Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
social organization and cultural life arose as a consequence of the tool-
making, tool-using abilities of Homo sapiens.
A common moral and political lesson from the homo faber, “tool-
making animal,” theory was that the projects of modern technology—
including nuclear weapons, the space program, and computers—were
manifestations of humanity's most basic urges. As celebrated in numer-
ous World's Fair exhibits, television documentaries, and the famous ape
scene in Stanley Kubrick's movie
2001: A Space Odyssey
, tools make us
who we are. So prominent was this point of view in the 1950s and 1960s
that the skeptical Lewis Mumford chose to attack it directly in the first
volume of
The Myth of the Machine
, subtitled
Technics and Human
Development
.
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Mumford argued that the development of symbols, lan-
guage, and ritual both preceded the contribution of material tools and
was far more influential in generating the intellectual, economic, and
political accomplishments of human beings in prehistoric and historical
times than anything tools had made possible. The myth of the machine,
in his view, was the worshipful obsession with technology, a pathologi-
cal obsession that deflects people from recognizing other, more hopeful
dimensions of human creativity.
Although toolmaking animal conceptions stress the centrality of tech-
nology in human evolution and history, the underlying assumption is that
humans are still distinct from the tools they fabricate and employ. Our
instruments are available to us, ready to be used when needed. And cer-
tainly, the conditions of their use changes the activities and productivity
of individuals and social groups, affecting how different populations
flourish and how power is distributed among them. But this viewpoint
takes for granted that a firm, reliable boundary exists between humans
as organisms and tools regarded as material aids to their activity.
A second idea that has often been used to frame discussions of humans
and artificial means—one that is greeted in some quarters as an impor-
tant advance beyond simple notions about tools and humans—is the
claim that technologies are powerful extensions of human organs.
Although it had been suggested by earlier thinkers, this perspective
attracted considerable attention in the late 1960s and early 1970s as
the writings of Marshall McLuhan gained a widespread audience.
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An
obvious appeal of the extensionist position is that it finds power for
individuals within the very complexes of electronic media and other
