Reviewer

1. STS Reviewer
CHAPTER 8 THE GOOD LIFE
Aristotle’s view
- The ultimate goal of man is to flourish,
and find happiness
Martin (2012)
- defined happiness as loving one’s life
and valuing it in ways manifested by
sufficient enjoyment and a robust sense
of meaning
Achieving happiness and man’s own desire and
needs commonly gives essence for living a good
life
Moral decency, goodness, authenticity, mental
health, self-fulfillments, and meaningfulness
describes it
The concept of how good life would be, depends
in the personal decision of man
Dotson (2012)
- In our modern society, man’s personal
decisions and ideas – idea of progress,
happiness, beliefs, expectations,
attitudes and feelings – are directly
affected by convenience and benefits
brought about by science and
technology
THE CONCEPT OF BEING GOOD
- The term “good” is commonly used
interchangeably with the term “right”
Traer (2007)
- Explained that the adjectives good and
right are related in meaning, but not
synonyms
Taking the right action means correctly applying
a norm, premise, presupposition, rule, standard
or law
The term “right” reasons are being used to justify
the principle and its application
Traer (2007)
- Being good involves having the
character and personal qualities that
were justified by reason as having moral
worth
Morals refer to an individual’s own principles
regarding right and wrong
Aristotelean view
- The understandability of the good is
based on the idea of what is good for the
specific entity under consideration
Younkins (n.d)
- Expounded that Aristotle’s view states
that the good is what is good
Aristotle
- The good is what is good for purposeful,
goal-directed entities.
- He defines the good proper to human
being as the activities in which the life
functions specific to human being are
most fully realized
It acknowledges the fact that human being is
endowed with his own rational mind and free
will
Timbreza (2008) elucidated by Gripaldo (2013)
- Explained that in natural ethician’s view,
“good is that which is suitable to and
proper for human nature. Whenever it is
not proper for human nature, it is bad
and must be avoided”

2. Acting rightly means doing the right thing based
on the voice of conscience, otherwise, feeling of
guilt, self-reproach and remorse will be felt
A person, as a human being, has his own
consciousness of function, survival and means of
having the life he envisioned
The term “good” denotes a more objective
meaning of “a state or way of being”
THE GOOD LIFE
- The meaning of this term up to present
times remains vague
- Wise men of the past argued with the
nature and prerequisites of the good life
Socrates
- Declared that, “the unexamined life is
not worth living for” the idea of
worthwhile living should be filtered with
experience and vice versa
Aristotle
- Being the student of Socrates, viewed
the good life as a life of relationships
- It is the nature of man to seek good life
with and for others rather than
experiencing it by himself
- He elucidated the idea of relating the
essence of happiness to achieving well-
being and experiencing good life
In relation to psychological foundations, Steve
Mueller (2016), founder of Planet of Success
defined the term as:
- a (desirable) state that is primarily
characterized by a high standard of living
or the adherence to ethical and moral
laws. As such, the term can both be
understood as the quest for wealth,
material possessions or luxuries and the
quest to create a worthwhile, honest
and meaningful existence
Martin Heidegger
- an existentialist philosopher
- he dealt more on how we live an
“authentic life” rather dealing with
“good life”
- for him, living an authentic life means
living with deep acceptance on the
facticity of “death” and resulting to a
“life lived according to what it has clearly
decided as its meaning and purpose”
Despite the fact that philosophers dealt with
these questions for many years, modern world
tend to answer the problem of what constitutes
the good life through modern science
Various scientific disciplines have devised
empirical methods for assessing subjective
states of happiness and well-being and providing
innovative and advanced technology which
promotes happy and meaningful life for modern
society
The desire to feel satisfaction of research and
development through genetic engineering,
cloning, and the likes opened endless doors for
skeptics
The unending desire for perfection of altering
human condition and productivity, which is
somehow questionable, continues to flourish
Cybernetics and Nanotechnology
- considered to be the pillars for the
success of harmonizing the function of
machines and living organisms exposed
the idea of achieving precise and
accurate information.
Promotion of wireless technology
- revolutionized the way how humans
communicate and interact
Man’s varied ethical foundations may also
differentiate the idea of good life. Some may
define it through attaining pleasure (hedonism);

3. others may relate it to peace of mind through
minimizing desires and passions (stoicism) and
some views are based on professing moderate
pleasure, which for them, “anything that is take
in excess is bad” (epicureanism)
In short:
Epicureanism- professing moderate pleasure;
“anything that is take in excess is bad”
Hedonism- through attaining pleasure
Stoicism- peace of mind through minimizing
desires and passions
Thus, it’s up to the various intellectual traditions,
perspective or ethical preferences on what the
so called good life is
CHAPTER 9 WHEN TECHNOLOGY AND
HUMANITY CROSS
Technology
- a word with Greek roots, is defined as,
“the practical application of knowledge
especially in a particular area”
- use to define or portray the
progressions, abilities, creations,
happenings, interpretations and
knowledge of a singular group of
persons and as humans we execute
certain functions for man and society.
- External part of science and to
understand technology, academic or
internal science shall be treated like a
black box
Advantages, Disadvantages, and Limitation of
Technology
Importance of technology to humanity
- It shows that technology has profound
impact on every aspect of lives
- The way we live, communicate, and
interact changes through technology in
the different fields of education,
medicine, transportation, economy,
communication, and politics.
Advantages of technology
1. Life has become easy through science
and technology
2. Travelling has become faster than
before
3. Communication becomes easier, faster,
and cheaper
4. Innovation in technology increased the
standard of living
5. Using various technology, man become
advanced
6. The impossible have become possible
due to the progress in science and
technology
7. Science and technology made a lot of
things easy to do and comfortable for
man
Disadvantages of technology
1. Human had misused the technology and
used in damaging purpose
2. By the use of technology, man is doing
illegal things
3. New technology like mobile are
generating bad consequences on
children
4. By means of modern technology,
terrorists use it for destructive purpose
5. Many illnesses are created due to the
development of atomic energy and atom
bomb
6. Modern technology like nuclear energy
have not only affected man but it also
affected plants and other creatures
7. Natural beauty is decreasing due to the
development of modern technology

