Technology is closely related to very popular and positive imaginaries (Progress, Modernity, Science). This is why we tend to consider technology a good thing or, at least, a neutral thing. Nevertheless, there have been numerous critiques of technology in several fields. As we can watch in BM 1.3, we use lots of technologies which invite us to measure others as the result of their own visible actions, without paying attention to the fact that they are happening now as impossible selves. Any discourse that attempts to reduce us to a completely enlightened explanation (naturalism, nietzschean or moralist accounts) fails and reveals us as impossible selves.

1. Professor: Jorge Martínez Lucena

2. Transhumanism “is an international, cultural and intellectual movement with
an eventual goal of fundamentally transforming the human condition by
developing and making widely available technologies to greatly enhance
human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities. (…) They predict
that human beings may eventually be able to transform themselves into
beings with such greatly expanded abilities as to merit the label
"posthuman".” (Wikipedia)
Transhumanism & Human
Enhancement

3. Technology is closely related to very popular and positive imaginaries
(Progress, Modernity, Science).This is why we tend to consider technology a
good thing or, at least, a neutral thing.
Technology and Modernity

4. Nevertheless, there have been numerous critiques of technology in several
fields:
• During the Industrial Revolution, there were the luddites, a group of
British workers who, between 1811 and 1816, rioted and destroyed textile
machinery in the belief that such machines would impoverish workers.
Technology and Some Critiques

5. • In literature and cinema, we can detect some sci-fi and horror myths
which reflect the unconscious fears of modern people. Frankenstein,
Terminator and The Matrix are just three simple and well-know examples
of how we imagine futures where machines have become a huge
problem. Skynet and the Matrix are more powerful and intelligent than
humanity. Frankenstein proves that humanhood can be reduced to a
machine, to assembled limbs, according to one naïve naturalistic point of
view.
Technology and Some Critiques

6. • In Communicology, we find certain epistemological
critiques of the fact that technology is something
neutral. Here we can cite Marshal MacLuhan when
he famously said “the medium is the message” or
Neil Postman when he said his “embedded in every
tool is an ideological bias, a predisposition to
construct the world as one thing rather than
another“ (Technopoly:The Surrender of Culture to
Technology, 1993: 13)
• Neil Postman goes on to write, “new technologies
alter the structure of our interests: the things we
think about. They alter the character of our
symbols: the things we thing with. And they alter
the nature of community: the arena in which
thoughts develop” (Postman, 1993: 20)
Technology and Some Critiques

7. “The Entire History of you” is framed in a world which is very similar to ours.
There, the grain technology is widely used. It consists of a kind of chip that
people install behind their right ear and that allows them to register every
moment of their lives. What they see with their own eyes is automatically
saved in this artificial hidden mini-hard-disk whose information they can
revise, screen and share at any time.
The plot of BM 1.3 shows how this technology could have a big impact on
love relationships.
Technology and Humanhood in BM 1.3

8. The Grain allows people to have an extremely precise memory of what they
have lived.This seems to be roughly realistic.
So, in this regard, Liam, with his grain, becomes the witness of the truth,
because he investigates Fi and finds out about her undeniable unfaithfulness
thank to this device.
Realism or the Ideology of the Grain

9. Nevertheless, it could be argued that Liam neglects certain data regarding
his relationship with and the nature of his wife, that cannot be screened as
easily as the proof of her cheating.
When he is watching past videos of Fi at the end of the episode, perhaps he
is trying to discover blatant images of her real love for him. He is only
looking in the past for something that could also be in the present.
Realism or the Ideology of the Grain

10. Does the inconsistency of her love for him mean that her love is necessarily
false?
In any case, the technology of the Grain seems to focus Liam’s attention on
what can be viewed (irrational impulse to watch) and on the narrative
inconsistency of her faithfulness.There doesn’t seem to be room for the
present or the future of the relationship.The whole of the relationship is
charged with the unbearable weight of the past moral narrative
inconsistency.
Technology, Memory and the Past

11. However, maybe there is a possibility of narrative consistency for this love
relationship if we assume that the inconsistency of Fi is perfectly compatible
with a true love for Liam, and that Liam loves Fi as she is.
It would mean that our self is more than the sum of our past actions. The self
is always a novel event irreducible to our own actions, traits, or our
submission to ubiquitous lines of powers.
MoreThan a Narrative Self

12. In this sense, forgiveness, for example, is erased as a possibility. The
addictive search of visual evidences restricts the gaze, and doesn’t allow
Liam to forgive in a present unavoidably marked by the past which cannot
take into account this “novel” and “eventual” self that happens, that we all
are, and that is always a possibility of unpredictability in our narrative.
In other words, if we experience our lives as dramatic, it is because there is
something invariably new in us that exceeds any possible discourse solely
based on our past narratives.
Openess to Impossible

13. • Google Glasses? (More future than
present)
• Smart-phones? (Selfies, Impulse to
photograph differents moments of our
lives)
• Social Networks? (Historical profile)
• RealityTV? (Irrational impulse to
watch)
In any case, we use lots of technologies
which invite us to measure others as the
result of their own visible actions, without
paying attention to the fact that they are
happening now as impossible selves,
because any discourse that attempts to
reduce us to a completely enlightened
explanation (naturalism, nietzschean or
moralist accounts) fails and reveals us as
impossible selves.
HaveWe Got Grains?

14. Transhumanism has two pretentions:
1) Human Enhancement: Nobody can deny
that there are illnesses or disabilities which
can be removed or alleviated by
technologies.
2) Post-Humanity: If we cannot delimit
perfectly what humanhood is, to say that
we are going to go beyond the boundaries
of what a human being currently is, seems
to be ideologically adventurous, at the very
least.
AreWe Going to Be Post-Humans?

15. According to what we have watched in BM 1.3 we should take into account
that not every technology leads us to human progress in the sense of an
integral human enhancement.
In this regard, we should warn that technology can help us in certain ways
and, at the same, can close our eyes to certain aspects that machines cannot
see, assess, or measure as the human condition itself.
Real Human Enhancement

16. • If we want to enhance ourselves, we should realize that Skynet is just a
fictive computer which conveys a fear we have always had since the
beginning of Modernity.
• We tend to associate technology with the future but, paradoxically, it can
isolate us in the past.
• The best way to face a fear is to try to shed light on the thing that
frightens us. We should do that in a enlightening and wide way, without
hiding the traits of humanhood (as this perpetual and mysterious novelty)
that our most popular discourses cannot explain thoroughly, but which
are stubbornly present in our experience.
A Path toWalk