Development and use of tools led to cognitive thinking and communication amongst humans in the past and is responsible for the development and advancement of human civilization as we know it presently.

surle but is a little simplistic to analyze just simply tool makin. Learning how its made, sharing technical and technological skills, organization of raw material catchment and so on, are key for the understanding of human evolution. The question is, how every aspect influence in the evolution of each group. As far as we know, the things (startegies) changes a lot between technocomplex (ans probably between human groups).

Yeah, its great, but the type of focus employed could be disscussed. Interpretations of cultural changes as a result of genomic changes is also simplistic. the relation between genetic mutations and cultural chages is a bidirectional process and not unidirectional¡

I see that technology has not affected evolution but evolution, as a result of sociocultural reasons, has influenced development of technology.

what a nice silogism¡ in Spain we use for childs the question "what is before; the egs or the hen? every one could image that clearly the hen... here it is. biologist and archaeologist (humanist') were divirced long time ago. If we asume this ideas biology has nothing to do against fisics, so tecnology is not a matter of culture, evolution nor biology but phisics (even biochemistry).

There is a lot of confusion about this.

The big question in philosophy of technology is about the essence of technology. Lacking a unanimous definition of the term technology.

According to the epistemological theory of Jean Piaget, the knowledge is constructed by the subject, from interactions with the objects over time, knowledge cannot be conceived as something preordained, nor in the internal structures of the subject and not in pre-existing characteristics of the object and is, therefore, a synthesis of epistemological theories advocated empiricism and apriorism, which claim that knowledge comes, respectively, of the fruit of the experience of the objects (empiricism) or the result of innate programming preformed on the subject (priori). (PIAGET, 1976)

The technology is a result of the design process, but, once conceived passes influence the human existence, physics, genetics and that has been epistemologically.

Marcelo has unnecessarily complicated the definition of technology. It can simply be defined as "Transformation of resources in Usable Objects and/ or prevailing situations in more favorable situations to enhance capacity and efficiency in performing various activities." This is an outcome of human capability. More the evolution of capability more is the development in technology. Not vice-versa.

Mukundo, guess its definition good. But, I guess the Javier also is right. The man creates technology, but the technology influences the man, as well as social relations, the environment and genetics.

Is bi-directional!

The more simple analysis is to do it diachronic analysis... Take as corpus two or four decades in an specific technology issue and determinate a place (schools or universities and a range of students in two countries) and follow the changes. The results are going to show you specific factors that you can use for your own conclusions in the way Marcelo Monteiro wrote.

Dear Marcelo, I agree it is bi-directional. But the development of Technology as a result of human intellectual level, evolved, is in positive direction as the development is "Need-based" Other way is little different. Available technology does not develop the human level, it rather influences. Many a times negatively. There is no need yet merely because something is available and as one can afford it man starts adopting to certain technological advancements and carries a misconception that this has become a part of life. e.g. Coca Cola, fashions, playful gadgets like video games etc.

The development of Technology with human efforts is welcome (Unless there are malign intentions) But influence of technology (particularly negative and destructive) must be controlled.

Dear collegaues:

sorry if I seem to be excesively "relativist".... what is good or bad is something that the society must define... There are several examples in the anthropological record. For me is not valid to compare the effect of fire (f.e) in the evolution process to the Coca cola... yo always have pepsi

The essence of technology is a central theme in the field of philosophy of technology.

In these speeches lack a relationship between technology and the design concept that in theory is the human capacity to conceive and plan things.

I think there is not much to discuss as every body, including myself, has agreed that the relation between evolution or development and technology is bi-lateral. People may go adding with examples and arguments regarding more or less impact this way or that way. STILL THE CONCLUSION PREVAILS.

Technology made an essential contribution to the evolution of human intelligence. The reason is that tool use, and more so tool invention and tool manufacturing, require a certain intelligence that is not required without technology. One suggestion: The evolution of larger brains from Homo erectus via H. heidelbergensis to modern humans was driven by the first use of fire. You need to be smart enough to keep a fire burning. This means that only those hominid groups that were bright enough could manage the use of fire. Fire meant cooking, which meant more efficient extraction of energy from food, which meant better nutrition for women, which meant shorter birth intervals and more babies. Because of this end result (more babies), the use of fire put selective pressure on the biological evolution of intelligence. Because making the brain bigger is one way to raise intelligence (though with bad obstetric side effects), that's one thing that happened. Today the individual-level correlation between brain size and IQ is about 0.4.

