The Rise of Technology and the March of Freedom

The last two chapters of Natural Born Cyborgs sum up the basic point that Clark is making. In his example of the scientists at the University of Warwick, he was able to present both points of view and also explain why the advantages of the technological advance of our society outweigh, and possibly cancel out the risks. Fortunately, he does acknowledge some of the complexity regarding this on page 179, "We really do need to pay closer attention to the many ways in which new technologies may impact our social relations, and our sense of ourselves and of others." It seems that through our technological advances we have the potential both to build up and to break down our society. We could descend, as John Pickering fears into a society of people that devalue themselves and those around them, or facilitate more developed cooperation within our society. My estimation is that we will see both evolving among our populace, we will eventually see the traditional conflict between development and deconstruction fought through the medium of whatever technology is developed. There will be governments (including our own at some point in time) to insert themselves within the private confines of individuals as occurred in the 1950s during the Red Scare. However, their will also be those that will use the informative capacity of the internet (or whatever succeeds it) to crush the oppressive regimes and warlords who enslave people through force of arms, by bombarding them with a force of truth (just as Radio-Free Europe did during the Cold War).



My estimation is that we will require an informed citizenry that can communicate and mobilize. The good news is that the advances of this technology only makes this easier.