Week 13. Session 12. The last lesson of Technology and World Change.

This session marks the end of a 13 week journey for TWC. Although there is still the final exam ahead, but it somehow feels like TWC is officially over. In this session, my group had the pleasure of presenting our project, Sex and advertisements. Today’s session was an interesting one covering several aspects of technology we have yet to explore in this class. With that said I decided to try another format for my journal entry, I shall go topic by topic this time round.

Prosthetic limbs

Prosthetic limbs started out with the use of wood and iron materials. Today, prosthetic limbs are made up of plastic and other durable materials. Prosthetic limbs are becoming more flexible, joints have been developed to rotate 360 degrees. For prosthetic legs, walking from a stationary position is made easier with stored energy. In physical aspect, prosthetics serve to enhance humans. For example it can help reduce the efforts used or exerted during physical activities. Moreover it allows the disabled to engage in activities that they previously could not. Prosthetics is highly beneficial for the disabled and the elderly. Currently, mind control prosthetics and prosthetics that can give people a sense of touch are being developed. A number of the developments are spear headed by DARPA, an agency under the United States Defence. This is due to the major cause for the need of prosthetic limbs, which is the loss of limbs in warfare.  The technology of prosthetics holds a lot of potential, it could even give superhuman strength to those who possess it but should people be allowed to yield that much power? Could the negative implications of prosthetics outweigh the positive ones? Prosthetic limbs have no fingerprints, people could use them in crimes making it even harder to identify the culprit. People can hack into your mind control prosthetics and control your limbs. With prosthetic limbs yielding so many benefits would people in the future rather possess artificial limbs than have their original human ones?

Trans Humanism

The topic chosen by this group is very similar to previous presentation, it just covers a wider scope of prosthetics other than limbs. The first amputation was noted to be 10000 B.C.  I find it amazing that scholars were able to track back that far to mark out the first amputation. Ocular prosthetics (eye prosthetics), first started out with the usage of wood, then glass and now plastics. Other prosthetics like teeth have also developed through the years. The team then went on to talk about current prosthetics. The Ekso suit helps disabled walk and move about. The Deka Arm has the same purpose of aiding the disabled. The Deka arm is also known as Luke arm as it is inspired by the character Luke in Starwars. Next the team explored a prosthetic limb designed for athletes, the flex-foot cheetah which is modelled after the cheetah. Prosthetic limbs provide various benefits such as economical means for the disabled to support themselves, and the increase in societal contributions. Prosthetic limbs could also lead to improved efficiency in industries. This group then linked prosthetics to tans humanism, mentioning that this particular technology could branch out to other forms with the aim of lengthening human lifespan and enhancing human life. The group speculated that as technology in this field advances, it could lead to the development of transhuman. People could be adapted to live in space or adapted to other situations. If this occurs would humans be considered to be of the same species as before? As compared to the previous group this group focused more on ethical and socio-economic implications of prosthetics. They foresee that in the future developed countries with these technologies can progress further ahead economically and socially but other countries (currently developing or undeveloped countries) will once again suffer. If humans are successful in lengthening our lifespan the problem of ageing population and population increase would definitely arise. All these issues have to be addressed in order to prevent the negative implications from getting the best out of humans.

Food for the Future

This presentations talks about providing sustainable food source for future generations. Today, 870million people do not have enough food to keep them healthy. One of the solutions might just be In-vitro meat – meat grown in labs. Currently, this technology is very expensive but in the future the prices might drop. Nutrition and additional minerals can be inserted to the meat and ‘bad’ fats can be taken out or replaced. Other solutions include increasing the food supply to decrease the prices of food and an app to post or advertise leftovers so people can come and eat them instead of wasting them. I frankly think it would not be a successful app as who wants to eat someone else’s leftover, especially a stranger’s? However I feel that the main problem is not the wastage of food, it is the uneven distribution of food leading to wastage and hunger in different parts of the world. More focus should be given to the distribution of food rather than food wastage and technologies that can increase food supply.

This session was an interesting one with many predictions and speculations about the future. I would give it a 9/10.