Technology and our re-formation

Derrick De Kerkhove and Anne Foerst

For De Kerckhove, director of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology and professor in the French Department at the University of Toronto, globalisation is an issue of psychology, rather than economics, which has given human beings a greater world awareness.

"It's not really a matter of whether I'm for or against technology —it's there," De Kerckhove said, arguing that globalisation has been driven by electricity and the development of communications media since the telegraph, as well as by screen-based technologies, music and youth culture, the increase of travel and the Internet, which he said creates a mindset of a "globalised state." The results have been a change in our sense of scale, with the point of reference now being the globe, rather than our immediate surroundings, and a change in identity, although not a loss of identity.

Providing a counterpoint to DeKerckhove's outward-looking view, Anne Foerst, professor of computer science and theology at St. Bonaventure University in Oleans, New York, examined how technology shapes our understanding of ourselves and our relationships with others. Foerst's work with artificial intelligence and robots have led her to the thesis that because of the way the human brain has evolved, people tend to react to media as they would to real-life events or human beings.

"From birth, we're trained in interacting with humans, so that's the most effective way to interact with other things," said Foerst, whose experiments include human interaction with Kismet, which she called the most advanced robot in the field. The robot "has an enormous array of facial expressions, which creates an immediate bond, because that's how humans bond," Foerst said. Her research implies a break with Western philosophy that places reason above all. "The body is not just a tool to carry a brain around, but a means to another end, which is human interaction," she said.

Foerst's research contributes to an understanding of the difference between "humanness," which is a biological category, and "personhood," which is an individual construct based on "stories we tell about who we are" in relation to a social group and the outside world. The problem, she said, lies in the human fear of recognising that there may be many valid stories — a response whose consequences can range from discrimination to genocide. "We are very good at separating humanness and personhood, but usually to exclude," Foerst said. "We do not treat humans as persons all the time."

De Kerkhove underscored the ethical elements of the globalisation debate and pointed to issues of multiculturality and identity —which hinges on groups maintaining a strong identity and good communications ability — as well as a global awareness of and desire for a "tolerable way of life" and a multicultural mindset characterised by equal rights and equal access to resources .

For Foerst, lessons for reconciliation that can be drawn from her work include the importance of "embodiment,"s hared physical space and storytelling in shaping our humanness. The question, she said, is not whether we are all part of one another's stories, but "can we create meaningful stories together?"