GEC 17 SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, & SOCIETY

FIRST SEMESTER, 2022-2023

CHAPTER 9:
WHEN TECHNOLOGY AND
HUMANITY CROSS

Chapter Outline
1. Advantages, Disadvantages, and
Limitations of Technology
2. Humanity
3. Policies and Technological
Advancement
4. Ethical Dilemmas

“Technology is best when it brings people

together.”
Learning Matt Mullenweg,

Outcomes

At the end of this chapter, the students should be able to:

1. rationalize the advantages, disadvantages, and limitations of applying technology to
humanity;
2. identify and examine international/local government policies and human rights that
protect the well-being of the person in the face of the new technologies; and
3. discuss some examples of ethical dilemmas and conflicts wherein technology affects
humanity in terms of moral issues and social conflicts.

Checkpoint!
1. What is technology?
2. What is humanity?
3. What is the primary purpose of technology for humanity?

Overview

Our world is indeed entering a period of

transformative modification. Most people will be
surprised by the measure and unavoidable step of
development that we had not expected. There are
many inquiries regarding the positive and negative
effects, limitations of developments, and the
ethical dilemmas that we will face in the future. Source: ViaFoura

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 To find the answer to these questions, we have to understand and rationalize humanity,
human nature, and its condition, the ethics that will and should govern each application of
technology to humanity. It also requires an understanding that these technological advances offer
tremendous potential, and with these opportunities come tremendous new responsibilities.

Technology, a word with Greek roots, is defined as “the practical application of knowledge
especially in a particular area.” (Merriam-Webster) It is a word used to define or portray
progressions, abilities, creations, happenings. Interpretations and knowledge of a particular group
of persons and humans execute certain functions for man and society.

Technology is the external part of science, and to understand technology, academic or

internal science shall be treated as a black box. Inner workings are not important for as long as
they are responding to the needs of technology.

Advantages, Disadvantages, and Limitations of Technology

 Importance of technology to Humanity

Technology has a profound impact on every aspect
of our lives. The way we live, communicate and interact
changes through technology in education, medicine,
transportation, economy, communication, and politics. This
chapter will provide you with a clear picture of this impact and
highlight its limitations and negative aspects.

 Advantages of Technology
1. Life has become easy through science and technology.
2. Travelling has become faster than before.
3. Communication becomes more comfortable, faster, and cheaper.
4. Innovations in technology increased the standard of living.
5. Using various technology, man becomes advanced.
6. The impossible has become possible due to the progress in science and technology.
7. Science and technology made a lot of things easy to do and comfortable for men.

 Disadvantages of Technology
1. The human had misused the technology and used in damaging purpose.
2. By the use of technology, man is doing illegal things.
3. New technology like mobiles is generating harmful consequences for children.
4. Using modern technology, terrorists use it for destructive purposes.
5. Many illnesses are created due to the development of atomic energy and the atomic bomb.
6. Modern technology like nuclear energy have not only affected man, but it also affected
plants and other creatures.
7. Natural beauty is decreasing due to the development of modern technology.

 Limitations of Technology to Humanity

“Is there a specific limitation in these technological advancements?”

"Can humanity limit the use of these technologies?"

According to Booch (2003), technology has many advantages for humanity. One cannot
live without these advancements, but there are certain limitations to what humanity can apply it
to almost everything they do. These are the factors that define the limits of technology:

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A. The Laws of Physics
Software, Quantum effects, and thermodynamics play an essential role in the
law of physics and technology. Software is a flexible medium. Specifically, the speed
of light is a given, which has practical implications for throughout systems. Quantum
effects have theoretical and practical limits to information capacity; you cannot store
more memory than elementary particles' numbers in the universe. Thermodynamic
effects happen when the containers that will dissipate heat, which limits the use of
technology.
B. The Laws of Software
Fundamental laws of software; an example of software limitations is when there
is a given computation, there are times we cannot do it. There are times we cannot
afford to do it. And sometimes, we do not know how to do it (these categories and their
examples come from David Harel’s delightful book, Computer, Ltd.)

