My comment to a post called Thresholds of Artificiality
Thanks for airing these excellent interlinked topics, much food for thought. Here’s another take, inspired by your words, possibly challenging them too:
I define reality as continuously unfolding in three-dimensional space, where its contents can be known to all the relevant senses.
Thus, I walk into town, see a panoply of human and non-human. It would be possible in principle to touch, smell and hear them. The only thing which limits my apprehension of the moving scene is my attention. I see what I want to see. I might be lost in thought. I might or might not be aware of my body from the inside. But reality is there, offered to me unfiltered.
In one sense, this kind of perception is all I know of the world. The rest is hearsay: filtered, selective; brought to me by any kind of technology you care to name, including handwritten correspondence sent through the mail.
Walking through town, I prefer to wear glasses and hearing aids, to get the most reality I can. These sophisticated devices expand rather than limit my perceptions.
Technology causes harm:
—through its destructive capabilities (weapons, pollution of earth, air & ocean)
—when e.g. news and social media are consulted for expanding our knowledge of reality and “what to think”, and we find ourselves unable to take into account what has been filtered or distorted
—when it temptingly allows us to do things not in the best interests of Nature, however defined
But speaking of “us” reminds us that technology is constantly being pushed by “them”: powers not motivated by the best interest of the overwhelming majority called “us”.
a wayfarer’s notes 