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week11 - Cyborgs, Symbionts, Gaia, Clones

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week11 - Cyborgs, Symbionts, Gaia, Clones

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Sam Smith

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week 8: human exceptionalism and non-human agencies

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week 8: human exceptionalism and non-human agencies

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Harry Coleman-Goriah

Charlie Theodosius

Catrin Platt

Samuel Dykes

Asian eels and global warming

Pickering suggests a new way of thinking about the environment and society.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of this way of thinking?

What implications does it have for human exceptionalism?

How could this be applied to:

Transbiology/confessions of a bioterrorist (Week 5)?

Cybernetics (Week 2)?

Against human exceptionalism

Pickering argues that 'human exceptionalism impoverishes us in action as well as thought' (p.5). Is this correct?

Are there advantages to human exceptionalism that posthuman ways of thinking might cause us to miss out on?

Pickering identifies a few characteristics as the thing which has been thought to make humans exceptional. What are they and how might they be challenged/criticised? (Consider the four challenges to human narcissisms from Week 2 - Copernicus, Darwin, Freud, Cybernetics)

Pickering argues that it's mistaken to think that there is "nothing to say about the non-exceptional aspects of our being...". Do you agree?

Can you think of any other examples of 'dances of agency'?

Bennett - The Agency of Assemblages

Can a thing be an 'agent' without having 'agency'?

Does saying that something such as the grid, or an individual, non-human actant within the grid, has agency a linguistic application through an intentional human agency or a true statement?

"Thus spoke the grid. ... It will be objected that such communication is possible only through the intermediary of human. But is this really an objection, given that even linguistic communication necessarily entails intermediaries?" (p462.) - Is it more that agency requires (non-agent) actants in its assemblage in order to manifest in-the-world?

Can the cyborg provide a way of thinking of agency without invoking human exceptionalism, without extending agency itself to other parts of a system?

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week 2 - History of Cybernetics --Posthumanism versus Transhumanism

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week 2 - History of Cybernetics --Posthumanism versus Transhumanism

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Byron Roberts

1) How does human exceptionalism interact with post and transhumanism?
2) Moravec and other like-minded thinkers state that the age of the human is drawing to an end, what do you think of this?
3) Warren McCulloch stated "Man to my mind is about the nastiest, most destructive of all the animals. I don't see any reason, if he can evolve machines that can have more fun than he himself can, why they shouldn't take over, enslave us, quite happily. They might have a lot more fun. Invent better games than we ever did."  If this is the reality of our contemporary world, why should we resist a posthuman world?
4) What is an example of a pleasure and/ or a terror expressed by Hayles?
5) Hayles argues that the determining process within the Turing test is irrelevant to identify ourselves as posthuman, rather interacting with a cybernetic interface in any capacity represents us as posthuman. Does this have wider implications to the argument of what is defined to be a cyborg?
6) What role does the concept of embodiment play in this argument?

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Week 5 - Transbiologies and Techno-Kinships

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Week 5 - Transbiologies and Techno-Kinships

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Amelia Woods
Tom Jowitt
Ali Noor

The Cyborg Embryo (Sarah Franklin):

What is Transbiology? How does it relate/differ from biology?

How might the movement of embryos reflect the identity and rights (biosociality) of the embryo? (p.173)

What are some post-Haraway ironies of the cyborg? (p.177)

Should we adopt a transbiological mindset? If so should this be encouraged in areas like education, law, media etc?

Confessions of a Bioterrorist:

How does the story parallel Biblical narratives? What does this imply for human evolution?

Was Mary right to save the bonobo species via her pregancy?

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week 9 - Heidegger and the Question Concerning Technology

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week 9 - Heidegger and the Question Concerning Technology

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Amelia Kamara

Ruby Weir

Is Heidegger arguing for a rejection of technology/a return to nature (or at least a ‘softer’ use of it)? Would this be a good thing?

Could Heidegger’s ‘enframing’ extend to the human body too? How does this relate to post/trans-humanism?

Is ‘enframing’ really a modern thing? Or is it something we have always done, only now it is happening on a more extreme and destructive scale?

Is poetry/art/beauty an “antidote” to modern technology?

Why might evaluating the consequences of technology also be important for anyone who is not an engineer?

If we lived in a completely equal society, would we still have the same concerns about technology?

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Alfie Peck

Natasha Murrin

Walker Martin

Celia de Bruin:

-Could & should robots fully replace human soldiers instead of creating ‘cyborg soldiers’?

