Thursday, September 01, 2011

The technological human

There has not been a time during or before human history (which is recognizable as the era of which we have written evidence of human events) in which the notion of human has been separate from the notion of technology. As orangutans and other primates can be seen to use sticks and the like, it can be seen that our species has made use of technology since our earliest stages of evolution.

Seeing as that technology can be defined as any thing that enables us to perform a task, it is obvious that there are two requirements to what can be considered technology. The tool must be used by man and man must benefit from its use. A stick without a human wielding it is just a stick, whereas a stick used by a human is a form of technology. In this case, the stick is enabling the human to act beyond his natural limits and hit things he could not hit without the stick. A stick on the floor is not technology, it is merely an object. Likewise, a human bereft entirely of technology is not a human, but an animal. He is capable of nothing which is not granted to him by his natural form. Through (as i see it) a kind of symbiotic relationship, man and technology use each other to further themselves. Without man, a stick is meaningless; without the stick the man is impotent. Neither can be understood or exist apart from the other.

Recently, this relationship has begun to slide away from favoring man. Whereas a man can theoretically survive as an animal without technology, technology had not been able to do the same. With he advent of self sufficient machines, this is becoming less true, man is becoming less necessary. Instead of giving the technology motion, he is now restricted to creation, maintenance and the giving of purpose. Technology is slowly achieving a new level of existence.

*edited due to wall of text

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