Introductory Remarks and A Brief Overview

1. Introductory Remarks and A Brief Overview By Raj Ayyar

2. Welcome! • This is a hands on workshop, not a full dress conference. • Therefore it is important to actually think through concepts with one’s interlocutor and the audience, rather than reading out a paper aloud. • Many members of the audience may be undergraduates- it is a good idea to engage them in the discussion by interacting with them directly, encouraging them to ask questions and occasionally checking their levels of comprehension. • Let us try to keep to the time limit! • Suggestion : please reflect on take aways and possible sequels throughout the workshop.

3. Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Technology • While there are linkages between the two, the philosophy of technology is not an automatic offshoot or a given subset of Philosophy of Science • Indeed Philosophy of Technology did not come into its own in the latter half of the 20th century. • The first reference to a philosophy of technology per se is in the work of a neo-Hegelian philosopher by the name of Ernst Kapp, who wrote a book called Tecknikphilosophie. • Technology was largely discounted by Plato and Aristotle who viewed it as an adjunct to aesthetics. • It was not till Francis Bacon’s work that technology began to come into its own.

4. The positive and shadow sides of technology • ‘The reason we are on a higher imaginative level is not because we have finer imagination, but because we have better instruments, in science the most important thing that has happened is the advance in instrumental design.’ --A.N.Whitehead : Science and the Modern World • ‘Technique can never engender freedom.’ --Jacques Ellul • The sunny side of technology versus the shadow side, finds its echo in the subset of philosophy of technology known as the philosophy of cyber technology.

5. Leading Philosophers of Technology • Karl Marx and the relation between technology and modes of production. • Marcuse and Ellul are techno-pessimists framing the new technocentric world order as one that breeds totalitarianism and one dimensional living and thinking. • Habermas has a more nuanced view of instrumental rationality. • Two significant figures in the 20th century in Philosophy of Technology are Martin Heidegger and John Dewey. • For Heidegger, we are thrown into a world where our primary relations are to a world that is praxical, bodily and technological. • For John Dewey, philosophy itself is instrumental and technological. • Philosophy of technology blossomed from the 1970’s onward- figures like Don Ihde, Borgmann.

6. Philosophy of Cyber Technology- the backdrop • In as new an area of research as the philosophy of cyber technology we need to schedule many interactions and brainstorming sessions that can help us define its boundaries more clearly. • This workshop is a mere beginning in that direction. • It is a cliche to say that we live in a digitally mediated reality-- what is surprising is that there seems to be a disconnect between the practises of cyber technology and meta analysis of the same. • Many of the paradoxes and worrying questions in the philosophy of cyber technology revolves around ethics. • Thus one can ask questions about cyber surveillance and privacy, unethical data mining, the ethics of whistle blowing and the ‘googlization’ of everything.

7. The shadow side of Cyber Technology: AI and Biotechnology • There are genuine Frankenstein concerns about robotic intelligence and the human mind. • What of a machine that actually passes the Turing test with flying colors and becomes a spontaneous self programming entity capable of decisions without external programming? • The boundary between AI/ Neurocognitive science and the philosophy of mind needs exploration. • Meta ethical concerns abound in the gray areas between philosophy and biotechnology, notably in the ethics of cloning and stem cell research. • On the other hand such research could hold promise for the treatment of many so called incurable diseases and for survival in another form.

8. The shadow side of Technology: continued • What is the ‘public interest’ in the virtual domain? • Concerns about a neo-Hobbesian security discourse post 9/11. • Urgent need to classify virtual speech-acts in the social media. These don’t seem to fall in the set of face to face communicative acts described by traditional speech act theory. • Dramaturgic models of speech-acts found in ex. the work of the sociologist Erving Goffman and Marvin Carlson might work better. • Cyber alienation and the Alone Together syndrome as described by Sherry Turkle. Thus, we are connected as never before and yet paradoxically we have been so lonely in the history of humankind before.

9. Digital Solipsism and the Problem of the Other • Human touch replaced by the touch screen. • The simulation becomes more real than physical interaction. • The phubbing solipsist. • The other as an adoring mirror in one’s virtual solipsistic bubble. • The Selfie and the Killfie.

10. Conclusion • We need to put the philosophies of technology in relation to each other and start conversations between Marx, Ellul, Marcuse, Habermas, Heidegger, Dewey, speech-acts theory, in relation to cyber technology.