I Like My Human Limitations

            The human struggle against the fleetingness of life has been documented for centuries. From Gilgamesh to the Odyssey to the Harry Potter series, literature in particular provides a colorful history of attitudes towards mortality and the measures to which determined parties will go to ensure that their legacy, and sometimes even various manifestations of themselves, lives on. However, fiction is no longer the only place where humans have the ability to transcend their life spans.

 Who doesn't want to be immortal! Right??

 Transhumanism, the movement that combines science and technology to enable human improvement, is a reality. The topic is controversial, striking passionate responses from both pro and anti- transhumanism camps. The debate about transhumanism is subjective and revolves solely around each individual’s code of ethics. The transhumanists seem to objectively put science and progress above everything, while critics of transhumanism attempt to subjectively incorporate bigger questions of humanity into their opinions. The argument about transhumanism is a grey area, but I find many of the claims made by transhumanists to be confusing.

One such claim that is unsettling to me is made by Ronald Bailey in his article “Transhumanism: The Most Dangerous Idea?”. He states that “Human liberation from our biological constraints began when an ancestor first sharpened a stick and used it to kill an animal for food”, which I can understand and agree with. Then he elaborates by writing, “Our ancestors had no wings; now we fly. Our ancient forebears could not hear one another over 1,000 miles; now we phone.” Bailey is directly linking technology to human evolution. He is forming a relationship between a lack of certain appendages and the modern technology that supplements that absence. This is not a true comparison because we have not physically evolved into creatures with wings or with phones internally circuited to our bodies (though most people treat their phones as an extension of their being). This thought provokes the question Is evolution considered a natural process? If the answer to that question is yes, then it is impossible for the addition of technology, a man-made innovation, to be a part of evolution.

Another problem I have encountered while reading about transhumanism has to do with what I see as the homogenization effect. In Ray Kurzweil’s book The Singularity is Near, a chapter called “The Six Epochs” outlines the six steps leading to Singularity, a term used to reference the time period after the shift of transhumanism occurs, as Kurzweil sees it. In the description of his fifth epoch, titled “The Merger of Human Technology with Human Intelligence”, Kurzweil writes that, “The Singularity will allow us to overcome age-old human problems and vastly amplify human creativity.” This claim poses a conundrum. If everyone becomes more creative, does that not mean that creativity loses its value? When there becomes a surplus of something, the value of it decreases. Though this surge in creativity is meant to be a boon to transhumanism, it seems to actually be working against itself by making creativity commonplace and, ironically, uncreative. If everyone is creative, no one is creative. It frightens me because it sounds like everyone will be the same. The lack of talent of some people is what makes talent in other people so remarkable. If everyone has the same talents, like what this transhumanist writing is predicting, then there will actually be no talents because everyone is good at everything. Without flaws and mistakes, there is no variety. In my opinion, perfection is boring.

I will admit that I am nowhere near to being an expert on transhumanism. However, based upon the Bailey and Kurzweil texts I have read, it does not seem to me an appealing option though it does become a more viable one to the 21^st century human every day. Advocates of tranhumanism like Ronald Bailey claim that the combination of technological innovation with the human body is a step of evolution. They say that this fluidity between the mortal and machine will amplify human abilities and annihilate innate human flaws. These ideas are purely concerned with scientific questions and are not addressing, in my opinion, the more important ethical issues. When will there be a line drawn between what is sacred and cannot be affected? If we are to follow Bailey and Kurzweil’s example, it seems as if everything will be considered “fair game” and will be meddled with. It sounds like the basis of a post-apocalyptic horror movie to me.

Sari, Not Sorry

             After the stress of college applications subsided last fall, I began to worry about the real conundrum of senior year: the prom dress. I did not know exactly what I wanted in a dress, but I knew that I wanted to stand out and be different. This was a great concept in theory, but hard to pull off when almost every girl at school is shopping at the same place. I was sitting at home watching Bride & Prejudice, Bollywood’s take on Pride & Prejudice, when I came up with the idea of wearing a sari. A sari is a traditional garment worn by Indian women consisting of one piece of fabric wrapped around the waist then slung over a shoulder (at least that is how I wore it!).  My mom and I had to drive over an hour away to find a place that sold them, but in the end I got a sari custom tailored for less money than I would have spent on a typical long prom dress. The reactions of my friends and their parents at prom pictures were priceless. My goal of standing out in a sea of sequins and frills was accomplished. Instead of subscribing to American cultural norms, I opted to look to a foreign culture for a refreshing change in the world of prom dresses.