Could someone indicate articles on this topic?

In philosophical term, human evolution compared as subjective and technology as objective. Technology is a part of culture, which we invent and use for adapting with nature and this is one of the causes of human evolution. The relation is like climbing on a hill, at first make steps and then climb up. Technology influence human subject to find out the best way to go further using and upgrading existing technology.

Dear colleague, i suggest you a different vision about the evolution of technology across the theory elaborated by G. Simondon.

"Du mode d'existence des objets techniques", Aubier, 1958.

Leonardo Carmignani, I like the theory of Simondon. Excellent work which need translation in English.

Yes, at the moment i know only the france one.

Indeed Leonardo, i've been studying this topic keeping in mind the theories of Gilbert Simondon on transduction. We can find this idea of co-evolution between man and technology in the book from Leroi-Ghouran "Le Geste et la Parole", which i invite you to read if you understand french.

Yes, I know Leroi Ghouran. In fact, the theory of Simondon has many similarities with the idea of Leroi-Ghouran but there are also some important differences .

Thank you anyway for the suggestion.

Technology is influencing, and will go on influencing the "The development". I just fail to understand how can technology influence "The evolution" I understand the term evolution used to denote natural process and the development to denote result of man made attempts. Technology can not do things naturally. To say so is self-contradictory.

Of course if some one defines 'evolution' as artificial development, the story is different.

Some anthropologist have different thesis, for example, Leroi-Ghouran developped the idea that primal technology had an influence on our physical/natural evolution.

You along with Leroi-Ghouran may accept this but still I fail to understand it. I will like to know How? with examples.

Mukund, is not hard to understand. Just remember that the primitive technology allowed new food sources that in consequence changed our constitution.

MUkund, I also suggest Dussek (2009) and Roberts (2001).

Hi, I suggest Budin 1996 and 1998 its de terminology modelling for knowledge and also my own works.

Bestv bregsrds

cecilia......I can see how budin (1196) and (1998)?

Hi,

you can read the following:

1)

http://books.google.com.co/books?hl=de&lr=&id=VJblU8i--scC&oi=fnd&pg=PA371&dq=gerhard+budin+knowledge+management&ots=Z3nuZ6Llhp&sig=c85zTvXGm-XhjCLH5wnN6fnuAN4#v=onepage&q=gerhard%20budin%20knowledge%20management&f=false

2)

http://books.google.com.co/books?hl=de&lr=&id=IL2E9xuJLAAC&oi=fnd&pg=PA103&dq=gerhard+budin+knowledge+management&ots=ZXb4wUTtKD&sig=etvjirGZoMf4xiK_iyLFjlgJA3U#v=onepage&q=gerhard%20budin%20knowledge%20management&f=false

3)

http://www.lrec-conf.org/proceedings/lrec2000/pdf/283.pdf

4) a videolecture

http://videolectures.net/gerhard_budin/

5) some of his publications

http://transvienna.univie.ac.at/fileadmin/user_upload/fak_translationswissenschaft/Forschung_neu/Gerhard_Budin_Publications_December_2011.pdf

Hi, here is an interesting point of view developped by the prehistorian Serge Maury.

http://www.sudouest.fr/2012/12/21/et-si-l-on-survit-914628-726.php

Felix

you may wish to read this journal article as it provides specific evidence for your question

Tool Use Affects Perceived Distance, But Only When You Intend to Use It

Jessica K. Witt, Dennis R. Proffitt, and William Epstein

University of Virginia

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Copyright 2005 by the American Psychological Association

Human Perception and Performance

2005, Vol. 31, No. 5, 880–888

http://www.faculty.virginia.edu/perlab/pdf/Witt2005.pdf

hope this is useful

Sunil Ram

Dear Felix,

Thanks for your question. The best answer that I have come across is that of Karl Popper who argues that technology constitutes exosomatic evolution. This may have started for us when our species no longer had to wait for members to grow thicker coats of hair in cold climates, but started using the skins of other animals to keep warm. We no longer have to adapt to the environment in order to survive, but rather adapt the environment to our survival needs.