C. The Challenge of Algorithms

Limitations for algorithms is that there are also certain classes of problems that
are on a good algorithm data compression and photorealistic which renders two such
problems like theoretical limits of compressing an image, a waveform, video or some
raw stream of bits, some degree of information loss, hairy mathematics, some trial and
error, lack of perfect knowledge adds complexity and compromise to our systems.

D. The Difficulty of Distribution

Leslie Lamport, an American computer scientist, observed, "A distributed
system is one in which the failure of a computer you did not even know existed can
render your computer unusable." Building distributed systems are only moderately
harder than building a non-distributed one, but it is decidedly not because the reality
of the real world intrudes. Peter Deutsch, an American politician, noted eight fallacies
of distributed computing: we would like to believe that these are all true, but they not.

E. The Problems of Design

The design of any relevant Web-centric system consists of tens of thousands
of lines of custom code on top of hundreds of thousands of lines of middleware code
on top of several million lines of operating system code. William Occam, 14 th century
logician, and Franciscan friar, stated, "Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.”
Isaac Newton, an English physicist, and mathematician projected Occam's work into
physics by noting, "We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such are
both true and sufficient to explain their appearance." Put in new terms, physicists often
observed: “When you have two competing theories which make the same predictions,
the one that is simpler is the better.” Finally, Albert Einstein, a German-born theoretical
physicist, declared that "Everything should be made as simple as possible but not
simpler.”

F. The Problems of Functionality

Brooks writes to consider the requirements, functionality, and non-functionality
of a machine like multi-engine aircraft, a cellular phone, or an autonomous robot with
limitations such as usability, survivability, and adaptability unrestrained potentially
contradictory, eternal requirements are too complex to design.

G. The Importance of Organization

According to Booch (2003), No one person can ever understand such a system
altogether. It demands that we use a team of developers and ideally, as small a team
as possible, but software systems that drive an entire enterprise, one typically must
manage teams of teams, each of which may be geographically distributed from one
another. More developers mean more complex communication and more difficult
coordination, mainly if the team is geographically dispersed. With a developer team,
the key management challenge is always maintaining the design's unity and integrity.

H. The Impact of Economics

Technological Advancement costs money. According to Barry Boehm (1981), in
his classic work on Software Engineering Economics, based upon 20 years ofempirical
evidence, concludes that the performance of a project can be predicted according to
the following equations:
𝑃𝑒𝑟𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 = (𝐶𝑜𝑚𝑝𝑙𝑒𝑥𝑖𝑡𝑦 ∗∗ 𝑃𝑟𝑜𝑐𝑒𝑠𝑠) ∗ 𝑇𝑒𝑎𝑚 ∗ 𝑇𝑜𝑜𝑙𝑠

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 Where: Performance means effort or time.
Complexity means the volume of human-generated code.
Process means maturity of process and notation.
Team means skill set, experience, and motivation.
Tools mean software tools automation.

I. The Influence of Politics

Investment in software development is the key to success. The political
organization can influence its progress and its limitations. Great things could have
provided it. The influences in politics are on a positive side.

Humanity
From the Latin word "humanitas", humanity, which means "human nature kindness", is the
human race, including everybody on Earth. It is also a term for the qualities that make us human,
such as the capacity to love, sympathize, be creative, and not be a robot or alien. This also refers
to the kind of emotion humans frequently feel for each other. However, when people talk about
humanity, it is talking about people as a whole. When doing wrong things, it challenges your faith
in humanity. When people request money to help hungry children, they are appealing to
humanity's sense.

The human race or humaneness, the quality of life or state of being, attributes, and
qualities of being a human being. Humankind is highly dependent on technology. With the
development and constant technological changes, humans change their way of life to improve
living standards.

We can see how humanity changed due to technological advancement in medical and
health care, communication, agriculture, and education. Today, humanity is advanced. Humans
have come a long way from the cave, but how far can they still go? Is there a limit to technological
progress? What does this mean for humanity's distant future? The answer to that is: As a part of
these technological advancements, it hinges on the longevity of the human species. To
advance far ahead in science and technology and the wisdom to use these, human beings need
time.

