Revitalizing Human Values in an Age of Technology

Abstract

Technology does change human lives, but my query is: does it change human selves too? On a closer look, it is observed that technology and the trail of human beings towards an authentic life (the highest desire) are central and pivotal to human living. However, most of us think of them as separate and unrelated. Technology is technical, the job of technicians, whereas queries of ‘authenticity’ are primarily philosophical, the job of the philosophers. But why do philosophers really bother about technology? This paper aims at a search for human authenticity even in the age of technology since humans are constantly in the process of becoming and they will continue to be so both socially and historically. The first segment of the paper focuses on how technology has depersonalized human persons, with respect to the views of many philosophers; in the second part, the concept of authenticity is understood in connection to our philosophical discourses. Finally, the unseparated relationship between technology and authenticity is explicated. My prime effort here is to understand authenticity from a value-based paradigm and as a therapy from the consumerist-driven materialistic life but not segregated from the prospects of a technocratic world.

Keywords

• technology
• authentic
• value
• humanity
• autonomy