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#1 | |
Very Grave Indeed
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![]() The cavalcade of essays continues. This one was written in my second year as an analysis and exposition of the position of philosopher Hans Jonas on the subject of the need for philsophers to develop a philosophy of technology, as a means of helping to ensure future developments remain grounded in an understanding of the consequences and implictions of the development.
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#2 |
Little Chief Hare
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![]() I'm not sure I recognize the substance of the distinction between classical and modern technology. A technology is created, accidentally or otherwise. It is now utilized to meet human desires. How is there room for the semantical distinctions he suggests? There's never been a unilinear progression of technology that I know of.
Another thing, I think Jonas might be misrepresenting the relationship between capital and human beings. He seems to attribute value to capital itself. His discussion of a self-perpetuating mechanic such as "knowledge" might prove this to be a misinterpretation on my part, though. So people will start valuing other possibilities once their current desires have been satisfied. So what? What's the significance of this? The one valid example of a problem resulting from rapid technological growth was environmental problems, and if technology is capable of solving its own problems; "feeding back on itself after new needs have been created"; what is the issue? I'm not sure I recognize genetic engineering and human obsolescence as a problem. Yes I've seen Gattaca. |
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#3 | |
Very Grave Indeed
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![]() I think the distinction he makes between Classical and Modern technology is this:
"Classical: It's really hard to plow the fields by hand...maybe if we tried to make something we could have pulled by a horse, we could make plowing easier!" "Modern: We're going to just keep fiddling with this, for no better reason than to see if something come out of it that we can use" I suppose another way to look at it is that they are stage 1 and 2 of development. Classical technology allows us to do X. Modern technology replaces how we were already doing X with a new way X. Once the emphasis moves away from "How can I do a, b, c" to "Now that we do a, b, c how can we do it -better-" we've entered, to Jonas, the second stage of the development. Or even better, I guess: His distinction is that in Classical technology, once the means you were looking to find to get an end is met, you're done. While later improvements may come along, your prime goal in the research was "Finding out how to do X" and once you do, that's it. Whereas in Modern technology, assuming you were even looking for something specific, once you find it, you just go "Oh that was neat" and keep on going, to see what else is implied by that advance. Quote:
He's calling for the philosophical community, basically, to start paying more attention to the world of technology to inform society's decisions on technological advancement. Yes you've seen Gattaca, but if you look at a concept like genetic manipulation or copy-cloning (IE. as opposed to the current, "make a new thing with old DNA" instead the sci-fi concept of "Man walks into machine, Man1 and Man2 walk out) there are many far -far- less desireable possibilities for that technology than the kind of things in Gattaca, etc. He seems mostly to be worried that such might happen if we aren't more cognizant of the consequences of our actions. Last edited by devonin; 08-30-2007 at 03:59 PM.. |
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#4 | |||
Little Chief Hare
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Is the distinction multitude of use? I mean, he wouldn't be the first person to argue that certain things have specific non-changeable non-transferable use values, so I don't know why he didn't just say that if that was what he meant. If this is what he's saying, then the very distinction between classical and modern tech invalidates this perspective because modern tech is an instance of technology with various uses. If the distinction is just "classic tech was treated as if it had only rigid values", then this distinction is substantive, however I still don't think a clear line can be drawn between classic and modern tech. Quote:
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Little Chief Hare
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#6 |
Very Grave Indeed
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![]() Well, since they were my examples not his examples, the failure lies with me for not picking a more extreme route to demonstrate his point.
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