-Do you agree that human soldiers will become ‘feminized’ as a result of cybernetics, whereas ‘cyborg soldiers’ are constructed as hypermasculine?

-Is it bad if values like ‘courage’ and ‘honour’ lose their connection to soldiers?

-What ethical implications do you think that ‘dehumanization of the enemy’ has (Masters 2005, p.123)

& should cyborg soldiers deliberately be made more aware of the ‘bloody results of their decisions’?

-Should the army be more transparent about the research it is currently conducting on technologies?

-Do you think the American military currently reinforces masculinity in society?

-Americas' military currently makes no distinction between fighting on the battlefield and by yourself in a hangar as a drone pilot. Is that okay?

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‘What ... might force a radical rearticulation of what qualifies as bodies that matter, ways of living that count as “life”, lives worth protecting, lives worth saving, lives worth grieving?’ (Butler 1993: 16)

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With the body of the soldier no
longer representative of American identity, technology instead has become the
productive site of identity and the nexus of power and knowledge within
American military techno-scientific discourses. In other words, technology,
not the body, is the critical surface for the writing and speaking of power
and knowledge (Haraway 1991: 153).

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The surgical removal of a one-party police state while trying to leave the civilians and the infrastructure as untouched as possible is an operation of unusual diffi- culty. Yet the pictures from the opening nights of the war told the story: plumes of smoke from precision strikes on Saddam’s instruments of power while the city lights remained on and cars casually traversed the streets.

(Krauthammer 2003: 1)

In Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault (1977: 138) argues that by the
eighteenth century the soldier was already becoming something that could be
constructed:
The human body was entering a machinery of power that explores it, breaks it
down and rearranges it. A ‘political anatomy’, which was also a ‘mechanics of
power’, was being born, it defined how one may have a hold over others’
bodies, not only so that they may do what one wishes, but so they may
operate as one wishes, with the techniques, the speed and the efficiency that
one determines. Thus discipline produces subjected and practiced bodies,
‘docile’ bodies.

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These signify the ideal representation of the American soldier – white, male and heterosexual – and have historically functioned as the representation of power within the American military (for further
discussion on the operation of race and sexuality in the production of US soldiers,
see Farmanfarmaian 1992; Boose 1993; Cohn 1998; Niva 1998).

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(What's so special about nanotechnology?)

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potential for new/better experiences, elimination of bad experiences, increased health and life span, increasing the possibility of human knowledge, new human achievements, stop thinking humans are above everything else, elimination of more medical conditions and diseases, help with worldwide issues such as malnutrition
Drugs are pretty good and posthumans dont care about us using them
Expanding our horizons of what it means to be human can be liberating for many marginalised people (other factors are more important than our human nature)

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losing contact with the past, immortality, environmental implications, losing contact with human nature/human dignity, eugenics, discrimination, wealth gap access to post human technology, additional surveillence technology and mind-reading, loss of culture and human individuality
Technology is kinda scary
Diminishing meaning/morality

Creates a new class system (inequality) economic inequality, new form of human could be seen as “better” than traditional humans resulting in discrimination.

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1) An Ironic Dream of a Common Language for Women in the Integrated Circuit

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1) An Ironic Dream of a Common Language for Women in the Integrated Circuit

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4) The ‘Homework Economy’ Outside ‘the Home’ & 

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4) The ‘Homework Economy’ Outside ‘the Home’ & 

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6) Cyborgs: a Myth of Political Identity

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6) Cyborgs: a Myth of Political Identity

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Emotions - would we work better without as many emotions? I.e. Less sadness?

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week 3: Transhumanism, biotechnical anxieties, human nature

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week 3: Transhumanism, biotechnical anxieties, human nature

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- What is a transhumanist? (p13-14)
- Does the transhumanist go too far with their optimistic view of humanity's potential and self-improvement- in particular the Procreative Beneficence? (p19)
- If the transfer of a human mind to a computer was successful, would this mind be a person? (p11-12)
- If not, why not?
- If yes, should this transfer be resisted- problems arise such as having duplicate people, do they deserve rights?
- Would the making of this superintelligent AI not serve against the transhumanist agenda- superintelligent machines may threaten to make humans slothful, indolent, lazy? (p20)
- If super intelligence poses an "existential risk," should it be abolished? (p21)

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Emilie Aitken

Aaron Gainaru

Olivia (V) Brumby

Should people be allowed to genetically engineer their children to not have disabilities?

Can technologies that enhance the human experience be justified when so many people in the world regularly cannot access the basic necessities?

