Criador e Criatura: o papel das tecnologias da informação e comunicação no novo contexto das tecnologias emergentes

Abstract

This text will try to address the following issue: what is the role of the new ICTs in the context created by emerging technologies? The purpose of this questioning is to understand the relevance of ICTs in contemporary technological experience, in the general framework of science, technology and society studies that might be able to coherently integrate new knowledge about perception, representation and cognition. A secondary, albeit important, question presents itself, related to the clash of new perspectives of creation of hybrid systems between traditions and theoretical approaches about technique and technologies, very much present in scientific speculation and futurology: how can this evolution be understood from philosophy of technology’s viewpoint? And how does it express itself in past and present techno-utopias? Is there continuity or a fundamental break between past and present technological forms and techno-utopian formulations? These questions are related to the existing technological environment, but also with the changes that loom as a possible future or fictional image: will new technologies be able to rebuild society and political systems, under the overarching categories of generalized rationality and post humanism? Can human beings and society be administered by highly efficient artificial systems, such as those present in science fiction? Assuming that the crisis, or at least the specter of a crisis of political and social institutions, is felt as fact, what promises or risks are present in the development of emergent technologies? And what is ICT’s role in this process? Therefore, this text suggests a comprehensive view of communication and information technologies that includes its role as a mirror and driver of human ambitions for humanity and society. Given the complex interlocking of this questioning, it will be developed through a previous study of its diverse genealogy, regarding the scientific and technical knowledge embodied in ICTs and NBIC (nano-bio-info-cognitive sciences and technologies), the concepts of interaction and communication and the perspectives of philosophy of communication about these changes. This study is undertaken through the analysis of possible repercussions and new political and social questionings that may be brought to fruition by the emergence of these phenomena. The solution to this crisis might be, in democratic contexts, a convivial view of technologies – and especially ICTs – the effects of which would be an enlargement of the discussion about these. This praxis is favorable to the construction or institution of a mature relationship between individual and ICTs (and, potentially, other technologies), but also to a new understanding of the public role of ICTs and emergent technologies (NBIC technologies). In this regard, it is particularly important an ethical and philosophical landscape of the effects of the colonization of human beings by NBIC technologies and the reduction – or enframing – of the natural and social world to technicity’s determinations.