Biophysics: A Bionic person, for everyday, for military...?
Hello, Happy Solar Eclipse today! May you be in the path of totality! :)
A lot of movies and tv shows I enjoy have bionically adapted people, such as in Marvel Agents of Shield and The Defenders. It's interesting because in the former, the guy is basically a war machine and he's forced to fight for his makers - the "bad guys", in the latter she's an NYPD cop, Misty Night, who gets a bionic arm after hers is lost in the line of duty, and she's one of the "good guys".
There are good and bad reasons to use technology, but I don't tend to see the technology itself as inherently good or bad. I like the idea of a war veteran being able to walk again, but I don't like the idea of giving this person bionic features just so they can return to battle. On the other hand, I do really like one of our classmates' comments last week about how technology affects or even creates our desires. Technology is certainly not neutral.
I've really enjoyed how in the four weeks of this class we've discussed emerging technologies, and we are not focusing on how it works so much as what are the implications of that technology. New technology can be really seductive (but I think on the inside I'm a curmudgeonly old woman who is skeptical of new technology so not very readily embracing of it!) - so it's a good idea to ask the questions of what could happen after we embrace a new technology before we decide to jump on board. What's interesting is that it seems like in asking these questions we often loop back to definitions and we talk about expectations and boundaries. There are boundaries to human existence! Like, when should we die? Are wheel chairs good enough?
The other concern is how society changes, too - as in how we accommodate one another. I'd like to think that it's not just about cutting edge new technologies that make us all functional in some normative sense, but how we work with one another. If someone can only hear out of one ear, do we treat them like a nuisance, or do we accomodate them? If not everyone can walk, well, do we set up features in our city to accommodate them? (Side note: my partner took a class in which one assignment was where the students had to explore the campus in wheelchairs to see just how accessible the campus was -- that's a very cool project to gain perspective into another experience, I thought!).
Anyway. It think it's not just about new advances, new technologies, but how we use them, our consciousness in what it means to use them, and how society changes too...
A lot of movies and tv shows I enjoy have bionically adapted people, such as in Marvel Agents of Shield and The Defenders. It's interesting because in the former, the guy is basically a war machine and he's forced to fight for his makers - the "bad guys", in the latter she's an NYPD cop, Misty Night, who gets a bionic arm after hers is lost in the line of duty, and she's one of the "good guys".
There are good and bad reasons to use technology, but I don't tend to see the technology itself as inherently good or bad. I like the idea of a war veteran being able to walk again, but I don't like the idea of giving this person bionic features just so they can return to battle. On the other hand, I do really like one of our classmates' comments last week about how technology affects or even creates our desires. Technology is certainly not neutral.
I've really enjoyed how in the four weeks of this class we've discussed emerging technologies, and we are not focusing on how it works so much as what are the implications of that technology. New technology can be really seductive (but I think on the inside I'm a curmudgeonly old woman who is skeptical of new technology so not very readily embracing of it!) - so it's a good idea to ask the questions of what could happen after we embrace a new technology before we decide to jump on board. What's interesting is that it seems like in asking these questions we often loop back to definitions and we talk about expectations and boundaries. There are boundaries to human existence! Like, when should we die? Are wheel chairs good enough?
The other concern is how society changes, too - as in how we accommodate one another. I'd like to think that it's not just about cutting edge new technologies that make us all functional in some normative sense, but how we work with one another. If someone can only hear out of one ear, do we treat them like a nuisance, or do we accomodate them? If not everyone can walk, well, do we set up features in our city to accommodate them? (Side note: my partner took a class in which one assignment was where the students had to explore the campus in wheelchairs to see just how accessible the campus was -- that's a very cool project to gain perspective into another experience, I thought!).
Anyway. It think it's not just about new advances, new technologies, but how we use them, our consciousness in what it means to use them, and how society changes too...
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