Should the focus be on creating technologies to help disabled people adapt to the world, or should it be on changing the way the world works so that disabled people can function equally in society without having to change?

Is it possible to overcome the past of discrimination in a transhumanist future (ie: will racism no longer be a problem if everyone can choose any skin colour, or will people still pick lighter skin tones that have been historically favoured)?

What are the positive implications of understanding disabled peoples as cyborgs? What are the negative implications?

At what point does one's reliance on technology, machines or prosthetics transition them into being a cyborg?

Does calling those with disabilities 'cyborgs' 'other' them (further) in society?

Can the use of cyborg inducing technology erase the "disabled/non-disabled" divide?

What are the concerns of allowing people to genetically engineer their children to not have disabilities?

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Tom's Reading Response to Fukuyama’s “Human Nature” from “Our Posthuman future” 1

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Tom's Reading Response to Fukuyama’s “Human Nature” from “Our Posthuman future” 1

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This chapter is split into two sections: In the first, Fukuyama address’s three distinct criticism’s that have been levelled against the idea that a common human nature exists. In the second he tries to define what Human Nature might be.

The reason for why Fukuyama tries to define and defend the idea of a common nature is because of his concern that genetic manipulation may not only rewrite our physical appearances, but also our cognitive functions, especially including behaviours and moralities that we take for granted as being part of our ‘human nature’.

However, whilst in his responses he consistently rails against the idea that our genetic makeup has no influence on our behaviours as a species, I still think that he undervalues how effective environmental and cultural factors can be in affecting these behaviours. I argue that whilst we may be genetically predisposed towards certain behaviours, I think that cultural conditioning can have powerful effects on human behaviour; if one is consistently taught that a certain behaviour is recommended and morally ‘right’, then the person will most likely act with the same moral drive that we do for our own ‘right’ moral actions. It is this difference between genetic predisposition towards an action and actual actions that are environmentally influenced that I think Fukuyama’s argument does not address.

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Tom's Reading Response to Fukuyama’s “Human Nature” from “Our Posthuman future” 2

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Tom's Reading Response to Fukuyama’s “Human Nature” from “Our Posthuman future” 2

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Francis Fukuyama's chapter "Human Nature" from "Our Posthuman Future" delves into the implications of biotechnology and genetic engineering on the very essence of humanity. Fukuyama asserts that these advancements threaten to erode our shared human nature, which underpins social and political systems.

Fukuyama's analysis highlights the potential consequences of genetic manipulation, including the creation of designer babies and the quest for genetic enhancement. He argues that such practices risk exacerbating inequality and undermining the values of liberal democracy, as the enhanced may seek to separate themselves from the rest of humanity.

The chapter, however, has been criticized for its conservative stance and its failure to embrace the potential benefits of biotechnology. Critics argue that Fukuyama's arguments may hinder scientific progress and limit the possibilities of using technology to alleviate suffering and improve the human condition.

In conclusion, while Fukuyama raises important concerns about the ethical, social, and political implications of biotechnology, his conservative stance might hinder the exploration of posthuman possibilities that could benefit humanity, if carefully regulated and ethically employed. A balanced approach that considers both the risks and rewards of biotechnological advancements is crucial in navigating the complex terrain of our posthuman future.

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According to Nick Bostrom, Transhumanism is the act of using science and technology to improve the standard of living beyond our current state, of us being unshackled by the confines of our mortal bodies.

He first goes through the things that aren’t necessarily transhumanist thoughts but mentions works such as Gilgamesh or the fountain of youth, showing that even early within the history of our culture, the idea of going beyond our bodies have always been present.

He then introduces various science fiction authors such as J.B.S Haldane and Julian Huxley, whose contemplations in the early 20th century laid the groundwork for augmenting human potential through scientific and technological progress.

Delving into more contemporary transhumanism, Bostrom highlights thinkers such as Max More and the establishment of the World Transhumanist Association and emphasizes the belief that scientific advancements hold the power to mould our future.

The essay underscores how throughout human history, we constantly seek to improve our current capabilities to grow beyond what we are now, and with the growing and rapid advancement in human technology, we now have a road towards the Transhumanist dream that Bostrom claims we always have had.

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Nick Bostrom's essay, "A History of Transhumanist Thought," provides a compelling journey through the development of the transhumanist movement. Bostrom adeptly uncovers the movement's historical roots and intellectual evolution, shedding light on a topic that becomes more pertinent as technology rapidly advances.