4. Limitations of technology to Humanity
Booch (2003)
- Technology has many advantages to
humanity.
- one cannot live without these
advancements but there are certain
limitations as to what humanity can
apply it to almost everything they do
- technology is the application of the laws
of the theory in science
Factors that define the limits of technology:
1. the laws of physics
2. the laws of software
3. the challenge of algorithms
4. the difficulty of distribution
5. the problems of design
6. the problems of functionality
7. the importance of organization
8. the impact of economics
9. the influence of politics
The Laws of Physics
- Software, quantum effects and
thermodynamic plays an important role
when it comes to the law of physics and
technology
- Software is a flexible medium;
specifically, the speed of light is a given,
and that fact has practical implications
for throughout systems.
- Quantum effects have theoretical and
practical limits to capacity: you cannot
store more memory than there re
numbers of elementary particles in the
universe
- Thermodynamic effects happen when
the containers that will dissipate heat,
that limits the use of technology
The Laws of Software and Algorithms
- An example of software limitations is
when there Is a given computation,
there are times we can’t do it, and there
are times we can’t afford to do it, and
sometimes we just don’t know how to
do it
- Limitations for algorithms is that there
are also certain classes of problems that
are on a reasonable algorithm: data
compression and photorealistic which
renders two such problems like
theoretical limits of compressing an
image, a waveform, or some raw stream
of bits, some degree of information loss,
hairy mathematics, some trial and error,
lack of perfect knowledge adds
complexity and compromise to our
systems.
The Difficulty of Distribution
Leslie Lamport
- an American computer scientist who
observed “a distributed system is one in
which the failure of a computer you
didn’t even know existed can render
your computer unusable”
Building distributed systems is only moderately
harder than building a non-distributed one
Peter Deutsch
- an American politician who noted that
there are eight fallacies of distributed
computing: we’d like to believe that
these are all true, but they are definitely
not
The Problems of Design
William Occam
- a 14th
century logician and Franciscan
friar stated, “entities should not be
multiplied unnecessarily”

5. Isaac Newton
- an English physicist & mathematician
projected Occam’s work into physics by
nothing
- “we are to admit no more causes of
natural things than such are both true
and sufficient to explain their
appearances”
Albert Einstein
- German-born theoretical physicist
declared that “everything should be
made as simple as possible, but not
simpler”
The Problems of Functionality
- Brooks writes: to consider the
requirements, functionality, and non-
functionality of a machine like multi-
engine aircraft, a cellular phone, or an
autonomous robot has these limitations
such as usability, survivability, and
adaptability has these unrestrained,
potentially contradictory, external
requirements are too complexity to
design
The Importance of Organization
Booch (2003)
- no person can ever understand such a
system completely
- it demands that we use a team of
developers
The Impact of Economics
- technological advancement costs money
Barry Boehm (1981)
- in his classic work on: software
engineering economics, based upon 20
years of empirical evidence, concludes
that the performance of a project can be
predicted according to the following
equation:
Performance = (complexity**process) *
team * tools
Where:
Performance means effort or time
Complexity means volume of human-
generated code
Process means maturity of process and
notation
Team means skill set, experience and
motivation
Tools means software tools automation
From this equation, we can observe that
the complexity of a system can either be
amplified by a bad process or dampened
by a good process
The Influence of Politics
- investment in software development is
the key to success
- political organization can influence its
progress and its limitations
- great things could have provided if the
influence in politics are on a positive side
HUMANITY
- human race, which includes everybody
on earth
- a term for the qualities that makes us
human such as the capacity to love, to
sympathize, to be creative and not to be
a robot or alien
- from the Latin word humanitas which
means “human nature, kindness”
- it comprises all the humans, also refer to
the kind of emotions humans frequently
feel for each other
- when people talk about humanity, it is
talking about the people as a whole
- when people do wrong things, it
challenges your faith in humanity

6. Human race or humaneness
- quality of life or state of being, its
attributes and qualities of being a
human being
- humankind is highly dependent on
technology
Sagan (2004)
- today is a period where he called it
“technological adolescence”
- he is worried that human being will likely
to mature fast enough to escape the
destruction by the own hands of human
beings
The two roads to take in humanity are ascension
of all mankind and the other is a complete and
total destruction
ETHICAL DILEMMAS
1. real-time satellite surveillance video
2. astronaut bioethics (of colonizing Mars)
3. wearable technology
4. state-sponsored hacktivism and “soft
war”
5. enhanced pathogens
6. non-lethal weapons
7. robot swarms
8. artificial life forms
9. resilient social-ecological systems
10. brain-to-brain interfaces
Soft war
- concept used to explain rights and duties
of insurgents (and even terrorists)
during armed struggle
- incorporates tactics other than armed
force to achieve political ends
Cyber war and hacktivism
- could be tools of soft war, through
certain ways by states in inter-state
conflict, as opposed to isolated
individuals or groups (like Anonymous)
Garret Hardin (1968)
- “tragedy of the commons” in which
many individuals making rational
decisions based on their own interest
White house suspended research on October 17,
2014 that would enhance the pathogenicity of
viruses such as influenza, severe acute
respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East
Respiratory Syndrome (MERS)
Non-Lethal Weapons:
- Laser missiles, blinding weapons, pain
rays, sonic weapons, electric weapons,
heat rays, disabling malodor ants, as well
as the use of gases and sprays in both
the military and domestic police forces