The techno-human condition

Today's humans come equipped with rebuilt immune systems, a revised set of cultural ideas about gender, race and sexuality, and personalized upgrades such as prosthetic joints, drugs that adjust mood chemistry, and hormones that enhance performance. Braden Allenby and Daniel Sarewitz consider what being human now means, at a time when technology has grown too intricate and fast-changing to fully grasp. They contend that meeting this challenge requires letting go of familiar beliefs about reason, advancement and certainty, while still holding firmly to basic human values.

People have shaped and been shaped by their tools for as long as there has been a prehistoric record, with toolmaking, meat eating, brain growth and social organization developing in step. The difference today is that technology no longer just acts on us from outside. It reaches inside to reshape us, and at the same time it is altering the planet's systems as a whole. According to the authors, adapting to this situation means abandoning the sharp divisions between the human, the technological and the natural, and forming a new relationship between people and technology.

The book lays out the terms of that relationship and examines sociotechnical systems that range from railroads to modern military technology. Its conclusion is that personal authenticity depends on a fresh humility, one that responds to the steady erosion of the Enlightenment foundations that once anchored us.