We discussed last time in class if violence in movies promote violence in children. In my opinion violence occurs within the people or within the society the children live in. Children see violence on daily basis and in my opinion movie makers do what people are interested in and they make violence movies according to the preference of the watchers. So for me movies shouldn’t be blamed for children’s violence, and that the society is responsible.

How can people with various and different cultures exist in AUC which is relatively a small environment. Imagine the number and diversity of cultures that would exist in Egypt, what is mind blowing about this is that with all these different cultures and ethnic backgrounds people are able to live together in a way.

Last class, when we talked about our relationships with our technological devices mainly mobile phones. This enlightened me about several things, it gave me the opportunity to think how my life would look like if I do not have a mobile phone, or in other words how mobile phones affected people’s lives severely in many different ways; by listening to each of my colleagues talking about their relationship with their mobile phones. Nearly everyone of us agreed that they can not live without their mobile phones and it is not a bandage, it a necessity that without it we can not live. This is also something that I was not aware of, as I have never though that a device could be a necessity in my life; but, after listening how my colleagues describe how a whole day was spent without using their phones, and how they felt so lost. This made me aware of how i can not live with a mobile phone too nowadays. However, it would be a lot better if I could learn how to manage my daily life without using it, or even learn how not to be fully dependent on just a device.

In class, we were assigned the task of writing a paragraph about how dependent we were on a technological object. Naturally, just like anyone else would, I chose my phone. According to the my Iphone’s screen time update, I spend an average of 7 hours daily on my phone. Whenever I see this notification, I find myself wondering, “How is that I spend 7 hours of my day looking at a screen?” However, once I began analysing my actions, I found that my life does truly revolve around my phone, as for me it became a priority rather than a luxury. In the morning, it is not my Mom or Dad that wakes me up, but it is my phone. After 5 minutes of scrolling through social media, I use my phone for background music as I am getting ready, such as when I am dressing up or brushing my teeth. As soon as I get ready to go to university, my phone tells me which path to take and the amount of time I’ll need; this becomes crucial in times of exams or conferences. Once I arrive to university, my phone becomes more essential than ever, as it keeps my company whenever I am not in the mood for real-life humans. At this particular mood, my phone entertains me through the use of various apps, or by enabling me to contact my abroad friends. Therefore, it is no question that my phone must always be on me, or else I’ll panic about losing it, which is something that I certainly cannot handle. Due to how reliant I am on my phone, I sometimes favour it or trust what its telling me over other people’s words, as I find it much more beneficial. For instance, my phone can answer as many questions as I want about any topic, guide me to locations, as well as it can tell me the type of clothing to have on for the day by checking the weather. As well, my phone happens to know me better than most people do, as it contains almost all information about my personal life, such as my: contacts, pictures, preferences, and dislikes. Therefore, by reflecting on the type of relationship that exists between my phone and I, I can wholeheartedly state that it has become a replacement for real-life humans. My phone wakes me up, provides me with information, knows my likes and dislikes, as well as it spends time with me when I am alone, so what stops it from taking on the role of a human? Does that mean that as humans, we no longer have the tendency to survive without the possession of a phone?

Throughout the course, most of us argued that we, humans, are superior to any existing thing in this universe. Our main reason for why we are the best is that we think. Such a belief is a result of philosophical accumulations that supported the superiority of humans, and these philosophies manifested during the renaissance and enlightenment period. Descartes, who is famous for saying “I think. Therefore, I am,” concluded through his search for solutions for world problems that the mind is the master of the existence. His philosophy was widely accepted and spread because it was introduced to solve the chaos Europe was living during the Reformation period in the sixteenth century. It also was considered as an incentive for capitalism, and other philosophers such as Kant accepted it. This philosophy has been affecting humanity in many aspects since then. On the philosophical side, many people consider the human as a complicated machine that once science and engineering could achieve its complexity, humans’ age would end: either we would extinct such as dinosaurs or evolve, and from here transhumanism and posthumanism were introduced. On the practical side, the philosophy of “mind is the master of the universe” led to the subject-object base of people’s dealings with each other and with their surroundings. For instance, noble people utilized machines and people for their own profit with the rise of capitalism and its accompanying mass production and consumption. Labors were treated inhumanely because they were considered as less intelligent and weaker, so they were supposed to work for the benefit of others as what happened in the cotton mills of London. Other similar examples are slavery, colonialism, world wars. Nowadays, we justify doing experiments on animals and manipulate the environment because we are the masters on earth. Even when talking about any universal threat such as global warming or aliens, we discuss it from the point of the possible consequences on “humans”. With such belief, we will always act from the perspective of “we” and “them”, and we will keep comparing our intelligence with animals and robots. Moreover, we will continue doubting our existence when we get to have intelligent robots and become very afraid because we think we will be inferior to them and would experience what others suffered for us, and that is already what we see in cyborgs or robot movies.

