The Politics and Philosophy of Technological Advances

The Politics and Philosophy of Technological Advances

I do not recognize any difference between artifacts and natural bodies…
—Rene Descartes, Principles of Philosophy


The political and philosophical alterations that occur with the introduction of technology to the human body surmount any metaphysical and socio-political issues on the table today. Since Platonic times we have tried to discover and answer what consciousness and democracy are, and just as it seemed a sense of these issues was being settled in debate, the rise of technological enhancement and artificial intelligence and life has created a need to re-examine many of our perceptual realities. Answering questions about consciousness in machines, in cyborgs (part human, part machine), or androids and setting up distinctions between such entities and humanity increases a great gap of gray that was already quite wide.

It was Rene Descartes who proposed the entire material universe to be a large clockwork-like machine. According to this way of thinking everything moves in accordance with mechanical laws, as if by gears. In his Treatise on Man, Descartes pronounces:

I suppose the body to be nothing but a machine…We see clocks, artificial fountains, mills, and other such machines which, although man made, have the power to move on their own accord in many different ways…one may compare the nerves of the machines I am describing with the works of these fountains, its muscles and tendons with the various devices and springs which set them in motion…the digestion of food, the beating of the heart and arteries…respiration, walking…follow from the mere arrangement of the machine’s organs every bit as naturally as the movements of a clock or other automaton follow from the arrangements of its counterweights and wheels.

These same issues arise in our socio-political debates.

On issues surrounding biotechnologies, the political response is already extensive. In 2000, George W. Bush developed his President’s Council on Bioethics. The council takes on the role of creating reports about the pros and cons of genetic and biotech therapy and studies. In the 2004 report, Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness , it is argued that improving the genetic makeup of children will distance parents from their offspring, that genetic engineering for improved athleticism is unnatural and similar to the use of steroids, and that extending life will result in a generation of elders who refuse to let younger generations grow into their positions in life. The team is led by Leon Kass, Professor of Bioethics at the University of Chicago, and a political conservative who has opposed biotechnology for more than twenty-five years. In that time, issues such as in vitro fertilization, cosmetic surgery, organ transplants, therapeutic cloning, embryonic stem cell research, and any other technologically-based medical treatment that ‘disrupts the natural order of life’ (which includes birth, procreation, and death, the latter of which should be viewed as a ‘necessary and desirable end’ ) have been strictly opposed by Kass.

Our government does not always stand in opposition to embracing technology. When advances can be used to benefit such areas such as military strategy and power, the U.S. government has proved willing to spend the large sums of money necessary to make extensive research possible.

DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is the central research and development organization of the Department of Defense. Their research into robotics, neural activity, nanotechnologies, and the technology of electronics in general has paved the way for revolutionary items such as Arpanet (now known to us as the Internet). Today DARPA can be credited with much of the advancement made in fields such as AI (artificial intelligence), virtual reality, and GPS (global positioning system) devices. All of these advancements are remarkable for an organization originally founded to ensure that Sputnik-like events would not surprise the United States again. In 2008 DARPA celebrated its 50th Anniversary.

It is easy to imagine how, in the next century, these political confrontations will explode onto the scene of artificial intelligence, robotic rights, and the separation between natural human beings and electronically enhanced human beings. As these ways of living begin to emerge more and more visibly in mass culture, opposition to and support for them will inevitably collide. The issues that will be debated on the political frontlines will be basic human rights and discussion about what is human. If an individual has a memory implant which improves his or her short or long-term memory, will they no longer be human? If having a new memory chip is not too far from being human, what if a person gets a boost in neural signals to their reflexes? Will this push the being to be classified as post-human or non-human? When decisions about what is or is not human are being made, it will be impossible to see in absolutes. Vision itself (likely to be artificially enhanced) will see a culture that will be too gray to make differentiations, as synthetic and organic materials continue to grow closer in appearance and operation. While we can easily draw lines in the sand at this point in history, that line will not be so recognizable in the future.


*excerpt from Formatting Gaia: A Comprehensive Outline of the Photographic Work


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