The paper discusses the effect of Information Technologies entering into the everyday life of a human, which is associated with the erosion of the identity boundaries. In respect of such technologies phenomenon, which is important for the structure and dynamics of identity, is revealed: the interpenetration of the two control systems. On the one hand, technology provides people with new means of control over the world, but at the same time we becomes controlled by the same technological expansion. Getting equipped with certain vital facilities, technologically advanced people become deprived of their privacy, so technology turns out to be the means of total control. Benefits that provide technological expansion have the reverse side. Extended opportunities to access information results in increasing the availability of an Internet user, a smart phone owner or a bank cardholder. Any private information in the network can be accessed by a third party without the user’s consent.
Personal deprivatization results in increased levels of anxiety, emergence of feelings of being controlled and feelings of insecurity. The agenda includes the issue of ethical and psychological repercussions of electronic monitoring, digitizing, and chipping via wearable implants. The paper discusses the risk of changing human living through invisible, widespread and standard technologies of control. It is shown in the paper that personal space violation is not always a result of the activities of the state, but is rather the result of misunderstanding the specifics of Information Technologies, as well as ways of using than by a human.
Realizing that technology is a not neutral issue with respect to the user is the basis for complying with ordinary ‘information hygiene’ and preventing violations of the identity boundaries.
Pages: 19-26
DOI: 10.11621/npj.2014.0203
Keywords: information technologies;
total control;
technological expansion;
privacy;
information society ;
The article discusses the problems of cyborgization and disability as a consequence of technological extensions of human. Cyborgization is the process of combining man and machine, which is accompanied by substitution of natural body functions and human mind. Technological media have become integral human prostheses, and their loss leads to disability of a human and poses a threat to his\her identity. Understanding the impact of technology on a human being a representative of the information community is supposed to begin with rejecting an approach based on their neutral attitude to a person. There are three main trends in modern technology.
The first one is the complete denial of the latter and is deemed as completely hostile to a person (neo-luddism), the second one is based on the maximum convergence of human and machine intelligence (transhumanism), and the third one is the intermediate position which dwells upon “peaceful” coexistence of human and technology, and development of mechanisms to adapt to the technological reality of the information society.
The author wonders whether M. Heidegger’s idea that technology has become a European man’s destiny and challenge of being can help us find the possibility to avoid fatal scenarios of developing relationship of extremely technologically extended human and extremely humanised machines. Finding an answer to another question whether it is possible to make a person happy with the merging of technologies is the key to understanding further development of technological extension of humans.
There can be only one conclusion: remaining an enigma for its incomprehensible nature or a dream of percieving it and submission of technological advances, the technology and a human being always remain separated.
Received: 09/12/2012
Accepted: 10/18/2013
Pages: 62-70
DOI: 2079-6617/2013.0108
Keywords: information society ;
transformation of identity;
technology;
technological expansion;
cyborgization;
disability;
neo-luddism;
transhumanism;