Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
effect of technology advancement
technology progression and impact on society
technology progression and impact on society
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: effect of technology advancement
In the past decades, many thinkers have discussed transhumanism and human enhancement. They are the result of centuries of progress and represent for a lot of us the ultimate human attempt to transcend himself. Hence the critics that many formulate: this progress will affect us forever and we should be careful about it. However, the problem of progress in itself is not a recent one. Since humanity exists, it has not ceased to progress and every step that humanity took was criticized in its time. So while the need to discuss transhumanism and human enhancement is legitimate, it is also interesting to wonder about human progress in a broader general view.
It is undeniable that throughout times, humanity has been progressing in all fields, but what drove humankind to do so and what still drives us to invent things to improve our lives and ourselves remains a bit mysterious. What drives us to progress and towards what end is it aimed? The phenomenon seems to be unstoppable; a simple glance at History textbooks will tell you this. In addition, it seems to be a cycle of improvement followed by destructions: for example, the invention of the automobile destroyed the use of horses as a means of transportation. Therefore, it seems to me that humanity is condemned to progress and never to attain its goal.
This paper will thus first wonder why humanity always progresses. Is it simply an intrinsic feature of human beings, or is it a need to survive? Second, what is its goal in this process? Last, it will discuss the consequences of progress for humanity.
With Enlightenment came the idea that Man is capable to understand and shape the world that surrounds him. Human beings no longer rely on an all-powerful God that decides everything; in...
... middle of paper ...
...we are condemned: we cannot stop progressing and we are/will be punished for it. It implies that the recent instances of progress, i.e. in human enhancement, will not bring about only positive things, we will “pay” for them; but we cannot simply deny those progresses, so we might have to learn to live in the vicious circle in which we are stuck.
Works Cited
- Bostrom, Nick, ‘A History of Transhumanist Thought’, Journal of Evolution and Technology, 14 (2005), nr. 1.
- Huber, Eduard, ‘On Progress, Values and Marx’, Studies in Soviet Thought, 30 (1985), nr.4, 365–377.
- Meek Lange, Margaret, ‘Progress’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edited. by Edward N. Zalta, 2011.
- The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000).
- Weng, Frank, ‘On Freedom and Progress: Comparing Marx and Mill’, Student Pulse, 11 (2013), nr.5.
Marx, Karl, Friedrich Engels, and Robert C. Tucker. The Marx-Engels reader . 2d ed. New York: Norton, 1978. Print.
The belief that humanity is progressing while they are really losing their individuality is actually halting human progress. Every aspect of life is changing for the worse while people believe humans are advancing. One example is Newspeak. As Syme put it, "You don't grasp the beauty of the destruction of words." The destruction of words is seen as progress while in actuality, it is another step in destroying individuals and creating a hopeless future. Once this happens, Orwell warns, all hope is lost.
Marx, Karl, Friedrich Engels, and Robert C. Tucker. The Marx-Engels reader. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 1978. Print.
Mapes-Martins, Brad. “Karl Marx.” Class lectures, Modern Western Political Theory from University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, WI, 11/12/13, 11/14/13, and 12/19/13.
“Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844” is a collection of writings that appear to be intended to be a book. These manuscripts provide important information about the the way in which Marx interpreted history, particularly the ways in which the revolution of the proletariat and the future prevalence of communism as the result of historical progression. It also tells the historical story of man's alienation.
Ronald Wright’s A Short History of Progress gives an overall view of the world’s history of progression since mankind has entered the earth. He discusses the argument whether human’s progression has been beneficial or resulted in many catastrophic mistakes. He uses examples to back his argument up such as the civilizations in the past and how their progression also was their reason for their downfall. A civilization needs to handle progression in their society responsibly. Wrights contributions to this argument have been able to lead to further discussion in relation to being a responsible citizen in our world today.
Welcome to CHSBS! | Central Michigan University. Karl Marx. Retrieved January 27, 2014, from http://www.chsbs.cmich.edu/fattah/COURSES/modernthought/marx.htm
Author Yuval Noah Harari has a unique way of reviewing the past fourteen billion years in his monograph Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. His intention for writing this book is mainly to bring up the conversation of the human condition and how it has affected the course of history. In this case, the human condition coincides with the inevitable by-products of human existence. These include life, death, and all the emotional experiences in between. Harari is trying to determine how and why the events that have occurred throughout the lives of Homo Sapiens have molded our social structures, the natural environment we inhabit, and our values and beliefs into what they are today.
Bender, Frederic L. Karl Marx: The Communist Manifesto. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. ed. 1988.
...t of the condition of the mankind, it involves learning, and the outcome is discovering the yet unknown. And it seems that progress is the highest when freedom is present, in other words we can not get the most out of ourselves if we have constraints. So by the definition of progress we are unable to say what good is it going to make us, but it will do something generally valuable.
Tucker, R. C. (1978). In “The Communist Manifesto” in The Marx-Engels Reader. New York, NY:
Throughout history many things in general have been improved upon. Four major improvement areas are: warfare, medicine, education of society, and technology. All of these improvements have brought with them positive effects. Warfare has allowed oppressed people to rule themselves; medicine has saved countless lives with vaccines and treatment programs; education of societies has allowed people to make their dreams come true; and, advancements in technology have made the previous three possible. With these positive effects also come negative effects, which are seen on a grand scale. Advancement in warfare has caused numerous deaths, medicine has advanced to the point where ethical questions arise because of cloning and stem cell research, the education of society in addition with the advancement in technology have allowed these negative advancements to be achieved.
Marx, Karl, Friedrich Engels, Samuel Moore, and David McLellan. The Communist Manifesto. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Print.
The human progress response to life’s meaning is when one believes that life’s goal is to contribute to human progress. This means that the person believes that everyone’s life goal is to contribute to the world or to improve the condition of living for everyone in the world in some way. Supporters of this response believe this to be true because of all the progress we have made so far as human beings. We have made technological advances, advances in medicine and science and these many advances show how we have progressed as humans. The advances have also been the reason that people have accepted the human progress response to the question of
From the first imaginative thought to manipulate nature to the development of complex astronomical concepts of space exploration, man continues to this day to innovate and invent products or methods that improve and enhance humankind. Though it has taken 150 million years to reach current day, the intellectual journey was not gradual in a linear sense. If one was to plot significant events occurring throughout human existence, Mankind’s ability to construct new ideas follows a logarithmic path, and is rapidly approaching an asymptote, or technological singularity. This singularity event has scientists both supporting and rejecting the concept of an imaginative plateau; the largest topic discussed is Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). When this technological singularity is reached, it is hypothesized that man’s greatest creation, an artificial sapient being, will supersede human brain capacity. According to some, this event will lead to the extermination of mankind as humans are deemed obsolete. Yet others are projecting a mergence between A.I. and Humanity, a gradual conversion of man and machine. Will the projected apex of our technical evolution be a gradual or abrupt end of mankind?