To Be Human: When Advancements in Technology Redefine Humanity

By Ana Marsh

At the beginning of every The Technically Human podcast episode Dr. Doing always describes the podcast as a journey of answering “what it means to be human in the age of tech”, and I have just accepted this as some abstract question that is too large to reflect on. However, I think the “Biotechnically Human” podcast episode and Nancy’s Intrusion made me start to reflect on how we really define ourselves as human. Both of these works explored the advancements in our medical fields and how that reflects on our value of human life.

In the “Biotechnically Human” podcast, Estreich talks about the preventive testing of disabilities. He points out that preventative testing is inherently unneutral because it points to a good result versus a bad result. Estreich goes on to say that he has devoted much of his work to show that disabilities don’t fall into a good or bad category but fall into a complex category. This idea of preventative testing reinforces what it means to be a “normal” human when in reality this is not a precise or simple concept. Through a scientific lens, we can see disabilities as “not normal” since they result in some “error” in our DNA sequence but this is a very focused and risky view of humanity. As Estreich points out we all have our own “syndromes”. This made me wonder how we draw the line of what we define as within the norm of humanity. For example, I struggle with severe anxiety and through a scientific lens, this could be considered an error as my anxiety makes me less efficient in doing my daily tasks. What is to say that one day we won’t have preventative testing for anxiety? Does this make me less human than someone without anxiety? This seems like it has such a simple answer of no, but why isn’t it obvious when we ask the same questions about those with disabilities that have preventive testing already in place?

Honestly, the idea that we can preventatively test for things is truly mind-blowing. Even a concept like birth control that is so ubiquitous is quite an astonishing feat of humanity. As Nancy says in Intrusion humans are those who “re-create creation”. Nancy seems to really struggle with these medical advancements and has an inner battle of what these medical achievements have meant in the context of his life and what makes him human. Nancy explains that the idea of organ transplants have begun to remove the physicality of ourselves from the definition of a human. If you can still be your own person with having a heart that is not your “own”, then we must not be defined by any one particular organ. Nancy says that even the brain is dependent on all the other organs which can merely be replaced. This is similar to Estreich’s point that we cannot be viewed as just a sequence of genes. Science simplifies our complex beings into sequences and processes when humanity is so much more than that. We can see this in Harvest as the westernized world views the underdeveloped world as a jumble of parts used to prolong their own lives. But as both Nancy and Padmanabhan point out what is the significance of living without death?