an Adobe product but at what point does technology leave us in the dust and function on its own.

    http://newhive.com/galenallan/humanity-tech

  6. B. F. Skinner’s quote says “The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.” When first presented the question: What is technology? I led myself to think that it is a creation that supposedly supports the human or even the environment, yet, although I enjoy living in a world where technology helps through almost everything, I began to think how these technologies are in turn making us, human, doing less and more so, thinking less.

    What is humanity? The study of human; it’s experiences; how it processes? Through philosophy, literature, religion, art, music, history and language is how we as humans understand and record the world. But what makes us humans. Like previously mentioned, as humans, and probably as humans only, we are able to communicate with each other in so many different ways and have various meanings.

    The connection between technology and humanity to me sometimes seem like a parent (humanity) teaching and raising a child (technology) to become better than the parent was or is; however, the parent in turn refuses to grow with the child and learn with it. Therefore, there often seems to be a gap between them.

  8. When I input the question “what is humanity” on Google search, it brings up two definitions:

    1. “the human race; human beings collectively.”
    2. “humaneness; benevolence.”

    If I go by these definitions, then humanity is anything related to human beings– but this then means that we’d have to set parameters for what would make something “human,” and that’s a pretty darn difficult thing to do. For example: a common response/explanation would be that humans have the ability to feel emotions and empathize with other sentient beings, or even just representations of beings we see reflecting our own behaviour (see: Heider Simmel demonstration). Yet we see videos of animals grieving the loss of their offspring (or that’s what we interpret), so this explanation does not stand solidly. There’s even been an episode on Mythbusters where plants appeared to react to distress from other organisms– and plants aren’t even capable of expressing themselves physically.

    If there’s one thing that sets us apart from other living organisms, I think it’s our ability to create and put technology to use; we are able to take advantage of technology we create to a great extent (for example; build tall buildings with strong machinery). While it may not necessarily be something that constitutes humanity, it is definitely something that we as “humans” can do that other creatures cannot.

    While reflecting on my response to last week’s assignment, I mulled over the connection between technology and humanity some more. Personally, I see ourselves as the creator of technology– in other words, technology is the result of human creation. However, it seems that over time, we as the creators of technology have become somewhat overly dependent on it; I know some people who don’t know how to read analogue clocks and rely purely on their phones.

    Like I mentioned in last week’s response that “we’re constantly imagining new technology and creating them to create more things from our imagination.” I think this can further be extrapolated to something like “we’re constantly creating new technology to rely on.” At least from my point of view– if there’s something that’ll make a process easier– I’d definitely take it.

  9. Humanity is the unlimited power that creates and destroys at the same time. We push the limits of available technologies and make further development easier each day. We make world more available by decreasing the time to cover distances. However, to create something new we have to destroy something old. Culture and values change over time and something that was believed to make us humans, like ethics and principles, fade over time. National proud and knowing your origin are not appreciated so much in the time of globalization. To sum up, I would say that humanity is a unique specie, whose natural state is unlimited development (and technology is the part of it) that has its own negative and positive outcomes, and this makes us humans.

    http://newhive.com/tetyanas/

  10. What makes people inherently “human” is a question that has been posed on more than one occasion. In part it is possibly characterized by what we would call “human traits”. However, I find this difficult to define seeing as we do not have the ability to understand all living creatures and their capacity to show empathy etc.

    I do believe that it has to do with our genetic make-up, well obviously, but with the size of our brains and mental capacity being much larger than other species it has allowed us to construct entire civilizations. This could be spawned from our desire to find meaning or solve problems. I believe that human curiosity and our ability to solve problems/ create could be what sets us apart. Not only does our curiosity apply to technological means, but it also expression. Humans are able to express our experiences, feelings, thoughts and ideas through visual art, literature, music and we have reached an age where we are able to funnel our hypothetical creations into real objects to use and abuse.

    It is this characteristic that has fused our bond with technology. Our curiosity reaches much further than the physical world that we live in, it allows us to, for lack of a better example, put a computer more powerful than could have ever been imaged 30 years ago in the pockets of millions of people. Our development of technology has always been prominent, but does not solely link us to humanity. I believe it has to do with the rapid development of our technology- and our consumption.

  11. What differentiates human and animal is consciousness. Consciousness is something independent of everything, such as body, thoughts, social identity and so on. It is pure, it is basis of human self-realization and rational thinking, so we can sometimes have those enlightening moments. But, animals totally rely on nature, their feeding and reproduction is controlled by nature evolution. They do not have realization of themselves.Human are the only creature that can stand, I think that means something.

    Consciousness makes us conflict ourself too, because human is neither fully aware, nor sleep soundly like animals. We are somewhere between animality and divinity. So the meaning of technology is as complicated as meaning of humanity. sometimes technology is created for a better life sometimes it is for desire, for controlling others, for destroy.

  12. What is humanity? There are several definitions that I found from Wikipedia, I pick up two primarily to talk about my own understanding of the term. Firstly, it is one of a human nature, including psychological characteristics that members of the human species have in common. The total world population adhered to the existence of human, who occupied the most part of the earth through their innovations and inventions as a main way to advance themselves to the better life. Therefore, humanity is belonging to one particular group absolutely, and it is different from the way that we defined other species. For example, when we were watching the video “Dawn of human” giving a narrative of prehistoric civilization in human(may should call them pithecanthropus) society, we could see as a way to become human, it is necessary to learn the use of other tools, which is the key to distinct yourself from other animals especially at that time, when there is ambiguous line showing up between the world “human” and other species. It is an important element that human can make a great use of tools and recreate them forever, based on this crucial feature, the answer of humanity could be more clearer than before, the ability of innovation and invention along with the pondering process is one important part of humanity. From my perspective, as a group of human, you have to be surround by this ability otherwise you will be get far from the real definition about “humanity”. Secondly, when we read definition following: the human condition, the totality of experience of existing as a human, my mind fills directly with the discussion that ww talked on weekly class.

    The experience as a familiar term refers to our exploration about visual arts? If we find out a way to see humanity clearly, it is probably to make sense of experience significantly. Both the moment when we share our experience with others and the way to express emotions individually play an important role in visual arts. Images, videos, musics and all that we re-edited or created through technologies originally came from our experiences, as a only participant, we are the closest to those technologies that created experiences, or to some extent, they created a main part of the heart to get a storage of those. To sum up, technology and humanity were the similar one, they are good friend to help each other and sometimes, may have disagreements to deal with.

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