The history of life on Earth is a history of extinction. Despite advancement, human beings
are STILL quite vulnerable to both nature and themselves as human beings. To measure how to
advance human beings, it is relatively linked to human beings' ability to avoid extinction. Human
beings' capabilities in terms of technology, will depend on how they can improve the quality of life.
According to Sagan (2004), today is the period he called "technological adolescence". Human
beings are still delivering technological advancement, and it all depends on how wisely they will
use these "technological advancements" to reach into a mature human being with a reasonable
chance of reaching and enjoying the quality of life until old age. Sagan also stated that he is
worried that human beings will likely mature fast enough to escape the destruction by their own
hands.

Life of humanity has become easy through technology and still progressing through
continuous invention, thus improving the quality of life and surprising themselves in ways that they
can never imagine.

The two roads to take in humanity are ascension of all humankind, and the other is
complete and total destruction.

Policies and Technological Advancement

 United States of America
According to the US, Industrial Competitiveness and Technological Advancement article
in 2012: US industry technological advancement has frequently been reinforced by congressional
initiatives over the past 30 and more - direct measures that concern budget outlays and the
provision of services government and indirect measures that include economic and legal changes.

However, many of these efforts have been revised over the past several congresses.

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Congressional legislation seems to have preferred indirect strategies such as tax policies,
intellectual property rights protection, and antitrust laws to promote technological advancement
and government support for basic research over direct federal funding for private-sector
technology commercialization initiatives.
An increase in economic growth in contributing to new goods, new services, new jobs, and
new capital is due to technological advances. Technology applications can improve productivity
and quality of products. The development and use of technology also play a vital role in
determining international trade patterns by affecting industrial sectors' comparative advantages.
Since technological progress is not necessarily determined by economic conditions but can be
influenced by advances in science. The organization and management of firms and government
activity can affect trade independent of macroeconomics factors. New technologies also help
reward for possible disadvantages in the cost of capital and labor handled by firms.

 Canada, USA, North and South America to Europe and Asia-Pacific

The origins of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development-OECD is
date back to 1960 when 18 European countries, the United States, and Canada merged an
organization dedicated to economic development. Today, 35 countries are members around the
world from North and South America to Europe and Asia-Pacific. They include many of the world's
most advanced countries and emerging economies like Mexico, Chile, and Turkey.

Scientific developments and technological changes are important drivers of current

economic performance. Creating, distributing, and exploiting knowledge has become a significant
source of competitive advantage, wealth creation, and improvements in life quality. Some features
of this transformation are the growing impact of information technologies (ICT) on the economy
and society; rapid application of new scientific advances in new products and processes; a high
rate of innovation across OECD countries; a change to more knowledge-intensive industries and
services; and rising skill requirements.

 Philippines
According to the Research and Development and Technology in the Philippines, the
technology market faces a crisis since the developing countries' economic environment is
opposing technology-based institutions. Thus, the Philippines is taking action in reforming the
technology market by focusing on 23 industries as priority areas.

The Philippines can follow the technological innovation strategies imposed by Japan and
South Korea. With a synchronize and consistent overall industrial strategy, the Philippines can
move up to economic reforms. The government should also expand human resources,
infrastructure, incentives, and research institutions to help this system grow.

Ethical Dilemmas

“What will our ethics be?”

“Are there win-win ways to gain advantages without sacrificing our humanity?”
“Can we bio-minds teach newer kinds of ethics?”
“Is it time to regulate mass technology application?”
“Do we mainstream in our media, schools, local and international government and
– almost immediately the boardrooms of our local government to simply face the
numerous ethical, economic, social, and biological issues in the application of
technology?”

Science and technology, as well as research and development, enjoy autonomy from the
state and society. They may draw inspiration from them, but they are not necessarily determined
and directed by them. However, the application, use, and distribution of technology require ethical
standards and even legal provisions set by the local and international governments.

