Are humans becoming domesticated by technology?

Question

Look at domesticated animals — pets — and how their inability to fend for themselves has rendered them largely obese, lazy, dependent, and less curious. In this sense: are humans becoming domesticated by technology?

This question was asked at the Dropping Knowledge event on 9th September by Ian, 23, Arlington, Virginia, USA.

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Answer 1

In order to answer this, I'll start w/some of the definition(s) of domesticate:

1) to tame (an animal), esp. by generations of breeding, to live in close association with human beings as a pet or work animal and usually creating a dependency so that the animal loses its ability to live in the wild.

2) to accustom to household life or affairs.

3) to make more ordinary, familiar, acceptable, or the like: to domesticate radical ideas.

Okay, so given the above definitions, a response by definition:

1) What I'm concerned about is the possibility that technology (Artificial Intelligence) replaces 'human' with 'machine intelligence' in the sentence, so that it reads something like human animals will have been conditioned to live "...in close association with machine intelligence as a pet or work animal and usually creating a dependency so that the animal loses its ability to live [independently]". Once that has hapened, humans will truly have been domesticated by technology. Again, I'd prefer that doesn't happen, I think. :)

2) Sure, technology has made us very accustomed to household life or affairs. At least in the USA, most people can afford to be in a house or domicile of some sort, and thus get used to the running of a household. Technology certainly has enabled this, and does enable a more smoothly running domestic situation.

3) Most definitely. How radical was it to research on the web, get someone on a mobile phone, see people on TV, etc. 100 years ago? It was pure science fiction. Only 100 years ago! 'Civilized' society has been going for many thousands of years, so this is a mere fraction of human civilization that's been radically altered by technology.

Answer 2

No, I don't believe so.

First off, I don't feel that domesticated animals are incapable of fending for themselves. My girlfriend's cat knows it has a readily available food source, but it still goes out and kills its own food too. The same can be said for dogs & the pack mentality. Plus, what version of "when animals attack" are they on? Must be getting close to 64. Those are nearly all domesticated.

Now, I will give you this. Our staple food stocks (beef) are getting dumb. This is probably due to the fact we need them cooperative. However, when was the last time you've seen someone hand feed a full grown cow? How about chicken our pork? They still have the instincts needed to survive.

Are we loosing our abilities? ABSOLUTELY NOT! Why have we become the dominant species on the Earth? Simple, we have superior mental capacity. We are forming the environment to meet our needs. We have successfully limited our need to protect & feed ourselves. This is a resounding success.

Have we lost any technologies? No. We replace them. We no longer have to build fires w/ sticks & lenses. We have replaced them w/ matches or gas & sparks. Does this mean we can't? Of course not.

We maybe getting lazy in America, but this doesn't mean we are incapable of surviving. With personal discipline, it is actually a major advantage. We now have access to a world of knowledge. This was our ONLY advantage, & I don't see it going away any time soon.

Answer 3

Most definitely. Just the other day at my university, the internet and the cellular phone tower went down. The whole campus was distraught. People didn't know what to do. They had no phone and no instant messanger - how terrible it was to go 6 hrs without communication. Seriously people, it wasn't that big of a deal. I'm sorry you had to wait to tell your boy/girlfriend back home you love them. The part where people missed technology was the scariest. This means most people are addicted to either their phone, the internet, or even both. This shows how lazy we've gotten where we can't even figure out how to walk down the hall to ask someone if they want to eat because we do it everyday over the internet. We are obviously dependent on it, otherwise we would not have gone so crazy. Obese and less curious? Just walk around the campus, I think you can see for yourself.

Answer 4

The flood of oil into the american economy has made things possible that were never even imanginable before.

We used to have a social order that people who lived out of town raised food. Folk who lived in town engaged in business. Now we have urban sprawl. If oil dries up or becomes too expensive, how will we continue this life style. How will people who live far from the job get to work? Once we find out selves in such a situation how will we survive. Oil has made it possible for a very small number of people to raise a very large amount of food. When that is gone we will see our world get very large. It will be too far for china to stock a walmart shelf. We have lost the ability to garden for our food. Most teenage kids have no clue how to bottle or can any of their own produce. In fact of the grocery store were to run out as a result of disaster or war, they would starve in a matter of a few days. The ability to survive harsh conditions is more a thing of the pioneer past. Less of a thing of the here and now. Most kids can't tell the difference between garden plants sprouting up and weeds.

Even the art of fixing a meal from scratch is becoming a lost art.

