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When Technology & Humanity Cross

Chapter Outline
• Advantages, Disadvantages, and Limitations
of Technology
• Humanity
• Policies and Technological Advancements
• Ethical Dilemmas
“It has become appallingly
obvious that our technology
has exceeded humanity”

Albert Einstein
 Sydney Harris

• “The real danger is not that

computers will begin to think like
men, but that men will begin to think
like computers”
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 • Importance to Humanity
• Life - easy through S & T
• Travelling - faster than
before
• Communication- easier,
faster & cheaper
• Innovations-increased
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the standard of living

Advantages, Disadvantages, &
Limitation of Technology
Advantages, Disadvantages, & Limitation of Technology

•Importance to Humanity
• humans have become advanced
• the impossible have become possible due to
the progress in S & T
• S & T made a lot of things easy to do and
comfortable for human
• Disadvantages of Technology
• Humans misused the technology and
have used in damaging purpose
• Man is doing illegal things with
technology
• New technology like mobile are
generating bad consequences on
children
• Modern technology may be used by
terrorists for destructive purpose
• Disadvantages of Technology
• many illness are created due to
the developments of atomic
energy and atom bomb
• nuclear technology have not
only affected man but it also
affected plants and other
creatures
• natural beauty is decreasing

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 Limitations of Technology to Humanity
• BOOCH in 2003 said “Technology has many advantages
to humanity”
• One cannot live without these advancements but
there are certain limitations as to what humanity
can apply it to almost everything they do.
• Technology is the application of the laws of theory
in science, and to discuss its limitations, one needs
to answer the following questions:
 Is there a specific
limitation in these
technological
advancements?

Or can humanity limit the

use of these technology?
Factors that define the
limits of technology:

The laws of physics

The laws of software
The challenge of algorithms
The difficulty of distribution
The problems of design
The problems of functionality
The importance of organization
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 The Laws of Physics
Software, Quantum effects, and
Thermodynamic play an important role
when it comes to the law of physics
and technology.
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Quantum effects have theoretical and

practical limits to information capacity;

You cannot store more memory than

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there are numbers of elementary
particles in the universe.
 The Laws of Software
and Algorithms
An example of software limitations is when
there is computation
there are times we can’t do it, we can’t
afford to do it or we just don’t know how
to do it
Theoretical limits of compressing image, a
waveform, video , or some raw stream of bits,
some degree of information loss, hairy
mathematics, some trial & error, lack of
perfect knowledge adds complexity and
compromise to our systems.
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 Difficulty of
Distribution
“A distributed system is one in
which the failure of a computer
you didn’t even know existed
can render your computer
unusable”

Leslie Lamport
American Computer Scientist
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The Problems of Design
Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.
William Occam –Franciscan Friar
“We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such
are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances”
Isaac Newton

“When you have two competing theories which make exactly

the same predictions, the one that is simpler is better”
“Everything should be made as simple as
possible”
Albert Einstein
 Limitations in terms of
functionality & non-
functionality of a
machine like multi-
engine aircraft, cell
phone, or an
automated robot
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 usability,
 survivability, and
The Problem of  adaptability
Functionality Brooks…
 The Importance of Organization
No one person can ever
understand such a system
completely.
Booch
More developers mean more
complex communication and
hence more difficult
coordination.
 The Impact of
Economics

• Performance = (Complexity **Process) * Team* Tools

Where:
Performance means effort or time
Complexity means volume of human-generated
code
Process means maturity of process and notation
Team means skill set, experience, and motivation
Tool means software tools automation
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The Influence of Politics

• Investment in software
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development is the key to

success, the political
organization can influence
its progress and limitations.

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HUMANITY

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 • Is the human race which
includes everybody on
earth.
• From humanitas – human
nature and kindness
• Also refer to the kind of
emotions humans
frequently feel for each
other.
• The human race or
humaneness, the quality
of life or state of being, its
What is humanity? attributes and qualities of
being a human being.
• Life of humanity has become
easy through technology and
still progressing through
continuous invention, thus
• improving the quality of life,
and surprising themselves in
the ways that they can never
imagine before.

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The two roads to take
in humanity:

1. ascension of all mankind or

2. a complete and total

destruction
Policies & Technological
Advancement

• U.S. Industrial Competitiveness, &

Technological Advancement Article in 2012
• Direct measures that concern budget
outlays and the provision of services by
government and indirect measures that
include financial incentives and legal
changes
• Congressional legislations preferred
• indirect strategies such as tax policies,
intellectual property right protection, and
antitrust laws to promote technological
advancement and government support for
basic research over
• direct federal funding for private sector
technology commercialization initiatives.
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Policies & Technological
Advancement
• Technology application can improve
productivity and quality of products.
• Advances in technology has
contributed in the increase in
economic growth
• Creation of new goods, new jobs,
and new capital
 OECD (Organization for Economic
Co-operation and Development )