Technology permeates every aspect of human life, an activity. Inevitably, ethics will also
evolve into a burning, un-ignorable issue for every individual and organization. At present, we do

GEC 17 I SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY 5

not have everyday global ethics to technological advancement to discuss different issues, let
alone agreement or accepted legal rights and responsibilities.

The ethical dilemmas and policy issues for 2015 (no particular order) are:

A. Real-time Satellite Surveillance Video

Companies such as Planet Labs and Skybox Imaging have launched lots of satellites
in the last year to record the entire Earth's status in real-time. The satellites themselves
are getting cheaper, smaller, and more sophisticated than before. Commercial satellite
companies make this data available to corporations letting customers see useful images
of areas handling natural disasters and humanitarian emergencies and data on private
citizens' comings and goings.

“How do we choose what should be observed and how frequent? Should we use
this information to solve criminalities? What is possible for the misuse by corporations,
governments, police departments, private citizens or terrorists, and other "bad actors"? ”

B. Astronaut Bioethics (of colonizing Mars)

The colonization of Mars and plans for long term space missions are already
ongoing. NASA has launched the Orion spacecraft, and NASA Administrator Charles
Bolden declared a "Day One of the Mars era." The company MarsOne and Lockheed
Martin and Surrey Satellite Technology are preparing to launch a robotic mission to Mars
in 2018 with succeeding humans in 2025. The first 418 mean and 28 women worldwide
are presently competing for the four spots on the first one-way human settlement mission.
However, as we watch with interest as this clarifies, we might ask ourselves the following:

“Is it moral to expose people to new levels of human separation and physical
danger, including exposure to radiation for such purpose? Will these pioneers lack privacy
for the rest of their lives so that we might watch what happens? Is it moral to consider the
birth of a child in space or on Mars? Moreso, who protects the rights of a child not born on
Earth and who did not consent to the risk? If we say no to children in space, does that
mean we sterilize all astronauts who volunteer for the mission? Given the potential
dangers of setting up a new colony strictly lacking in resources, how would sick colonists
be cared for? Moreover, how an off-Earth colony is administered?”

C. Wearable Technology
We are presently involved in multiple technologies that monitor our behaviors. The
development of dozens of bracelets and clip-on devices that monitor steps taken, activity
levels, heart rate, etc., not to mention the advent of organic electronics that can be layered,
printed, painted, or grown on human skin, has led by the fitness tracking craze. Google is
partnering with Novartis to create a contact lens that monitors blood sugar levels in
diabetes and leads healthcare providers' information.

Wearables have the potential to teach us, protect our health, as well as violate our
privacy in many amounts of ways.

D. State-Sponsored Hacktivism and “Soft War”

"Soft war" is a concept used to explain insurgents' rights and duties during the
armed struggle. It incorporates tactics other than armed force to achieve political ends.
Cyberwar and hacktivism could be soft war tools, through specific ways by states in inter-
state conflict, instead of isolated individuals or groups. We already live in a state of low-
intensity cyber conflict.

“How do we fight back if these activities become more aggressive, damaging

infrastructure? Does a nation have a right to defend itself against, or retaliate for, a cyber
attack, and if so, under what situations? What if the aggressors are non-state actors? If a
group of Chinese hackers launched an attack on the US, does that give the US
government the right to react against the Chinese government? In a soft war, what are the
circumstances of self-defense? May that self-defense be preventative? Who can be
attacked in a cyber-war? What is to stop attackers from hacking into our wearable
devices? Are private citizens attacked by cyberwarriors just another form of collateral
damage? ”

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E. Enhanced Pathogens
White house suspended research on October 17, 2014, enhancing the
pathogenicity of viruses such as influenza, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS),
and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). In itself, Gain-of-function research is not
detrimental; it is used to provide vital understanding into viruses and how to treat them.
When used to increase mammalian transmissibility and virulence, altered viruses pose
severe security and biosafety risks.

