ENGC44H3 Lecture Notes - Bill Mckibben, Cyborg
Document Summary
What lies beneath: technology and the human question. There is a powerful irony in the fact that the novelty of modern technology, of both internet and genetic engineering varieties, has given rise to concerns exponentially matching the omnipresence of them. More exactly, there appears to be a runaway train mentality gripping mankind, and not for the first time. The question asked with increasing frequency is what precisely are we doing to ourselves, and the question is voiced as we feverishly continue doing it. There can be no real answer, of course, simply because the nature of being human is a thing too fluid to be properly identified in a way satisfactory to those seeking answers. What is most extraordinary in this sea of anguish, however, is its ignoring of fundamental qualities of humanness no machine may eviscerate: baseness and self-aggrandizement.