CANADA, Consists of 35 countries which include

USA, North advanced countries with emerging economies
like Mexico, Chile, & Turkey.
& South
America to Scientific, developments and technological
changes are important drivers of current
Europe & economic performance

Asia-Pacific
The ability to create, distribute, and exploit knowledge
has become a big source of competitive advantage,
wealth creation and improvements in the quality of life.
 PHILIPPINES
• According to R&D&T in the Phil.
• The technology market is facing crisis since
the economic environment of the developing
countries are opposing technology based
institutions thus, taking actions in reforming
the technology market focusing on 23
industries as priority areas.
• Can follow policies of Japan & S. Korea
• Should focus on expansion of manpower,
infrastructure, incentives, and research
institutions to assist the growth of this
system.
 ETHICAL DILEMMAS
1. Real-time satellite surveillance video
• Planet Labs, Skybox Imaging (recently
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purchased by Google)
• Satellites are getting cheaper, smaller, &
more sophisticated
• Commercial satellite companies make
this data available to the corporations
letting customers to see useful images
of areas handling with natural disasters
and humanitarian emergencies.

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ETHICAL DILEMMAS
• Astronaut Bioethics (of
colonizing Mars)
• On Dec. 5, NASA launched the
Orion spacecraft & NASA
administrator Charles Bolden
declared it “Day 1 of the Mars
Era”
• Mars One is preparing to Is it moral to expose
launched a robotic mission to people to unknown levels of
Mars human separation and
physical danger?
 Ethical Dilemma

• Wearable technology
• Development of multiple
technologies that monitor our
behaviors. This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY

• Wearables have the potentials to

teach us, protect our health, as
well as violate our privacy in any
amount of ways.

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 ETHICAL DILEMMAS
• State –sponsored hacktivism and “soft-war”
• A concept used to explain rights and duties of
insurgents during armed struggle.
• Cyber war and hacktivism could be tools of soft war

How do we fight back if Does a nation have a right to if the aggressors are
What
these activities become defend itself against, or non-state actors?
aggressive, damaging retaliate for, a cyber attack & about private citizens?
What
infrastructure under what situations?
 Ethical Dilemma
• Enhanced Pathogens
• Gain-of-function research, in
itself, is not detrimental:
it is used to provide vital
understandings into viruses This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY

and how to treat them.

• But when used to increase
mammalian transmissibility and
virulence, the altered viruses
posed serious security and
biosafety risks. This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA
Ethical Dilemma
• Non-Lethal Weapons
• have been around since WW1 & not
designed to kill could be an evolving
ethical or policy dilemma
• weapons that may not kill but can cause
serious pain, physical injuries, and long
term health costs
 • Robot Swarms
• Harvard Univ. researches created 1000 robots
• capable of communicating with each other to
perform simple tasks such as ordering themselves
into shapes and patterns
• “kilobots” do not require human intervention
Ethical beyond the original set of instructions and work
Dilemma together to complete tasks.
• tiny bots are based on the group behavior of insects
can be used to perform environmental clean ups or
answer to disasters where humans fear to tread
• The concept of driverless cars also relies on this,
where cars would communicate with each other for
traffic laws and transport people safely
Ethical Dilemma

Should we be worried about the If a robot malfunctions

ethical and policy consequences and causes harm, what
of letting robots work without will happen?
human interference?

What if tiny swarms of

robots could be set up to
Who could be blamed spy or sabotage?
for such an accident?
 Ethical Dilemma
• Artificial Life Forms
• Research on ALF is an area of synthetic biology focused on
custom-building life forms to address specific purposes.
• 1st synthetic life form in 2010 has the introduction of synthetic
DNA in an organism
• Safety issues and risk factors are connected with releasing
artificial life forms in the environment
• Making ALF has been deemed “playing God” which allows
individuals to create life that does not exist naturally
• While it may one day cure cancer, they may also be used as
biological weapons
Ethical Dilemma

Resilient Social-Ecological Systems

• This is what we need to build
• Resilient systems that can endure external pressures
such caused by climate change, natural disasters, and
economic globalization
• Can maintain a complex web of life when one or more
organism is over-exploited
 Ethical Dilemma
• Brain-to-Brain Interfaces (BBI)
• Allows for direct communication from one brain to another
without speech w/c can be between humans or between humans
and animals
• In 2014, Univ of Washington researchers performed BBI
experiment in a half a mile distance
• Using electroencephalography (EEG) machine that detects brain
activity in the sender and a transcranial magnetic stimulation coil
that controls movement in the receiver
• words are transmitted from brain-to-brain across 5000 miles
Ethical Dilemma
What kind of neuro security can we
put in place to protect individualsIf two individuals share
from having accidental information an idea, who is entitled
shared or removed from their to claim ownership?
brains ( esp. by hackers) ?

Who is responsible for the

actions devoted by the recipient
of a thought if a separate thinker
is dictating the actions?