Riddle me this:
It seems as though you are saying that humanity has to change in order to accommodate technology. I think that’s true to some extent (for instance, chairs both accommodate and affect human posture), but your statement that all of our values must be reevaluated would seem to indicate a radical break, not just from cultural forms, but indeed from ontological ones. Take for instance Aristotle’s Poetics from which we derive the adage, “art imitates nature.” Art, more accurately translated from techne as craft, “accommodates” the real. Humans, in this example, are the “real,” that is, they are the thing which techne imitates. But you have inverted the two: in your view, humanity imitates, or “accommodates,” art. Chairs, as I said, both accommodate and affect, but they do not force the sitter to become the sat-upon.
What I’m saying is, quite frankly, that your “human” is not human at all, and therefore, you cannot be truly a humanist. Your “human” is not essentially different from the data and technology which you think he/she needs to accommodate. But there is a true human, and this human is not reducible to mere electric impulses and data. As Michael Polanyi said, “We know more than we can say,” and certainly more than we can download.
I hope my critique may be taken with a grain of salt, my own weakness in a situation like this is my pickiness in philosophical description. All this is to say: influencers, especially those trying to elucidate the tech-human interface, can’t afford to not be self-critical. I would like to respectfully encourage you to dig deeper.
Some great reads I would slide across your desk are Neil Postman’s “Technopoly,” Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics,” and Hans Jonas’ “The Imperative of Responsibility.”
