Humanities 110
According to Langdon Winner, technologies are, or become, much like virtual members of our society.
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According to Richard Sclove, technologies regulate social behavior in part because they are governed by physical and political laws.
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According to both Leon Kass and Lee Silver, free market liberalism, rather than centralized state government, will be one of the mechanisms by which potentially dangerous technologies will be implemented.
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After the American Civil War, American society moved from a pre-industrial society to an industrial society.
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As defined by Marxism, Ideology is an instrument of social reproduction derived from the superstructure that maintains the status quo by generating a mode of false consciousness.
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At present meat from cloned cows is legally produced, sold, and consumed in the United States.
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For Ian Barbour, positive freedom is the freedom to do something; negative freedom is the freedom from restraints
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Human cloning is not currently legal in the United States.
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Marshall McLuhan's famous statement, "The medium is the message." means the focal technical means of a message matters more than the contents of the message.
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One of Judy Wajcman's concerns regards the way in which technologies represent the reification and reproduction of gender identities and patriarchal power.
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The case of how the stirrup radically altered Western society is an example of macropolitics
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The ethical theory of John Rawls is one that holds to justice as fairness, appropriating contractarianism, liberty, and equity.
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Self-replication
According to Bill Joy, what is the modus operandi of genetic engineering and the prime danger underlying gray goo in nanotechnology?
Chimpanzees - chimps with human intelligence
According to Lee Silver, in order to advance the stage of creating "designer babies," science would first have to genetically modify ________ and hypothetically speaking, this could result in ________?
Linear-view
According to Ray Kurzweil this is a view of time and history, particularly regarding technological progress and innovation that does not take into consideration exponential trends.
Law of Accelerating Returns
According to Ray Kurzweil, it is an extension of Moore's Law stating that technological growth is exponential, applying positive feedback, paradigm shifts, and unbounded resources.
GNR
Genetics, Nanotechnology, Robotics
Reprogenetics
Lee Silver warns that if this is implemented society will see the formation of class division into the "GenRich" and the "Naturals"
Langdon Winner proposes that society incorporate these three guiding principles:
No innovation without representation. No engineering without political deliberation. No means without ends.
NBC
Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical weapons
Cloning
Scientific name is Somatic cell nuclear transfer
Mind uploading
hypothetical process of transferring or copying a conscious mind from a brain to a non-biological substrate by scanning and mapping a biological brain in detail and copying its state into a computer system or another computational device.
Johann Gutenberg
invented the printing press
Ray Kurzweil
involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electric keyboard instruments.
Technological determinism
is a reductionist theory that presumes that a society's technology drives the development of its social structure and cultural values.
Technoscience
is a term used to designate the technological and social contexts of science emphasizing that science is not only socially coded and historically situated, but also sustained and made durable by material (non-human) networks.
Actor-Network Theory (ANT)
is a term used to refer to "material-semiotic" method, which means it maps the relations between material (things/objects) and the semiotic (concepts).
Social Construction of Technology (SCOT)
is a theory within the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) that argues "technology does not determine human action, but rather, human action shapes technology;" and that "the ways a technology is used cannot be understood without understanding how that technology is embedded in its social context."
Consequentialism
is a traditional ethical theory that holds that the consequences of one's actions are the ultimate determinant of the judgments of rightness, wrongness, goodness.
Deontology
is a traditional ethical theory that holds that the morality of an action is based on the action's adherence to rule, duty, obligation.
Globalization
is the process by which the economies of countries around the world become increasingly integrated over time. Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/globalization#ixzz1gToJcc2Z
Bill Joy
one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems.
Three primary opportunities, according to Ian Barbour, in a technological society:
participation in the marketplace. Participation in political processes. Participation in work-related decisions.
Leon Kass
physician, scientist, and was chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics form 2001 to 2005.
Lee Silver
professor at Princeton University in the Department of molecular biology.
Polypotency
refers to the aspect of technology that exhibits superfluous efficacy, or their ability to be potent in many ways.
Nanotechnology
study of manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale.
Some of the reasons Leon Kass gives for the rising challenge presented to resisting human cloning include:
technological automatism, freedom, compassionate humanitarianism, and cultural pluralism and relativism.
Ruth Schwartz Cowan outlines five technological systems:
the Telegraph System, Railroad System, Petroleum System, Telephone System, Electric System
Paradigm shift
the idea used to describe a radical change in basic assumptions and perspectives within the ruling theory of science which generates a shift in scientific worldview.
Cybernetics
the study of feedback and derived concepts such as communication and control in living organisms, machines and organizations.
Commons
were traditionally defined as the elements of the environment - forests, atmosphere, rivers, fisheries or grazing land - that are shared, used and enjoyed by all.
Genetic enhancements
would allow for screening and reduction of genetic disorders and other diseases, allow for some couples the ability to have children who could not formally have any, etc..
Technological singularity
as the postulated point or short period in our future when our self-guided evolutionary development accelerates enormously (powered by nanotechnology, neuroscience, AI, and uploading) so that nothing beyond that time can reliably be conceived.
Therapeutic cloning
creation of a cloned, divided cell, in order to be used for research
Reproductive cloning
creation of a duplicated copy of a living human through somatic cell nuclear transfer.
Society
The word Society stems from the Latin roots societas, (friendly association with others); socius (companion, associate, comrade or business partner).
Technology
The word Technology comes from the Greek words techne (tool/skill/craft/art) and logos (word/reason/study).
The Industrial Revolution:
The rapid development of industry that occurred in Britain in the late 18th and 19th centuries, brought about by the introduction of machinery. It was characterized by the use of steam power, the growth of factories, and the mass production of manufactured goods
five transformative innovations that depended upon social and political encouragement and support, according to David Landes.
The water wheel, eyeglasses, the mechanical clock, printing, and gunpowder
Transhumanism
a class of philosophies of life that seek the continuation and acceleration of the evolution of intelligent life beyond its currently human form and human limitations by means of science and technology, guided by life-promoting principles and values.
Scientific Revolution:
a period when new ideas in physics, astronomy, biology, human anatomy, chemistry, and other sciences led to a rejection of doctrines that had prevailed starting in Ancient Greece and continuing through the Middle Ages, and laid the foundations of modern science.
Technological rationality
a philosophical idea postulated by Herbert Marcuse, posits that rational decisions to incorporate technological advances into society can, once the technology is ubiquitous, change what is considered rational within that society.
According to Richard Sclove, technology is
a species of social structure.
