The Melting World

Do you believe we are entering an era of sentient
things? Or has technology always had a level of feeling
and compassion? Why or why not?

I struggled with this q at first because I thought “How
can we enter where we have already been?”

I mean, as humans, we seem to have started with a close
relationship to the natural world within which we
survived: the rocks, the air, the fire, the water were
seen as sentient things to us (often simplified as
Animism) and many indigenous peoples (such as the Ainu
in Japan) still make no clear distinctions between
‘thing’, ‘animal,’ ‘god(s)’ and ‘human’: the
inter-relationships are seen as a family relationship:
interdependence along with ‘taking only what is needed’
are still taught in such realms, but definitely it is an
antithesis to the ‘winner takes all’ lesson taught in
mainstream.

So then, we are re-turning to this belief in sentient
things? Yes, I believe so….and it means a turning away
from, in many ways, the categorical boundaries the age
of Scientific Rationalism and Reason constructed…but
it also allows the entrance of complex machines into the
realm of sentience, thus creating a complex new world,
which I believe theorists are calling ‘technoanimism.’

As for whether tech has feelings/compassion, it depends
on your definition of technology. If it is a socialized
process (ala Ursula Franklin) then yes, because humans
are intricately involved in the tech/we are the tech,
too. If technologies are seen as a mere ‘tools’, then
no, the technologies serve as mere reflections of human
feelings/compassion, I suppose…What do you think?