Tag Archives: #PHIL-231H

Foucault’s conception of the Panopticon can be very useful in trying to understand our current political universe through his description of the panopticon as a metaphor for discipline through social control. In his chapter, “Panopticism” he goes into the way in which our society is disciplined through mechanisms that control the members in it. The […]

Technological advancements will continue to grow faster than we have the moral capacity to deal with them. This does not mean we shouldn’t consider the potential consequences of technologies that may be a reality in the future. The question of technological manipulation of genetics is a very controversial topic. It is hard to have a […]

Genetic engineering is an idea that, when first hearing it, just sounds unsettling to most but it is difficult to articulate why that is. “The Case Against Perfection” written by Michael J. Sandel perfectly explains the unarticulated reasons that many people do not like the idea of using genetic enhancement. Sandel thoroughly refutes the explanations […]

The fifth prompt for blog post 5 lays out the dilemma the world faces under capitalism in the 21st century that Marcuse discusses in 1964. The system that inhibits technological advancement produces possibilities to solve non-technological problems. However, the conditions that are linked with technological advancement do not allow for these non-technological problems to be […]

In the past decade social media has largely taken control over as our main source of communication with the public sphere. Prior to the invention of social media, people interacted with people in their community through town halls and other public meeting places such as churches. After the invention of social media, much of our […]

For this post I want to analyze the episode of Black Mirror called, “Arkangel,” and connect it to what we’ve read in these past weeks. For those who have not seen the episode, I will attempt to explain it without spoiling the whole thing. The episode revolves around the very themes that we discuss in […]

As technology has advanced in the last few centuries, so has the extent to which we are under surveillance whether we are aware of it or not. Foucault suggests that we have entered into an era of a disciplinary society from around the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Exemplified by the invention of the panopticon, is […]

Heidegger gives many perplexing statements in The Question Concerning Technology, that require some time to fully unpack. One puzzling statement that I believe is highly important to understand is where Heidegger says that the standard definition of technology is correct, but is not true (Heidegger, 6). The standard definition he is referring to is the […]

For this post I want to expand on a comment I posted in reply to a classmates blog last week. I thought Charles’ post was very interesting in the way he expressed the ambiguity and sometimes confusing aspect of pursuing a definition of technology. In my comment I discussed the connection between technology and progress […]

For my first blog post for this course I think it is fitting and important to discuss the question, “What is technology? And why should anyone care how it is defined?”. After discussing the readings from both Dusek and Heidegger, I believe I have a better understanding of this complex question. Dusek talks about three […]