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Is Technology Innocent?

Sami-ud-DinRiphah International

University Islamabad

Sami.uddin@Riphah.edu.pk

00923335952403

05/01/2023 3Technology robs children of their innocence in many overt and covert ways.

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Technology in the 21st CenturyRole and Importance

• Technology performs actions in the world that are part of the processes and outcomes of human affairs.

• Some actions are optional for the operator; others are mandated by the technology, or perhaps by other technical systems to which the system in question is answerable.

• Some human actions can be performed without the participation of technology, but for pragmatic reasons are not. Other human actions require the participation of technologies.

• Technologies thereby respond to action, intervene with their own acts, make requests for action, receive requests for action, make demands on others, and receive demands from others. (as we observe in video games)

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Technology in the 21st CenturyRole and Importance

• Technology might be held to account for its actions against instrumental criteria which compare the technology’s actions with human will for instrumental action.

• Where human will or human purposes are not faithfully executed by a technology, the technology might be held to be deficient in some way – to be slow, inefficient, faulty, costly, liable to error, difficult to use, and so forth.

• Technology not only acts to implement the will of the operator or the designer. Rather, the technology facilitates the will of the operator and designer. 1

1. B. Nardi, Ed., Context and Consciousness: Activity Theory and Human Computer Interaction. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1995, pp. 17-44.

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Role of Clinical Technology• Clinical technology can be declared as electronic version of the patient

where patient history, medical tests, previous prescription and other necessary documents are held by it before the doctor. Clinical technology on one hand facilitates both the doctor and the patient while on the other hand becomes hurdle and an obstacle between patient and the doctor and may become an annoying factor that badly shape the behavior of a doctor especially in the case where the doctor or the operator/ lab technician does not know the proper use of the technology or where the available technology is outdated and ill-functioning.

• Clinical technology can make the doctor a better doctor, by checking the varieties of drug inter-actions, or suggesting the current best practice for a treatment.

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Being without technologyis unethical

• Indeed, it is now quite likely to be unethical as well as impractical for a doctor to practice without a computer, an accountant to practice without a spreadsheet, or a salesperson to practice without a mobile telephone, a lab technician without a micro-scope, and a university teacher without multimedia.

• The stronger claim that humans and technologies act and co-shape one another’s actions in performance.2

2. D.G. Johnson and T.M. Powers, “Computers as surrogate agents,” in Ethicomp 2004: Challenges for the Citizen of the Information Society. Proc. Seventh Int.l Conf., T.W. Bynum, N. Pouloudi, S. Rogerson, and T. Spyrou, Eds. (Syros, Greece), Apr. 14 to 16, 2004. vol. 2. Syros, Greece: Univ. of the Aegean, 2004, pp. 422-435.

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Proponents’ Arguments

1- Technology is not human:Technology is not human. A priori, only humans may be held to

be morally accountable for their actions. 2- The dumb instrument argument.

The actions of technology may be the immediate cause of harm, but the Technology is created and operated by humans. The

creators and operators are responsible for the action of the Technology, not the Technology itself.

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3- The free will argumentTechnology is deterministic. That is, it has no will, and it is not free to choose its actions. Without this freedom there can be no moral responsibility.

4- The right mind argument Technology has no knowledge of the wider circumstances in which they act, or of the consequences of their actions, and cannot reasonably be expected to have an awareness of these contexts or consequences. To be held accountable for the

consequences of an action, a computer system must have the capacity to foresee these consequences.

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5- The dilution of responsibility argument• Technology is ill-defined, is not a discrete entity, has no clear boundaries

in space and time, and its extensive constituent elements and boundaries are not clearly evident. Responsibility that is located everywhere is located nowhere.

technology is an instrument that faithfully translates the instructions of its designers and operators into action

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When there was no technologeeeeeeee…..

• In primitive societies, children learn from natural cycles of life.

• They watch adults manifest food from the ground, observe how usable goods are fashioned from raw materials, and watch how other provisions are made for basic needs and enjoyment.

