You Are The Wire: Humanity Enhanced

For most of us, our gadgets are addictive, amusing, intriguing, annoying, expensive, and infrequently useful toys. To some, however, they increasingly represent the movement of technology from the world beyond to the world within. In this analysis, I suppose, tools are EXPIRED, augmentations are TIRED, and human beings being the *socialized embodiment of technology *is WIRED. There's a joke in there somewhere ("So Marshall McLuhan, Donna Haraway and a rabbi walk into a bar...), but let's leave it to the philosophers for now:

"There is increasing concern amongst a wide range of commentators that human nature is in the process of being irrevocably changed by technological advances which either have been achieved or are in the pipeline. According to a multitude of op-ed writers, cultural critics, social scientists and philosophers, we have not faced up to the grave implications of what is happening. We are sleep-walking and need to wake up. Human life is being so radically transformed that our very essence as human beings is under threat."

In author Ray Tallis' view, "the distinctive genius of humanity is to establish an identity which lies at an ever-increasing distance from our organic nature." Welcome to the singularity, Ray. If it makes my God-damned cellphone work properly, I'm all for it.

Enhancing Humanity [Philosophy Now]