TAMING THE TECHNICAL GENIE
Keywords:
Bio-Piracy, Golden Calf, Moral Sleeping Pills, Poor and Vulnerable, Robots, Responsibility, Technology, Theology, Zygmunt BaumanAbstract
Technology rules the world today. While praising the usefulness of technology, the world is at times blind to see the dangers and responsibility that come bundled with this technological gift. Excessive use of technology triggers ethical questions. The sacredness of the human person is threatened. Playing God or replacing God with the Golden Calf seems to be the favourite sport today. The role, the reach and benefit of technology to the poor and vulnerable needs to be discussed and debated. Technology is a genie. Are we masters or slaves — that is the question.
References
Nicholas Carr in the Atlantic magazine asked, “Is Google making us stupid?” The article analyses the effect of google on our brains. Please See: Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making us Stupid,” Atlantic, July–August 2008, online in http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-usstupid/306868/. Accessed on 14 December 2015.
“Moore’s Law.” See: http://www.computerhistory.org/siliconengine/mooreslaw-predicts-the-future-of-integrated-circuits/. Accessed on 25 July 2016.
Roy Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near, London: Duckworth Overlook Books, 2008.
https://hbr.org/2012/01/generation-robot. Accessed on 15th December 2015.
Jerry Kaplan, Humans Need Not Apply, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2015.
Wilhelm Guggenberger, Are We too Successful to Survive? Growth beyond Welfare, [Unpublished], paper presented at JDV, Pune, India in September 2015.
Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, London: Polity Press, 1991.
Rene Ten Bos, “Essai Business Ethics and Bauman Ethics,” Organization Studies 18 (1997).
Rupal Oza, “The Geography of Hindu Right-Wing Violence in India,” in Violent Geographies: Fear, Terror, and Political Violence, ed. Derek Gregory, Allan Pred, London: Routledge, 2007.
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, London: Penguin Classics, 2003.
Oh my god! I have FOMO, Times News Network (TNN), Jul 24, 2013, in http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ludhiana/Oh-my-god-I-have-FOMO/
articleshow/21302849.cms. Accessed on 15 December 2015.