• They listen to stories at mealtime and ceremonial gatherings, which are told by elders who care about maintaining standards for the survival of their community. 3

3. The Discovery of Self, page 125

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Cartoons shape our Children’s

psychology

• Children who watch cartoons and other programs on television, and who play video games become enamored with fast paced, highly stimulating, sexualized, and violent material.

• Children become physically and chemically addicted to excitement and the hormones cursing through their brains and bodies; they develop no realistic grasp on the threat of danger.

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If parents and teachers

want to mend• If parents and caregivers reinforce the

notion, children may come to understand on an intellectual level that such forms of entertainment are not reality but merely fantasy. However, on a much more influential emotional level, children do not comprehend this difference.

• To bring them back from the distant place sometimes becomes difficult for parents and teachers.

• So do not let your children to go distantly from the position you want by watching fantastic cartoons and dramas.

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Consequences of taking children to unnatural levels of stimulation

• At such levels, children lose or never develop their own natural motivation and ability to create, explore their personal and unique Inner Worlds.

• Children listen to the still soft voice within them, and they surrender to a larger world of spiritual mystery.

• Life for such children becomes a quest for external stimulation, instant gratification, entertainment, and sensual fulfillment, and the more the better.

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Psychological demerits of Cartoons Watching

• Cartoons, movies, sports, and news programs expose young minds to so much violence, out-of-context sex, and a general lack of compassion.

• Winning for thrills, conquering, and annihilating become the coveted goal and grand prize.

• Hypnotized by mass media, children learn to get one over on the next guy, to win at the expense of all else, to conform to a projected image, to consume, to manipulate, or retreat into their own shells.

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Excessive use of technology by children• Through technology, children are given an acceptable

way to avoid contact with others, further denying needed interactions that would teach everyone involved how to handle their emotions and energy, refine their communication skills, and generally manage their energy.

• In the confines of their own little high-tech worlds, safely buffeted from bothering mom and dad, children are now being seen and told they are good and well behaved for appearing docile and compliant.

• Thus their social and coping skills are diminished.

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The world of High Tech Children

• This loss of innocence, imagination, and skills lead to a fragmentary understanding of love between man and woman.

• Since people are attracted to others of parallel consciousness and frequency, high tech children are drawn to similar fragmented beings who have never developed an understanding of who they are.

• Two half beings do not unite to make a whole being. They just know they need something they do not have and want to get it by any shortcut method at their disposal. Their ―love is in reality only an addiction, a need for gratification from an external source.

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High Tech Leads to Social Disintegration

• Without self-awareness, discipline, and skills, a man and woman will not be able to live harmoniously together in their full aliveness.

• Witness how so many couples begin with romance and passionate love, similar to an enjoyable movie, but after a few months, end up taking so much from the other or taking their partner for granted.

• They are not acting out of love anymore, but out of personal egotistic gratification. Love gives. Taking sucks the vitality out of a relationship.

• Unconditional love must be the foundation and the building blocks of daily living within any relationship or it will disintegrate.4

4. The Discovery of Self, page 125

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Technology is Morally not

Neutral

• A technology is not morally neutral. • It embodies a set of values, a framework and an

ideology. • Technologies include intellectual technologies,

such as cataloging and indexing, and software technologies, such as search engines, meta-searchers and subject directories on the Internet.

• Search engines have intrinsic properties that make them inherently and irredeemably flawed, because they attempt to infer intellectual properties, such as the meaningful content of a website, from physical properties.

• Search engines rely primarily on query term location and query term frequency, sometimes boosted by other computable factors, such as link popularity.

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Technology is Morally not Neutral

• These pseudo-intellectual technologies, such as search engines and meta-searchers, are not morally neutral and how they incline users to unethical use. We now have new intellectual technologies coming in ascendancy: information architecture, knowledge management and usability engineering. Now is the time to raise questions about their (non-) neutrality.5

5. Thomas J. Froehlich: Implications of the Non-neutrality of such Intellectual Technologies as Information Architecture and Knowledge Management

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Kinds of Information Technology

1.Texting2.Use of cell phones3.Social networks such as Facebook and My

Space4.Twitter and related offshoots5.Email

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Kinds of Information Technology

6. Gaming7. Instant messaging8. Internet9. Virtual worlds such as Second Life10.Web 2.0 to include items such as blogs and wikis11.Skype and other offshoots

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Harmful Effects of Information Technology

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1- Safety Concerns• Little probably needs to be said about the safety concerns of

electronic media. The use of cell phones while operating a motor vehicle, for example, has reached crisis proportions.

