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Showing posts from February, 2022

What Is Technology?

Transhumanists generally believe that the point of technology is to overcome barriers, and that what we commonly refer to as the human condition is just another barrier to be surpassed. The ancient Romans also had a complex system of aqueducts, which were used to transport water across long distances. The eleventh and final ancient Roman aqueduct was built in 226 CE. Put together, the Roman aqueducts extended over 450 kilometers, but less than seventy kilometers of this was above ground and supported by arches. The oldest known constructed roadways are the stone-paved streets of the city-state of Ur, dating to circa 4000 BCE and timber roads leading through the swamps of Glastonbury, England, dating to around the same time period. With computer technology, even people working on their own can produce professional-looking documents. More examples There were huge advances in aviation technology during the Second World War. Cathode-ray tubes in televisions have now been replaced with e

What Is Technology?

Considering a more generic perspective of technology as ethology of active environmental conditioning and control, we can also refer to animal examples such as beavers and their dams, or bees and their honeycombs. In his article, Jared Bernstein, a Senior Fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, questions the widespread idea that automation, and more broadly, technological advances, have mainly contributed to this growing labor market problem. His thesis appears to be a third way between optimism and skepticism. Essentially, he stands for a neutral approach of the linkage between technology and American issues concerning unemployment and declining wages. Nikolas Kompridis has also written about the dangers of new technology, such as genetic engineering, nanotechnology, synthetic biology, and robotics. He warns that these technologies introduce unprecedented new challenges to human beings, including the possibility of the permanent alteration of our biological nature. Fu