Author:
A. T. Nuyen
Affiliation:
National University of Singapore, Singapore
Keyword(s):
Art of living, Bio-power, Cyberage, Cyberpunk, Cyborg, Foucault, Harraway, Heidegger, Leary.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Social and Legal Issues
;
Society, e-Business and e-Government
;
Web Information Systems and Technologies
Abstract:
The World Wide Web, the Internet and other cyber technologies have changed the way we live and work. In
addition to such technologies, and interwoven with them, are biological technologies, such as those in the
areas of cloning and genetic engineering. Some of us welcome the technological age, some are hostile to it,
most are ambivalent, and hardly anyone approaches it with the Socratic question “How should one live?”
The context in which Socrates asks this question, in The Republic, is different, but in the context of modern
technology, electronic as well as biological, the significance of the question remains the same: Not a trifling
matter as Socrates puts it. Indeed, the new technologies have changed the way we conduct ourselves so
drastically, and the way we think about ourselves so fundamentally, that Socrates’ question must now be
asked with urgency. In what follows I offer some reflections on how one should live with the new
technologies, drawing on the works of Fouc
ault, Heidegger, Leary and Haraway.
(More)