https://www.techandethics.com/choi daily 0.75 2020-05-25 https://www.techandethics.com/contact daily 0.75 2020-05-25 https://www.techandethics.com/galindo daily 0.75 2020-05-19 https://www.techandethics.com/about daily 0.75 2021-04-15 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e9cc35f95e4b74d7928f2d1/1590432095469-66KJHGXIVYKYER1Y4OWS/1_PopularMechanics-e1541581539449.jpg About Klaus Burgle, 1959 https://www.techandethics.com/agustines daily 0.75 2020-05-25 https://www.techandethics.com/contributors daily 0.75 2020-05-25 https://www.techandethics.com/links daily 0.75 2021-04-15 https://www.techandethics.com/mastella daily 0.75 2020-05-19 https://www.techandethics.com/shanley daily 0.75 2020-05-25 https://www.techandethics.com/manek daily 0.75 2020-05-19 https://www.techandethics.com/rodriguez daily 0.75 2020-05-25 https://www.techandethics.com/home daily 1.0 2022-11-07 https://www.techandethics.com/makjumroen daily 0.75 2020-05-25 https://www.techandethics.com/home-backup-bu daily 0.75 2021-04-15 https://www.techandethics.com/spring-2020 daily 0.75 2021-04-15 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e9cc35f95e4b74d7928f2d1/1590421222235-J0439R7264RQWSCDS91X/robby%2Bthe%2Brobot.jpg Spring 2020 Robby the Robot, c. 1956 The explosion of machine intelligence research has raised fundamental questions about the nature of thinking, consciousness, intelligence, and embodiment. As our machines become smarter and more effective, it has become ever more important to question our everyday assumptions about what it meas to be a “thinking thing.” Even limited machine intelligence shines new light on how we use information and how we organize society, and the development of new human-machine interfaces has given rise to a plethora of enabling technologies that themselves raise questions about the line between augmentation and enhancement. Ultimately, intelligence and robotics technologies confront us with a set of deep ontological questions about what it means to be human. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e9cc35f95e4b74d7928f2d1/1590421347633-B5Q47NY60EX1WLZW4NXT/retro_helmet_lady.jpg Spring 2020 Artist Unknown Information is an essential component of daily life. Likewise, the accumulation and analysis of data enables a vast array of human activities and projects. Collecting, organizing, storing, and deploying the lessons learned from this data has been a central task of human culture for millennia, but only in the last 50 or so years, with the advent of computer and surveillance technologies, has that task taken on a monumentally global character. As more and more data is collected and used for an expanding variety of both laudatory and nefarious purposes, deep questions about how that data is collected and for what it should be used have become ever more pressing. Issues of privacy and autonomy are levied against collective action problems and public or economic welfare while new questions about the role of entertainment and artificial realities reshape how we engage with the world and with each other. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e9cc35f95e4b74d7928f2d1/1590421396862-P8JRSWVON07COZJYZCP9/transhumanism.jpg Spring 2020 Artist Unknown Some have suggested that a core feature of the human experience is the drive to become more than what we are, to “transcend” by reaching beyond our current limits and expanding our capacities for thought, emotion, experience, and connection. In recent years, this dive has been channeled into the movement known as “transhumanism,” an ethos which embraces the deliberate use of technology to enhance human capacities and potential. Some theorists even argue that the next stage in evolution of our species will be a fundamentally technological one—that we are destined to “merge” with our machines and even “upload” our consciousness and thereby inhabit purely digital bodies. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e9cc35f95e4b74d7928f2d1/1590428029928-R7VJIKEXN44T2TY4QH0Y/closer.jpg Spring 2020 Closer than we Think, 1962 Human beings have been, mostly unknowingly, manipulating the genetics of other organisms for centuries, but only recently, with the development of advanced genetic engineering techniques, has the direct manipulation of human and non-human genomes become possible. With this powerful new technology, we are suddenly confronted with the genetic mutability of our own species and the direct role genetic manipulation might play in future identities. CRSPR, germ-line edits, gene drives, and other strategies have the potential to give humanity unprecedented control over its own biological capacities and may soon begin to challenge our understanding of life and death. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e9cc35f95e4b74d7928f2d1/1590421450924-ZVNP195RPXFWGFN0EG75/space.jpg Spring 2020 Klaus Burgle, 1965 Space is viewed by many as the next great technological and social challenge for humanity. For some, the urge to explore space is an inherent part of our psychological makeup and that our “destiny” is to spread out among the stars. For others, colonization of distant planets is our only hope for long-term survival. For still others, the vast and untapped resources of our solar system represents an unprecedented opportunity to expand business interests and improve life on earth. Regardless, the opening of space technologies presents a unique set of ethical and cultural challenges leaders of the near future will have to face together. Likewise, infrastructure developments here on earth have raised a series of moral and social dilemmas concerning labor rights and the relationship between humans and their machines. New technologies like self-driving cars and machine workers have the potential to reshape how we look at the mundane but essential tasks of production and transportation. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e9cc35f95e4b74d7928f2d1/1590421721012-J05P9AJ6L9V2FSSKFYP7/18k5fa9yp7a7djpg.jpg Spring 2020 Syd Mead, 1960 As the power of technology grows, so too grow the consequences of our technologizing impulses. The rise of greenhouse gas emissions and the growing specter of human induced climate change have become the central challenge of our era, an era we have come to call “the Anthropocene” to indicate the fundamental environmental and geological changes caused by humans hands. Many have advocated for a reduction in greenhouse emissions and more careful and far reaching environmental policies to help curb the impact of climate change, but many others worry that it might be too little to late. A growing number of thinkers have advocated for taking a more direct hand in reshaping the climate through geoengineering—to once again use technology to try to heal the wounds created by technology. https://www.techandethics.com/archive daily 0.75 2023-05-05 https://www.techandethics.com/philtech-syllabus-database daily 0.75 2023-05-05 https://www.techandethics.com/prologue-preflight daily 0.75 2023-10-11