Regards, Mike.

p.s. Are we still evolving physiologically ? Richard Dawkins gives the example of species adaptation in Africa where the Aids epidemic has wiped out substantial parts of the population. Those with a natural (genetic) resistance to HIV clearly have a survival advantage and this is being passed on to succeeding generations - evolution in action!

On a less positive note I do wonder if with the invention of thinking machines, organic intelligence is less necessary to survival advantage and as a species humanity might be becoming more stupid.

If you want to know whether we are still evolving, simply count the number of surviving offspring and relate it to genetically influenced traits. In developed countries there is very little selection for infectious disease resistance. Even AIDS affects only a small minority of the population (except in a few African countries), therefore has little evolutionary consequence. Other than mutations compromising the reproductive system that are (and have always been) under mutation-selection balance, the traits that are under strong selection in most countries today appear to be psychological and behavioral in nature. An obvious one is the desire to have children. Another one is the ability or inability to use contraceptives efficiently. Other than desire for children, the traits that are most consistently associated with reproductive success (and therefore are under selection) today are low education and, in most countries, high religiosity or a "conservative" type of value system. Selection today is mainly for resistance to educational and contraceptive "technologies".

Thanks Gerhard - not encouraging.

Mike.

Hi Maria,

When you say 're wiring the brain' what do you mean ? Every time I learn something there has to be some neurological re wiring going on, connections being established between synapses.

Mike.

Yes I take Carr's point - but I think that the internet and artificial intelligence is here to stay and that we stand to gain more from it than we lose. It is already so integrated into our lives that we could not do without it. In being aware of the potential disadvantages maybe we are better placed to counter them.

Dear Collegues. I agree with Mikes "feelings" and I just base my opinion in my own experince (and for that maybe I'm wrong), but if we came back to the origin, that could be another point of view apart from the future, I would say that technology have had a tremendous influence in our evolution. Not always in the same direction and with succesfull results, but incredible High. We could have an idea about how natural evolution could work, but what is still needed is how ·cultural evolution works (may be a formulation of the cultural laws?)

Hi Natalie.

This is broadly Karl Popper's idea of exosomatic evolution in his essay 'On Clouds and Clocks' in his book 'Objective Knowledge' pub 1972 Clarendon Press, Oxford. Popper not only included the practical tools that Taylor writes about but also other products of human intelligence, in particular theories. The idea is that we try ideas out in experimental condition and reject theories that do not bear up, Our hypotheses;he says 'die in our stead'. It is a powerful bit of philosophical argumentation.

Mike.

Dear All,

I am presenting a 'off-the beaten-track' position on the above question. Please grin & bear!

I am of the view that technology is a double edged sword-It cuts both ways. It can be used to create and also to destroy. That being clarified, I wish to draw your attention to the fact that technology is only secondary, while human beings are primary. Hence technology is not the issue per se, but the human part-The creator and the end user of the technology.

Coming to the human part, technology shapes human beings mainly in two ways. The creator of technology, using all his ingenuity, knowledge, business acumen is definitely set to gain in evolution. He experiences his own problems, fights with his conscience and chooses the right/wrong path and succeeds. On the whole, he passes through a steep learning curve and his evolution-mentally, emotionally, spiritually-for the better or the worse-is faster.

The end user of the technology however stands to lose by using the above technology, because he uses a pre-packaged packet of technology-The fruit of another individuals efforts- and uses it for his own purpose. If he is ingenuous too, he would learn how it works and use technology to invent more technology thereby evolve for the better. But if he only uses technology to perform tasks without knowing how it works, he ends up loosing a 'learning opportunity' and by mechanically using the technology, he either stays in his current level of evolution or even slides down, becoming even dumber. This is illustrated in the case of people who cant even do simple calculations in the head when they have grown dependent on calculators and computers, while the opposite is true of people using abacuses to solve problems. The abacus is also technology, but in a very basic form that displays and uses more mind than matter.

