What makes us humans? The question seems plain and simple at first glance. But if given a thought, it may bring to our minds a variety of answers. Each of these answers may hold a complex truth, because we humans are indeed complex. This is especially true today, when we live in a world full of technologies which can potentially alter or supersede our very definition of humans. Technologies outside and within us, in our hands and embedded in us, we have a variety. Each of these can help us to collectively decide what kind of a race we are going to be. And in this scenario, we need to understand today, what it means to hope, to hope for the better or worse.
Humans have made tremendous progress over the years. Since the coming of industrial revolution, we have moved into a world where technology evolves each day. From computers to laptops to mobile phones; from watching the skies to sending the first man on the moon to sending probes beyond the solar system; from using technologies to wearing them to get chips being embedded within us, the possibilities are limitless. Currently we have reached a stage where we can even have technologies which can mimic human beings in thinking intelligently, understand and verbalise language easily, do everyday tasks with much ease, etc. All this progress seems desirable and good. To the ones developing the technologies it is beneficial and profitable. To the ones who can afford it, it seems enjoyable. But what about the vast majority of the population, who do not really see any semblance of hope in this progress? The progress which seemed desirable at one time has the potential to become a burden today. Therefore, we need to understand technological progress collectively. Not only are we constantly obeying the dictates of the many technical systems in which we are enrolled, we tend to see ourselves more and more as devices regulated by medical, psychological, athletic, and other functional disciplines.
Technology: The Instrumentalist Understanding
Technology has always risen as a solution to the need of the times. Every society has developed its own technology as a response to the situations in which they found themselves. It aided their efforts of survival and enhancement. As a result, technology seems to be a creation of humans. This is the instrumentalist understanding of technology. According to this view, technology is value neutral and its meaning and use is defined by humans. For example, a stone can be the raw material for a sculptor to turn it into a beautiful statue or it can be dangerous instrument with which one can break somebody’s skull and kill the other. The stone here is a technology, which by itself has no value unless humans decide what value to instill in it: a priceless statue or a murder weapon. This line of thought may seem to be fair enough for passive technologies, but with the evolving technologies of today where the line between what I use and what uses me has blurred, can we adopt and further this kind of thinking? Technology is no long the other, detached from my personal space, but has invaded our deepest being. Hence, when such technologies like, AI, genetics, etc., are promoted today as a solution to enhance our being, we need to make a conscious choice, a decision to hope for a better tomorrow.
Technology with a Liberating Face:
Technology has been always showcased a solution to our problems. For every human weakness, technology has offered its strength. This is specially true of technologies that have emerged today in every field. All our spheres of life is governed by some technology or the other. It is the saviour that humans have longed for. It gives us instant solutions, instant answers, instant gratifications. Within this context, technology adapts a face that we all run to, a liberation from our bondage of weakness. It makes us believe that we are superhuman. It helps us transcend our limitations. Radhakrishnan speaks about freedom from 'bondage to nature’. The light-bulb and the aeroplane free us, to a degree, from the constraints of darkness and distance. Likewise, with the arrival of IT, other 'freedoms from' are credited to technology e.g. ignorance and prejudice. Therefore, all that we have longed for seems to be completed by technology, to extend us and to complete us. But is that all what technology does? Is it really a saviour that we need and deserve? A critical thinking of technology will give us the answer.
Technology: A Conscious Decision for Hope
Technology is not all bad. But a critical view is important. Technology cannot be condemned as bad altogether, because it has aided us in so many beautiful ways. But for such blessings, technology cannot be hailed as a saviour to all our problems too. We need to make a conscious decision here. Technology is made by humans and it is used by humans. Therefore, every human is enabled with this power to decide. Kuruvilla Pandikattu remarks, “we have reached a stage in our evolution where we can collectively decide to enhance ourselves or to annihilate ourselves. So the decision is not individual but collective. We can together hope for a better tomorrow, integrative our lives with the technologies at hand, at the same time, vociferously opposing those that are harmful. We need to build a system where we all need to participate actively in guarding all that makes us humans. Individual and selfish motives, monetary benefits, personal glory is not the need of the hour.
The power to decide is with us. No matter what technology brings to us. Even with the coming of Artificial intelligence, autonomous robots, Chat-GPT all having a rational nature that characterized humans from the time we have existed, it is we who are collectively smarter than all of this because they are our creations. Before we lose all hope to depend hopelessly on such technology to complete us, we need to believe in our own strengths. Therefore, the change lies with us. There is hope, realistic hope that we have a better future, one that will truly enhance us and not annihilate us because of the technology that we depend so much upon.
So let us hope together, supporting each other, feeling for each other. Because however smart technology will be, it cannot feel like we do. We can truly emphasize with each other. Involve ourselves and immersive ourselves in each others lives in love and service. In times of crisis and weaknesses we can each reach out to others to help us out of them and complement and complete us. So let us hope together because this is the answer to the question of ‘what makes us humans?’ We are humans because we are able to love, feel, reach out and help, decide and most importantly, to hope. Let us be humans, because that’s what we are.
References
Feenberg, Andrew. “What Is Philosophy of Technology?” Lecture for the Komaba undergraduates, 2003.
Pandikattu, Kuruvilla. “Collective Extension or Common Extinction: The Challenge of Being Human Today.” Rehumanising the Human: Interdisciplianry Essays on Human Person in Context: Festschrift for Dr Jose Panthackal, Cst. 2005. Radhakrishnan, S. The Present Crisis of Faith. New Delhi: Orient Paperback