Techno-Beings
The thing that has made us so successful as a species is our ability to make our technologies part of us – or even, to put it another way: to make ourselves part of them. This is a perspective we have not wanted to recognize, however; and as a result we have been occupied (or preoccupied) by a foreign force: our own advanced technologies. They have become us and we have become them. We are no longer human beings – but something much, much better (we think): techno-beings.
This may sound like the rantings of a lunatic to you, so let me back off and start with our first technologies, which are borderline cases: our language and our brain – which no doubt evolved together. Is there any doubt that they are us?
You may demure that language is not really us – and you have a good point: the Buddha said the same thing: that we must not mistake language for reality.
And this can be taken further: modern science has discovered that consciousness is not reality either, but an illusion made in our brain: our most basic technology.
And this can be taken even further: by considering DNA to be a technology – but this is probably pushing it too far – but does show how important information processing is to life. We have simply taken this process a step further, as described in The Control Revolution – which I highly recommend, especially Table 3-2 Analytic dimensions and empirical properties of the four levels of control, including the type of social system possible at each level.
This lays it on the line – but does not take it a step further, and does not speak of what is produced by this mindless evolution: techno-beings. Which are not human beings at all.
wow, this is fascinating stuff. I wonder to what extent we ARE NOT technology if in fact language itself is just another technology.
But yes, we should probably just have a sense of humor about it all as a replacement for the dread we usually dwell in concerning our present and future prospects.
The Buddhists may have had the key when they kept asking, who is asking these questions?
Good point, I wish I had remembered it myself. My Zen Master would have whacked me with his stick for being so forgetful.
This post alludes to many things I’ve been preoccupied with my entire adult life, but it’s a little short on content. The relationships between biology and technology, consciousness and reality, and language and identity are not easy to recognize or describe. Suffice it to say that they are symbols, not discrete entities, and so separating and defining them are to a degree fool’s errands. They’re really all mixed up together.
There is a tendency to blur distinctions between objective concepts such as nature and reality on the one hand and technologies and manmade artifacts arising out of human creativity on the other hand. Genes and DNA are information carriers, yes, but they arise from nature (up to the point we go in an monkey around with them and they become human artifacts). So they aren’t technologies per se. Language and consciousness are more questionable categories of technology because, while being quintessentially human, they arise out of our nature rather than being concerted creations of ours. The fact that more rudimentary forms of language/communication and consciousness exist throughout the animal kingdom lends considerable weight to classification of these concepts within nature rather than as technology.
Finally, it’s a fundamental problem of philosophy that our perceptual apparatuses render objective reality (if such a thing truly exists) imperfectly and uniquely according to our biology. So it’s been fashionable for millennia to suppose that some deeper, spiritual level of reality exists from which humanity is alienated or cut off. Plato’s cave is one such expression. However, referring again to (the rest of) the animal kingdom, no one would suppose that any animal’s experience of reality is not in fact its reality — even considering its limited perception. Rather, it’s a mind game arising from the recursive style of human consciousness, much like language and math have their internal conflicts (“this statement is a lie” or dividing by zero).
This reply will appear in two places: in this email and on my blog – note the primary return address.
You have missed the main point – probably because I have been afraid to make it obvious: that society (the society of techno-beings, that is) is in the process of destroying human beings and itself.
This will become clearer in succeeding postings.
I didn’t miss your point so much as I responded to your supporting details rather than the main argument. The process of humanity destroying itself to which you refer is called transhumanism by others who believe it to be the next Holy Grail. I’ve blogged myself about the uncritical embrace of technology and outsourcing of cognition to our devices. I’m more fundamentally in agreement with you than it might appear from my previous comment taking you to task.
I did a google on transhumanism but the definitions there said nothing about humanity destroying itself. This feels to me like something new and scary.
I wrote a poor sentence above. You and I agree that we’re destroying ourselves seeking a more intimate interface between biology and technology. Those who regard the goal of a more intimate interface worthwhile rather than destructive are known as transhumanists. Many of them believe that immortality can be achieved by downloading one’s consciousness into a mechanical vessel so are embracing and adopting various technologies rather uncritically. Others have a tamer ambition, namely, augmenting human biology and capabilities with various cybernetic or robotic devices. They often point out that pacemakers, eyeglasses and contacts, and prosthetics are step along that path.