F. Non-lethal Weapons
Primarily, it may seem ridiculous that kinds of weapons that have been around
since World War I and not designed to kill could be an evolving ethical or policy dilemma
- considering the recent development and production of non-lethal weapons such as laser
missiles, blinding weapons, pain rays, sonic weapons, electric weapons, heat rays,
disabling malodor ants, as well as the use of gases and sprays in both the military and
domestic police forces. These weapons may not kill, but they can cause severe pain,
physical injuries, and long-term health costs (the latter has not been thoroughly
investigated).

G. Robot Swarm
Harvard University researchers created 1000 robots capable of communicating
with each other to perform simple tasks such as ordering themselves into shapes and
patterns. No human intervention is required in these "kilobots" beyond the original set of
instructions and work together to complete tasks. These tiny bots are based on insects'
group behavior and can perform environmental cleanups or answer disasters where
humans fear treading. The concept of driverless cars also relies on this system, where the
cars themselves would communicate with each other to obey traffic laws and transport
people safely to their destination.

“If a robot malfunction and causes harm, what will happen? Who would be blamed
for such an accident? What if tiny swarms of robots could be set up to spy or sabotage? ”

H. Artificial Life Forms

Research on artificial life forms is a range of synthetic biology focused on custom-
building life forms to address specific purposes. Announced by Craig Venter and
colleagues is the first synthetic life form in 2010 made from a present organism by
introducing synthetic DNA. Synthetic life allows scientists to study the origins of life by
building it rather than breaking it down, but this technique blurs the line between life and
machines, and scientists foresee program organisms' ability. The ethical and policy issues
surrounding synthetic biology innovations renew concerns raised previously with other
biological breakthroughs, including safety issues and risk factors connected with releasing
life forms in the environment.

Making artificial life forms has been deemed "playing God" because it allows
individuals to create a life that does not exist naturally. Gene patents have been a concern
for several years now, and synthetic organisms suggest a new dimension of this policy
issue. While customized organisms may one-day cure cancer, they may also be used as
biological weapons.

I. Resilient Social-Ecological Systems

A resilient social and ecological system is what we need to build - being pushed to
an extreme while maintaining their functionality either by returning to the earlier state or
by operating a new state. Resilient systems endure external pressures caused by climate
change, natural disasters, and economic globalization. A resilient system can stand
extreme weather events or regain functionality quickly afterward is an example. It can
maintain a complex web of life when one or more organism is overexploited.

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 “To what way is it the responsibility of the federal government to assure civil infrastructure is
resilient to environmental changes? When individuals act in their self- interest, there is the unique
possibility that their actions fail to maintain infrastructure andprocesses that are essential for society.”
J. Brain-to-Brain Interfaces
No Vulcan mind-meld, but brain-to-brain interfaces (BBI) have been achieved, allowing direct
communication from one brain to another without speech. The interactionscan be between humans or
between humans and animals. In 2014, the University of Washington researcher performed a BBI
experiment that allowed a person to command over another person about half a mile away, the goal
being the simple task of moving their hand. Using an electroencephalography (EEG) machine that
detects brain activity in the sender and a transcranial magnetic stimulation coil that controls movement
in the receiver,we have achieved a BBI twice – this year, scientists also transmitted words from brain-
t- brain across 5,000 miles.

“What kind of neuro security can we put in place to protect individuals from havingaccidental
information shared or removed from their brains? If two individuals shared an idea, who is entitled to
claim ownership? Who is responsible for actions devoted by the recipient of a thought if a separate
thinker dictates the actions? ”

"You cannot teach people everything they need to know. The best you can do is
position themwhere they can find what they need to know
when they need to know it.”
Seymour Papert

References

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Genetic engineering will change everything forever- CRISPR. Retrieved from

https:///www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAhjPd4uNFY.

How far can we go? Limits of humanity. Retrieved from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl=L4yYHdPSWs.

Humanity’s future challenges:Bio-technology, artificial intelligence and robotics. Rertievedfrom

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs70u6feUO4.

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