Is technology accelerating beyond our capacity to understand it?

I just watched the film, Bulding Gods," about the latest developments and discourses in artificial intelligence, cyborgs, artilects, terrans, comsos, and super intelligence. As is typical in the field of science and technology, it is exclusively white men who are debating and introducing these scientific and technological changes, with one white woman discussing the theological aspects of human uploading to machines, and questions of the soul.

Why does this aspect of the film concern me? The discourse of advancing technology is a discourse of exclusion. It boils down to the question of access. Who has access to these technologies, to these knowledges, to these epistemologies and ontologies? Who does not? Who is included in these changes, who is excluded?

Whose scientistic point of view is promulgated? It is part of the Western Project that can be traced through the Enlightenment and back to the Greek point of view of techne. It is part of a shocking hubris, and part of the Colonialist and Imperialist projects. Why? Scientists at the highest level have the power to completely change the course of humanity on earth. These scientists are influenced not by indigenous peoples of the world, not by non western concepts of life, but by Greek and European views of life.

This film is an hour and twenty minutes long, so it requires some time, and it is definitely worth a watch.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1079797626827646234&q=%...