Also technology makes it easier for us to perform tasks, but it also makes it easier to consume more and increase our rate of output, creating a catch 22 situation on the merits and demerits of technology.

In conclusion, technology, a product of the material sciences, inevitably slows down our evolution. If instead, we properly use the greatest technology we posess-The Human Mind, we stand to evolve higher and faster. I illustrate my point with the example of Panini. Panini, the legendary Sanskrit grammarian of 5th century BC, is the world's first computational grammarian. Panini's work, Ashtadhyayi (the Eight-Chapter-ed book), is considered to be the most comprehensive scientific grammar ever written for any language.

Sanskrit is a language amazingly rich, efflorescent, full of luxuriant growth of all kinds, and yet precise and strictly keeping within the framework of grammar which Panini laid down more than two thousand years ago. It spread out, added to its richness, became fuller and more ornate, but always it stuck to its original roots. is the oldest and the most systematic language in the world. The vastness and the versatility, and power of expression can be appreciated by the fact that this language has 65 words to describe various forms of earth, 67 words for water, and over 250 words to describe rainfall. The Sanskrit grammarians wished to construct a perfect language, which would belong to no one and thus belong to all, which would not develop but remain an ideal instrument of communication and culture for all peoples and all time. (Thus the world's First Open Source Grammar, also involved boolean logic and programming)

Friedrich Max Muller (1823-1900) "Sanskrit is to the science of language what mathematics is to astronomy."

Professor A. L. Basham, taught at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London.

He has noted in his book The Wonder That Was India:

"Though its fame is much restricted by its specialized nature, there is no doubt that Panini's grammar is one of the greatest intellectual achievements of any ancient civilization, and the most detailed and scientific grammar composed before the 19th century in any part of the world."

German critic, Schlegel, in History of Literature p. 117, says:

"Justly it is called Sanskrit, ie. perfected, finished."

This is because, over more than 2000 years, Sanskrit has not changed EVEN AN INCH, because of its mathematical and grammatic perfection.

Now some brief quotes on the man who summed up Sanskrit grammar:

Alexander Thomson, Principal of the Agra College, and one of the best philologist in India :"the consonantal division of the alphabet of the Sanskrit language was a more wonderful feat of human genius than any the world has yet seen."

Leonard Bloomfield (1887-1949) American linguist and author of 'Language', published in 1933) characterizes Panini's Astadhyayi ("The Eight Books")

"as one of the greatest monuments of human intelligence is by no means an exaggeration; no one who has had even a small acquaintance with that most remarkable book could fail to agree. In some four thousand sutras or aphorisms - some of them no more than a single syllable in length - Panini sums up the grammar not only of his own spoken language, but of that of the Vedic period as well. The work is the more remarkable when we consider that the author DID NOT WRITE IT DOWN but rather worked it all out of his head, as it were. Panini's disciples committed the work to memory and in turn passed it on in the same manner to their disciples; and though the Astadhayayi has long since been committed to writing, rote memorization of the work, with several of the more important commentaries, is still the approved method of studying grammar in India today, as indeed is true of most learning of the traditional culture."

Such a feat in devising complex rules for grammar, the precursor of today's programming languages, performed without the use of supercomputers, justifies that technology is not important, but the being who devises it.

Thus technology only arrests our evolution, hindering great achievements, which could possibly have occurred, if we had used our 'real technology', the Human Mind, better. And the slide continues.

Views welcome.

Morphologically, I know that several studies have indicated that the introdiction and integration of food processiong have had a distant impact on our dention. Specifically, the eruption or even presence of the M3s (wisdom teeth) have been observed to be gradually decreasing as our food requires less and less extreme mechanical digestion. Basically, techology that makes food easier to eat (including fire) has reverted an evolutionary selection in favour of those with more robust dention, which in combination with the semi common health effects of M3 complications, has created a selection against M3S.