Last class I was reminded by something Richard Feynman said in his biography. Richard Feynman is a theoretical physicist who was a friend of Einstein and worked with him on the atomic bomb. He was also very critical of some research practices carried out by psychoanalysts of his time.

In his biography “Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman!“, Feynman says that there’s a fundamental difference between how psychoanalysts develop theories and how someone like Einstein or Oppenheimer develops theories. He says that
psychoanalysts sometimes would come up with the same explanation for two very different scenarios. For example, (I can’t remember the example he gave but it’s similar) he says that psychoanalysts could look at someone who is abusive and say that this is because he wasn’t given much attention or was beaten when he/she was young, but also the could look at another abusive person and attribute that behavior to being given excessive attention and being spoiled children. On the other hand, the scientific method says that for something to be considered true you first have to make a prediction , then run tests to see whether your prediction is true of false, not observe some phenomenon and come up with a “logical” reason for it.

To take this back to our course I have decided that in my ethnography I’ll carry out at least two interviews with each interviewee. The first interview will be the one where I’ll ask questions about my topic of choice and investigate their reasons and “norms and values”. Then before the second interview I would develop my “theory”. In the second interview I would ask questions that I have predicted the answer to based on my theory. If my predictions were true then I would take my theory to also be true

The interplay between humans and technology kept evolving until it reached what we call now “hybrid Human-Machine”, which simply reflects how organic human bodies are interacting with automata either to overcome a specific disability or to save a person from a decrease in his lifespan. These hybrids mainly exist because of the recent medical inventions such as the pacemaker and the cochlear, they are both inserted inside the body to improve the function of a specific organ; and here comes the most controversial part, would humanity consider people with such implants as cyborgs? Theoretically they are, because hybrid humans have organic life with cyber technology. Moreover, in the case of heart patients their heart beats are practically controlled by an implanted device, and to accommodate any changes in their life style they have to visit their technician for some technical amendments in the device. The list goes one, however, our main concern is about the point at which such dominant inventions will reach in the future. Are we expecting something to control our thoughts or connect us all together through an embedded network? if we reached this level of automation such controversial topics will be finalized and we would easily be able to declare ourselves as cyborgs since the only thing that differentiates us from machines will be controlled by a specific device or a network. I certainly believe that we should set a limit for these technological advances in order to lose the essence of being human.

in last week’s reading, the interviews mentioned that some patients felt hacked because the pacemaker didn’t make them feel as normal as they imagined it would be. this disability is crippling to the patients, and they were told that the pacemakers would make there life’s normal not just sustained, which i get why they would feel hacked. one of the patients described there level of activity in general as very high paced and the pacemaker couldn’t keep up with his level of original level of activity. another patient felt as the pacemaker level of activity couldn’t make his heart rate rise because it didn’t recognize the level of activity he was performing. i think because of how small the object is and how it doesn’t really affect small parts of their activity, these patients didn’t recognize that they had a disability in the first place, as for example a person who is physically disabled would feel constantly that he disable, because he can easily recognize it very fast, and always be conscious about it and understand how he should attend to it. for a person with a pacemaker it is harder to recognize your disability because everything else is in tact nothing to be conscious about or to recognize in non fatal position to their own disability.

For starter, I would like to say that reading about current movement like “posthumanism” and “transhumanism” is exciting! exciting when i think about a term that google auto correct does not consider a word yet, exciting that i am thinking of an issue but i have no actual solid proof to direct my train of thoughts to what is more likely to happen in the future. In other words, new is exciting!

While reading “Cochlear Implantation, Enhancements, Transhumanism and Posthumanism: Some Human Questions”, there was one thing that caught my attention? while we have been previously discussing in class whether we should consider cyborgs as humans and give them rights and citizenship? and whether we should consider humans with technological implantation as cyborgs or human-cyborgs? this piece drives us to a new question which is, will non-enhanced humans be considered humans in a world where the ‘normal’ is to be enhanced?

The article already suggests that moral enhancement will soon follow after physical enhancement, and it also discuss issues regarding identity and the community and how parents might be to blame if they prevent their children from the ‘advantage’ of being technologically enhanced! how these non-enhanced individual might face social difficulties and maybe even discrimination (discrimination is mostly my driven conclusion, not necessary mentioned in the article).

The word “human” in general has always refereed to something more than what we are, an open notion in a way. Darwin’s theory of Evolution is basically all about how humans adapted to human earth, and we came to be as we are. There are other theories about how humans are connected to their environment and ecology and in continuous change. Could it be just a matter of adaptation before we all lose the ability to even survive without some sort of cyborg enhancement?

The documentary we watched about the boys that worked in the Greg’s factory showed that humans are becoming slaves not to only the people that they work for, but tat humans started to become slaves for the machines. because their lives depended on the machines, when the machines made a sound during the night time, they had to wake up and see what is wrong, when the machine wasn’t working they also stopped their work. so basically during that time, worker’s lives depended on the machines. in my opinion not only the workers, also their masters because if the machines got ruined they will gain no more profit and their money is going to decrease.