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is technology, overall, serving to divide us, or unite us, as humans?

I think, in reference to the current and following generations, technology may be uniting us in a superficial, physical way and dividing us psychologically. There is no doubt that with the advent of modern technology, from transportation (airplanes, trains, etc) to communicative (the internet, increased telephone tech) that more people are in contact with other people than in the past. But from a sociological perspective, I think children are raised to value deep and intimate communication less. Now we can make hundreds of friends on the internet, talk to them at our own leisure, and when the conversation runs dry, ending it is as easy as stopping replying to an instant messaging window. What consequences this might bring, I'm not sure really.
 
I'm not shy about the fact that I'm a technological optimist. However, I think that the human race needs time to acclimate itself to the technological era before it becomes a force for good in people's lives. After all, modern science is a very new invention -- we still need time to learn how to use it.
 
The rate of change in the average Westerner's lives in the field of "techne" is increasing exponentially My primary concern is that we need to do the Ethical and Moral thinking now, so that we are pre-equipped with the concepts and axioms that will us to give a response to that exponential change.
 
Eventually we'll have to change our biological make up and integrate ourselves further with technology. However humans remain divided in their social order. Such a divide as rich to poor could pose huge problems as we attempt to integrate our technology with ourselves. I'm a techno-optimist insofar as we mature to a point in which we can equally cope with the problems that lay ahead. As of right now, we are no where near (far, far, far, beyond) acceptable maturity that our technology requires.
 
Roger&Me said:
I'm not shy about the fact that I'm a technological optimist. However, I think that the human race needs time to acclimate itself to the technological era before it becomes a force for good in people's lives. After all, modern science is a very new invention -- we still need time to learn how to use it.
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Any man who declares he has a wooden soul is not likely to be shy about anything tho is he Roger ? =D
 
The Ethical Chasms that await the first transhumanists

I have noted a theme on BL recently which is together forming a roar, as people realising that psycho-spiritual change is heading inexorably our way, with the issues such as life extension, cybernetics, growing organs from stem cells. All this directed at the transhumanist who are daring to think the unthinkable. A split in the human race reflecting the technical progress of such social groups.

Normative ethics is only just managing to deflect well-reasoned arguments from the techno-progressives (particularly the bio-progressive elements of their thought.]

I fear the field of normative ethics is ill-equipped to face the intellectual and moral challenges that an ever-bolder transhumanism poses to society. I fear we must act now to think through the thought experiments that we will face in reality in the decades to come.
 
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