• Especially concerning is the use of texting while driving. The Capital Traffic Police and NHA have banned using Mobile for texting or calling while driving.

• The new research has found that when drivers text, they are 23 times as likely to be involved in a crash or close call.

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2- Privacy

• Through modern information technologies, we are indeed visible to the whole world.

• How will this information about us be used? The question is that will it be used to control or empower us? We know, for example, that advertisers use information gathered about us to target products and services.

• What about the ethical status of Machine Readable Passport (MRP) and Smart Card?

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3- Environmental Pollution

• High speed Music on the roads and streets has polluted the healthy environment of our surroundings.

• Similarly the use of loudspeakers in Masajid for un-necessary movements except Azan and Juma Khutba has disturbed the quietness of our streets.

• The smoke emitting from the silencers of vehicles and from the huge industries has polluted our healthy and natural environment.

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4- The discourteous use of Electronic, Print and Social Media

• We all have our own stories about being interrupted by others’ discourteous use of Electronic, Print and Social media. It seems that no place is sacred anymore from these distractions. You can go to restaurants, Masajids, sports events, Wedding Ceremonies, and even public bathrooms, and see people disrupt what used to be private occasions.

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5- Relationships• As we communicate more and more electronically, a related concern

is that we will lose valuable, face-to-face, communication skills.• A new research study is found that face-to-face interaction skills are

terribly important to executive success. Using sensors to measure these interactions, the researchers underscored their results with the following comment:

• “We think face time with colleagues is vital, as much as 2.5 times as important to success as additional access to information.”

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6- Electronic communication causes Losing Face to Face skills

• The concern about losing face-to-face skills is especially true with young people who may never have had the opportunity to have developed these skills in the first place. Are we breeding a population of young people that will feel more comfortable communicating electronically, and therefore, lose the ability to be effective in face-to face encounters?

• Face Reading and concluding intentions of humans playing very important role in organizational behavior…… what about electronic interaction in which parties are thousands of miles away from each others? 6

6. Peter S. DeLisi 2008, Santa Clara University: The Harmful Effects of Social Networks and Other Electronic Media

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7- High Tech vs. Low Tech People

• According to a new research studies, people who are heavy media multitaskers do not pay attention, cannot control their memory or cannot switch easily from one job to another as adeptly as low-tech people who concentrate on one job at a time.

• An article in the September, 2009 issue of the Harvard Business Review, “Death by Information Overload,” cites a study by Microsoft researchers indicating that people took an average of nearly 25 minutes to return to a work task after an email interruption.

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8- Overloaded information causes anxiety

• Human beings have limited ability to absorb information before feeling the effects of information anxiety. Therefore they should not be overloaded by information…….. Overloading information causes different kinds of anxiety.

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9- Information Fatigue Syndrome

• According to Lewis, “This term refers to the data smog that we encounter daily that ultimately interferes with our sleep, concentration, and even affects our immune system.”

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10- Internet Affective Disorder (IAD)

• Internet addiction generally include spending a lot of time on the Internet, an inability to cut back on usage and symptoms of withdrawal that include boredom, anxiety or irritability after a few days of not going online.

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11- Facebook Users’ Survey

• a survey conducted on 4,000 Facebook users. Of this population, nearly 60% reported that they checked posts in the bathroom, 15% checked it in Classes, and 11% had hidden the fact that they were checking it from spouse or other family member.

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12- TV Dramas and Indian films

• The PTV dramas are not representing our culture. These dramas are promoting elite class culture in the country. Similarly Indian/English films have destroyed our culture. Our children are using Hindi words in their conversations.