One of the most intriguing aspects of this essay is the exploration of early science fiction literature, particularly the imaginative works of H.G. Wells and Olaf Stapledon. These authors, through their storytelling, set the stage for real-world discussions on human augmentation and evolution, illustrating the profound influence of fiction on shaping visionary ideas.

Bostrom's introduction of key historical figures like J.B.S. Haldane and Julian Huxley, who contemplated human enhancement in the early 20th century, highlights that transhumanist ideals have deep historical origins. Their pioneering ideas serve as a testament to the enduring fascination with the notion of improving human capabilities through scientific and technological means.

The essay's exploration of "technological determinism" is particularly thought-provoking, underscoring the belief that scientific and technological advancements have the power to shape our collective future. This perspective is crucial in understanding the driving force behind transhumanism and its aspirations.

Moreover, Bostrom's discussion of contemporary transhumanism and influential thinkers within the movement showcases its continued relevance and growth. The essay effectively serves as a bridge connecting the historical foundations of transhumanist thought with its impact on modern society.

In conclusion, "A History of Transhumanist Thought" is a captivating exposé of the movement's history, offering a deeper understanding of its origins, fundamental concepts, and its ongoing significance in a world marked by technological innovation. The essay encourages readers to ponder the ethical, social, and philosophical implications of a future where science and technology are leveraged to enhance human potential.

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- raises questions of what we mean by 'perfect' human being. if we are genetically engineering humans to be of a 'perfect' standard it is telling others that they aren't up to standards or that they do not deserve to live. eradicating disability for example, is telling g those people currently with a disability that they are less worthy of life if we begin to select what kind of humans are capable of being born in the future. plus what goal are we reaching through selective engineering of foetus? we will select those with higher intelligence, better memory, physically attractive looks. and then what? what is the end goal of this?

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- Anarchy
- if new technology goes to the most wealthy first, what will happen to the other people?

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Potential rights issues should some people remain 'human' whilst others turn further into technology

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who gets to be immortal? only a certain number of people can be alive on the planet at once? so who gets to decide who lives and how doesn't? will the rich gain immortality and the poor will die?

the scary thing is not much might even change in this case just some people get to be immortal and profit from the existence of the rest

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We might not have as much loss of people's lives, of information, of history. A lack of collective grief

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Heidegger "The Question Concerning Technology" Ali Reading Response 1

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Heidegger "The Question Concerning Technology" Ali Reading Response 1

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In exploring how technology shapes our lives, Heidegger's "The Question Concerning Technology" delves into the significant impact it has on human existence. He argues that technology isn't merely a collection of tools; it constitutes a defining force shaping our understanding of the world. He introduces the concept of "enframing," suggesting that technology transforms not just the way things are revealed but turns them into resources to be exploited, rendering everything calculable and controllable and diminishing the genuine experience of existence.

Heidegger draws a comparison between traditional craftsmanship and modern technology, noting the former's personal touch and deep connection with the created object. In contrast, our contemporary affinity for efficiency and utility in technology often severs this intimate connection.

Heidegger prompts us to contemplate the nature of technology and its impact on our lives. It is not a call to abandon smartphones but a reminder to reflect on how technology shapes our understanding of truth and authenticity, encouraging us to seek a balance in the technologically driven world we inhabit.

A potential criticism of Heidegger's view is that it could be perceived as overly nostalgic, romanticizing a pre-technological past. Critics might argue that his emphasis on authenticity and the loss thereof overlooks the positive aspects of technological progress and the opportunities it presents for human flourishing.

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Heidegger "The Question Concerning Technology" Ali Reading Response 2

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Heidegger "The Question Concerning Technology" Ali Reading Response 2

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In "The Question Concerning Technology", Heidegger begins by questioning what the essence of technology is, detailing the Instrumental view where technology is a means to an end. Followingly, he takes a step by step process, looking at the concepts of causality and responsibility between them to argue that technology is not just instrumental but a ‘mode of revealing’ that ‘enframes’ or structures the world and gives rise to its resources.

This concept seems to parallel phenomenology, in that what is ‘revealed’ by technology interacts with our experiences of the world and so when we perceive his example of a sacrificial chalice, we sense its resourceful potential (use in sacrament) from its causal history.

Conceiving of technology this way is interesting as it combines the instrumental and anthropological views with the added experiential quality of enframing, however, his writing style and abundance of terminology makes the concept of enframing appear vague and abstract.

Additionally, he describes enframing as ‘ordaining of destining’ suggesting its is deterministic and governs technological development which seems impractical if his very concern is to ensure we remain open to truth and significant human endurance which enframing mitigates.