Previous to what I term the 21st century hyper informational age, technological change and innovation progressed at a moderate pace. Today, the rate of change has become exponential, mainly due to the rapid nature of data processing and exchange of ideas, of which Research Gate is but one example. As the brain, pace the cerebral cortex, is primarily an organ for processing various kinds of information, the question arises as to how technology impinges on brains and what might be the short to long term effects. The concept of grounded or embodied cognition suggests our cognitive outlook is shaped by the technologies with which we interact, as Natalie Uomini points out. Evolutionary psychology, however, suggests that the brain/mind is modular as expressed in cognitive domains (but, at the same time, can also be permeable depending on circumstances). These domains were established by our evolutionary past as hunter-gatherers and still affect or bias human behavior, which is not the same as saying they cannot be countermanded. Although cognitive domains can be “stretched” by cultural input, should the rate of change progress too rapidly, these domains may need to, not only recruit existing domains, but also transfer some of the processing to sources extrinsic to the brain. This has received some empirical confirmation by Dehaene and Cohen (Neuron 2007 “Cultural Recycling of Cortical Maps”) who found that new ways of processing information invented through culture, e.g. reading and writing, colonise existing cognitive domains that previously allowed us to survive during the Pleistocene. Dehaene and Cohen suggests a neuronal recycling hypothesis, whereby “cultural inventions invade evolutionarily older brain circuits and inherit many of their structural constraints”. Some of the first or earliest technologies seem to be more tied to such modular structures, as specific areas have been located that are necessary for making and using basic kinds of tools (lesions of these areas causes particular kinds of deficits). Another example, is speech that was evolving in early Homo well before Homo sapiens arrived on the scene and therefore seems to be instantiated in the brain and is, accordingly, imbibed automatically by infants. However, many of the technologies that developed from the Neolithic onwards increasingly required a period of training and pedagogy, which suggest they were not part of the natural suite of technologies on which Homo depended for survival during the Pleistocene. Susan Greenfield believes that the brain is unique in the way it is able to adapt to the environment in which it finds itself, which implies the brain is a blank slate on which individual experience provides the text. This conflicts with Pinker's idea that we come into the world predisposed to respond and easily “digest” particular kinds of information that has proved useful during our evolutionary past. Interestingly, Greenfield regards direct personal engagement in real social situations, especially in the case of children, as extremely important to the development of social skills but these skill are compromised on internet social platforms. There is some empirical evidence to support this e.g. infants learn to speak more quickly and effectively when interacting with real people rather than with individuals on the internet. In effect, Greenfield invokes a key evolutionary disposition, as direct social interaction is one of the key human traits of humans that evolved during the Pleistocene (see for example Robin Dunbar's research on the importance of social groups in human evolution). This research therefore underlines the value of the real engagement with people, which becomes impoverished or inadequate when transposed online. This suggests that although our underling cognitive faculties continue to depend on long term evolutionary instantiated brain structures, at the same time, evolution has also allowed a period of learning to take place through an extended childhood, which requires a measure of flexibility in the brain in order to absorb cultural imperatives. One of the consequences of this increased malleability has been the invention of extra-somatic information systems, such a writing, that has allowed knowledge to accumulate with all the advantages and disadvantages this brings. As the internet is but a continuation of the means by which information can be shared, in one sense, it is no different from those that came before. On the other hand, we see on the internet the same evolutionary instantiated domains being played out in various formats relating to basic human needs and drives that are part of the human condition. It seems unlikely that the long term predisposing cognitive domains will be completely overridden or rewritten by the influence of the internet as this would lead to various mental problems in dealing with the real world. Having said this, as with previous information systems, the internet can be used positively and negatively. However, as the internet seems to reflect back and, in the process, exaggerate human wants and needs, it remains to be seen how this will play out in the long term.

Recent and modernize tools of information and technology, scientific advances, research and developmental activities, easy access to knowledge / literature, computer, Internet, instruments and newer equipments, softwares, diagnostics, vaccines, elctronic items, and routine means of advanced tools for making life an easy way.

Thank you all for your insights. Is Taylor's "Artificial ape" replacing biological reductionism or determinism (a la Dawkins, e.g.) for technological determinism?