man becoming machine : embeddeed technology
In the harmony of machines
Posted on August 3, 2010 | Author: Mukul Sharma |
Here's irony indeed: earthworms, eagles and orangutans are examples of creatures that seem to be in harmony with themselves and everything around them. They are born, give birth, kill or get killed and ultimately go individually extinct without ever bothering to reflect — or having the capacity to do so — on such activity with the kind of perfect equanimity attained by those who are enlightened. Alas, if only Arjuna could have been shown the way a cockroach lives, some 18 profound chapters of an annotated sermon on the momentous battle might have been avoided.
That’s because we who aren’t just biological machines and happen to be gifted with a delicacy of awareness are not so lucky. Doomed to constant introspection, we fret to death on thoughts, words and deeds because there’s something called humanness that is more than mere animal that has evolved in us.
But, somehow, that humanity hasn’t turned out to be enough; something obviously seems to have been lost along the way. Else, why would we be told by those who are wise to not be wholly fulfilled by our everyday existence and exhorted to bettering our being?
There is, however, a flip side to this existential angst. All that inner wrangling has given birth to some of our best poetry and painting along with the greatest in literature, music, song and sculpture. It has also created societies, systems of governance, economic structures and founded religions and mythology.
And, just as importantly, it has given rise to an overarching curiosity about the worlds we inhabit so that we no longer stand in fear and awe of the unknown but understand how things work and make them work for us instead. We think such magnificent tools of science have also defined us away from animals forever.
Nothing wrong with that and more power to us, but now we are told the future lies in the melding of man with mechanisms wherein implants, electrodes and computer-brain interfaces with digital data uploads to the brain and downloads to disc are inevitable.
Yet, whether you internalise a tool or externalise out into it, you risk becoming the tool as much as the tool risks becoming you in the process of creating this higher order tool. The only possible danger is that we could then devolve into something resembling biological machines all over again, living in harmony with ourselves and everything around us. Would that be worth it?
Posted on August 3, 2010 | Author: Mukul Sharma |
Here's irony indeed: earthworms, eagles and orangutans are examples of creatures that seem to be in harmony with themselves and everything around them. They are born, give birth, kill or get killed and ultimately go individually extinct without ever bothering to reflect — or having the capacity to do so — on such activity with the kind of perfect equanimity attained by those who are enlightened. Alas, if only Arjuna could have been shown the way a cockroach lives, some 18 profound chapters of an annotated sermon on the momentous battle might have been avoided.
That’s because we who aren’t just biological machines and happen to be gifted with a delicacy of awareness are not so lucky. Doomed to constant introspection, we fret to death on thoughts, words and deeds because there’s something called humanness that is more than mere animal that has evolved in us.
But, somehow, that humanity hasn’t turned out to be enough; something obviously seems to have been lost along the way. Else, why would we be told by those who are wise to not be wholly fulfilled by our everyday existence and exhorted to bettering our being?
There is, however, a flip side to this existential angst. All that inner wrangling has given birth to some of our best poetry and painting along with the greatest in literature, music, song and sculpture. It has also created societies, systems of governance, economic structures and founded religions and mythology.
And, just as importantly, it has given rise to an overarching curiosity about the worlds we inhabit so that we no longer stand in fear and awe of the unknown but understand how things work and make them work for us instead. We think such magnificent tools of science have also defined us away from animals forever.
Nothing wrong with that and more power to us, but now we are told the future lies in the melding of man with mechanisms wherein implants, electrodes and computer-brain interfaces with digital data uploads to the brain and downloads to disc are inevitable.
Yet, whether you internalise a tool or externalise out into it, you risk becoming the tool as much as the tool risks becoming you in the process of creating this higher order tool. The only possible danger is that we could then devolve into something resembling biological machines all over again, living in harmony with ourselves and everything around us. Would that be worth it?
Labels: Cosmic Uplink, Mukul Sharma
posted by Borrowed Wisdom at 12:48 AM
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