SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND SOCIETY
CHAPTER 10: HUMANITY AND
TECHNOLOGY
POSITIVE VIEW
Material Standard of Living
Untimely Death is Reduced
Improvement in evolutionary view
Reduce suffering
NEGATIVE VIEW
Contemporary Social Problems
Society drifting away from human nature
BILL JOY’S: WHY THE FUTURE DOESN’T
NEED US?
Bill Joy is an American computer scientist
who co-founded Sun Microsystem in 1982
and served as chief scientist at the company
until 2003.
His now famous Wired Magazines essay
“Why the future doesn’t need us”
He said: the machine that do our work for us
and will achieve immortality by downloading
ourselves into them is all about robotics.
Kaczynski- argued that if machine do all of
societies work, as they inevitably will, then we
can:
a.) let the machine make all the decision; or
b.) maintain human control over the
machines.
The continual build of weapon put us at the
brink of nuclear disaster. And solutions like
moving into space, nuclear defense shields
and nanotechnology shields won’t work.
Genetics, Nanotechnology and Robotics
(GNR)
Genetics engineering will create new crops,
plants and eventually new species including
many variation of human species.
Nanotechnology has its “gray goo” problem
self-replacing nanobots out of control
Robotics deals with the design, construction,
operation and use of robots, as well as the
computer system for their control, sensory
feedback and information processing.
Societal Collapse…………………………..
Tainter (1990) notes that societies need to
protect certain resources such as food,
energy, and natural resources in order to
sustain their populations.
Diamond says that many past cases of
societal collapse have elaborate
environmental factors such as:
Deforestation
Soil Problem
Habitat Destruction
Over Hunting & overfishing
Effects of introduced species
Human population growth
Increased per-capita impact of people
4 New Factors to the collapse present and
future societies:
Human cause climate change
Build-up of toxic chemical in the environment
Energy shortages
Full utilization of the earth’s photosynthesis
capacity
Different classes of scenario involving
societal collapse:
Local Societal Collapse- individual societies
can collapse, but this is doubtful to have a
determining effect on the future of humanity if
other advance societies survive and take up
where the failed societies left off. All historical
cases of collapse have been of this kind.
Global Societal collapse- suppose new
kinds of threats or the trend towards
globalization increased interdependence of
different parts of the world and create a
vulnerability to human civilization as a whole
RELATION OF TECHNOLOGY
WITH HUMANITY
A large number of powerful sources – coal,
petroleum, electricity etc. have enabled
humanity to conquer the barriers of nature as
part of discovery and development.
20th CENTURY
Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) –
Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical (NBC)-
were powerful weapons had an enormous
risk
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that
derives its destructive force from nuclear
reactions, either fission or from a combination
of fission and fusion reactions.
Biological weapon, also called
germ weapon, any of a number of disease-
producing agents—such as bacteria, viruses,
rickettsiae, fungi, toxins, or
other biological agents—that may be utilized
as weapons against humans, animals, or
plants.
A Chemical Weapon is a chemical used to
cause intentional death or harm through its
toxic properties
Technologies in the 21st century such as
Genetics, Nanotechnology, and Robotics –
are so powerful that they can spawn whole
new classes of accidents and abuses.
Genetics is the study of heredity. Heredity is
a biological process where a parent passes
certain genes onto their children or offspring
Robotics is the branch of technology that
deals with the design, construction, operation,
and application of robots
Nanotechnology are the study and
application of extremely small things and can
be used across all the other science fields,
such as chemistry, biology, physics, materials
science, and engineering.
Therefore, we have the possibility not only to
those weapons for mass destruction but also
to those knowledge and enabled mass
destruction (KMD), this destructiveness
hugely amplified by the power of self-
replication.
THE NEW PANDORA’S BOX ALSO
KNOWN “TECHNOLOGY”
Genetics, nanotechnology and robotics are
almost open yet seem hardly noticed.
THE NEW TECHNOLOGY
"Ideas can't be put back in a box; unlike
uranium or plutonium, they don't need to be
mined and refined, and they can be freely
copied. Once they are out, they are out."
"Ideas can't be put back in a box; unlike
uranium or plutonium, they don't need to be
mined and refined, and they can be freely
copied. Once they are out, they are out."
We must act more precisely to do the right
thing or else we lose the chance to do it all.
As Thoreau said, "We do not ride on the
railroad; it rides upon us “
Will we survive our technologies?
According to Nick Bostrom (2004), there are
four future scenarios for the Humanity and
Technology.
THE EXTINCTION SCENARIO
Human psychological suffer become rare
occurrence
Any change of magnitude profundity
comparable to that of one of the above

One argue, that the current century or the

next times will be critical phase for humanity,
if we make it through this period then the life
expectancy of human civilization could
become extremely high.

THE CURRENT COLLAPSE

SCENARIO
The scenario assumes that technological
civilization will hesitate continuously within a
relatively narrow band of progress.
The scenario assumes that technological
civilization will hesitate continuously within a
relatively narrow band of progress.

THE PLATEAU SCENARIO

Are the recurrent collapse scenario in the
level of civilization is theorized to remain
confined within a narrow range; and the
longer the timeframe considered, the smaller
the probability that the level of technological
growth will remain within this range.

THE CUMULATIVE PROBABILITY

OF POST HUMANITY
Contrast to extinction scenarios there is a
possibility that a civilization that has achieved
a poat human condition will later return to a
human condition.

POST HUMANITY THEORY

A clarification of what has been referred to as
"post human condition" is overdue
Population bigger than 1 trillion persons
Larger than 500 views life expectancy
Large fraction of the population has cognitive
capacities more than two standard deviations
over the present human maximum
Near-complete control over sensory input, for
the majority of people for most of the time