Lecture 10 When Technology and Humanity Cross

• Technology has a practical impact to our communities
• Areas of practical impact of technology

  • Agriculture
  • Health
  • Education
  • Transportation
  • Security
• Advantages of modern technology

  • Improved communication, easy access to information, and social networking
  • Improved housing, lifestyle, and entertainment
  • Convenience in education
  • Convenience in travelling
  • Change in health industry - robotic nurse assistant and advanced prosthetics
  • Efficiency and productivity - increased production and reduced labor cost
  • Initiates creativity and innovation
• Disadvantages of modern technology

  • Job loss and human displacement - waiters have the highest probability of risk while medical practitioners have the lowest.
  • World destruction - a weapon of mass destruction is any weapon that is fatal an/or bring significant damage to humans
  • Increased loneliness - physical and social isolation which is the absence of interactive relationship
  • Decreased competency
  • Emerging technological ethical dilemmas
• Weapon of mass destruction

  Any weapon (be it radiological, nuclear, biological, or chemical) that is fatal and/or bring significant damage to humans, man-made structures, natural structures, and the biosphere in general
• Examples of weapons of mass destruction

  • Hiroshima and Nagasaki
  • Gaza
• Loneliness


  Recent technological developments have caused physical social isolation which is the absence of interactive relationship between family members and friends at an individual level
• Examples of emerging technological ethical dilemmas

  • Real-time surveillance imagery - skybox
  • Colonizing Mars: An Astronaut Bioethics - mars one
  • Wearable Technology
  • State-sponsored Hacktivism and "soft war"
  • Enhanced pathogens - gain of function
  • Non-lethal weapons - water cannons and tear gas
  • Genetically modified organisms (GMOs)
  • Artificial life forms -synthetic biology and GMOs
  • Brain-to-brain interfaces - direct communication without the use of speech
• Gain-of-function (GOF) studies, or research that improves the ability of a pathogen to cause disease, help define the fundamental nature of human-pathogen interactions, thereby enabling assessment of the pandemic potential of emerging infectious agents, informing public health and preparedness efforts, and furthering medical countermeasure development
• Synthetic biology is a field of science that involves redesigning organisms for useful purposes by engineering them to have new abilities.
• Non-lethal weapons are weapons that are not designed to kill people
• Hacktivism is the act of using technical hacking skills to fight for a cause or expose a believed injustice
• Soft war refers to the use of unarmed tactics in international conflicts such as cyber-warfare.
• Waiters have the highest probability of jobs at risk from automation while medical practitioners have the lowest probability.