The first time we had a power outage when my daughter was little was an eye opening experience. She wanted something to eat. Can't right now the power is out....well can't you just put it in the microwave?

Most have no idea where all that electric power comes from or how it is made. Most have no idea how to repair a car. Most have no idea how to do basic construction to build their own house. We have become very specialized and that has its good points but that means we are at the mercy of each others specialty. If we are going to be more independant, we need to know how to do more and then do it. Otherwise it becomes a lost art. Do you know how to bottle butter so it will keep without refidgeration? Can you even make butter? Its become a lost art. However a few of us are still doing it. I suppose some day I'll be very popular. But not till the rest of the world is in a world of hurt.

The day and age of people just buckling down and doing what needs to be done is slipping past. The age of dependance is upon us. We have never been so vulnerable in all the history of man.

Answer 5

In a way, one can say that is the case. What I think is the case, though, is that technology has made people more wilder. Physically they have got lazier, but mentally they are wild, a lot more than anyone would have thought two dozen years ago.

Man used to know his own and a few other neighborhoods in the days of our great-great grandfathers. They then started sailing to lands far away and learned more. Later came the telephone, then the automobile, which opened more frontiers. Now that we have the emailing system of communication, and sites like this one, we no longer rest. Then we have the cell phone, which has whipped up quit a frency.

Answer 6

2) Sure, technology has made us very accustomed to household life or affairs. At least in the USA, most people can afford to be in a house or domicile of some sort, and thus get used to the running of a household. Technology certainly has enabled this, and does enable a more smoothly running domestic situation.

Answer 7

Or is technology becoming domesticated by us?
Muhahahaha
just kidding...
sorry couldn't resite a smart allick joke ;-)

Hmmm, no I don't think so. I think if we allow our selves to become domesticated then yes, but we all know what we need and we can fend for our selves if we had to.

The real question is are we loosing wise old knowledge that'll make it easyer for us to servive without technology?
I think so.
Take for instance I don't know how to grow potatos, but my Grandma's do. However they never passed it down, because we don't give importance to such things in a high tech society (USA example, I'm not saying all high tech societys will be out of touch with old or nature lol)
Anyways...
My point is sometimes we forget or worse loose the valuble knowledge we already had, because we put this false expectation that technology will do it ALL for us and we will NEVER need to know what came before.
That's our doing, not technology's...
We need to keep both the old and expand the new, we need respect.

So we're not domesticated, we're suffering from memory loss
;-) from eying the dazzling new toys we have

::: Peace :::

Answer 8

I was wondering when someone else besides myself noticed this.

You should see the questions that suddenly appear in Yahoo Q&A when MySpace goes down or one of the Messengers goes down. (MSN, Yahoo, AIM) the questions flood Q&A.

You should have seen a highschool function I was at a year or 2 back and some Cell phone tower went out and no one's cell phone worked. IT WAS ALMOST MASS PANIC!!!!!
It was the funnusest thing I remember seeing in a long time. Everyone running around asking everyone else to check their phone. None of them working, People panicking, rumers of Terrorists attacking, THE GAME WAS NEVER ACTUALLY FINISHED because of the panic and people taking their children home. It was just a junior high socker game, but still. I wish I had a video camera of it.

I can't wait for the next majour solar flair and ALL the cell phones and communications are severly crippled. LET THE RIOTS BEGIN!!! LOL

Answer 9

Strange question. Since humans invented the concept of "housing" (domus = house in Latin), then I don't see how they are suddenly now becoming domesticated by technology (something which they also invented).

If your point is that techology renders humans less capable of fending for themselves in the wild, that's only seemingly true, because even the primitive cavemen did not hunt with bare hands but with spears and bows, which were nothing more but primitive technology. In fact, it could be argued that technology is what gave humans the edge in the fight for their survival.

If you take away all technological innovations from the human species, you end up with a society not unlike those of chimpanzees or gorrilas. Do they have any edge over us in terms of survival? Maybe, maybe not. After all, you don't really need all that survival skill to gather berries, nuts, insects and fruit. Humans are capable of amazing adaptions when our survival is at stake, even if we're deprived of any technology.

Answer 10

Some people are using technology to save time and to produce more with less effort. For example, the stock market is using computers to make more transactions (and more money) with other companies. A long time ago, farmers used to domesticate animals, like cows and horses, to produce more. Today, farmers are using technology to produce even more and different kinds of food. To depend on something to achieve more and better, isn't the same that to become domesticated by it.