                                                      With my prom date while wearing my sari!

    The globalization of fashion is enabling an exchange of traditions and ideas from East to

West and back again. The sari is not yet a mainstream fashion trend in America, but with

promotion from celebrities, designs by distinguished fashion houses, and some Western tweaks,

they could very well be the next craze. At her first concert in India, Lady Gaga wore a short,

sparkly sari-esque outfit with fishnet tights and leather boots, mixing her New York street style

with that of traditional India. Reputable luxury brands such as Prada and Tods have used India as

inspiration in their clothing and accessory collections. The French company Hermès, famous for

its classic accessories, even branched out so much as to create a limited edition line of saris that,

though priced in a way that will prevent the saris from crossing economic classes, showcase the

breach between East and West. The fact that such prominent Western labels and figures are

adjusting their iconic products and personas to incorporate a fundamental aspect of Indian

culture highlights the heart of globalization.

                                                                     Lady Gaga in her sari (not as pretty as mine!)

Western fashion designers are not the only ones fusing the two sides of the world in the form of a sari. Designers in India such as Gurav Gupta, Tarun Tahiliani, and Shivan Bhatiya and Narresh Kukreja of Shivan & Narresh are revitalizing the face of saris. These young Indian designers are eschewing traditional sari fabrics and patterns in favor of a more modern, trendy look. Tahiliani is the creator of Lady Gaga’s risqué, short sari, fostering a link between customary Indian culture and global popular culture. Shivan & Narresh are pioneering a sari made of Lycra, called a “bikini” sari, an adaptation that caters to accentuating the better features of the womanly figure and hiding those that women are typically more insecure about. Gupta is completely revolutionizing the sari, not only using contemporary prints and brazen colors, but also altering intrinsic features of the sari such as the location of pleats and replacing the petticoat with loose pants. This shift from a custom way of dressing dating back thousands of years exemplifies the way in which globalization can inspire progressive, creative changes while still retaining kernels of tradition.

                                                           Bikini saris from Shivan & Narresh

The connotations of globalization often evoke images of Western countries, specifically America, imposing McDonaldization on the rest of the world. While it is true that American companies such as McDonalds and Starbucks can be found around the globe from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to Invercargill in New Zealand, it is wrong to generalize the United States as a culture leech which only introduces its own traditions and returns home to bask in the Americana of baseball, apple pie and bald eagles. As evidenced in the adoption of the sari and other aspects of Indian fashion by noteworthy Western designers and both famous Americans like Gaga and normal Americans like me, globalization is a two- way street. Because we live in a global culture, ideas can be taken from one area of the world and applied in another. In a way, that globalization applies values from and facets of unique traditions from around the world promotes the endurance of culture rather than the eradication of it. 

Wait, What?: An Opinion Piece Response

            College: a word that brings up so many connotations, depending on which high school senior to whom it is posed. Thoughts of independence, change, the elusive and tantalizing “future.” As my senioritis was kicking in and my college acceptances began coming, I daydreamed about college. I was ready to go beyond the walls of my Catholic all- girls high school, ready to trade in my unwieldy, school- mandated Fujitsu tablet for a sleek MacBook, ready to embrace the new ideas that would bombard me at the forward- thinking New York University.  After a long summer of interning and living on my own in Washington DC, I made my way back to New York to begin my NYU experience. College officially started and I made my way to my classes with an eager, willing disposition and a fully charged laptop… and was promptly told that I would never again need to bring my laptop to class. Wait… what?

                                                                          From this...

                                                                          ... to this.

            Sadly, for three out of my four first semester college courses, I am not allowed to use a laptop. It seems backwards to me that a tool that was my companion all throughout high school should be considered such a distraction in college that all of its concrete benefits are voided in favor of possible negatives. Many educators seem to be of the opinion that the use of laptops in classrooms is more of a hindrance than a help, hence the ban. One such figure, Professor Timothy Snyder of Yale University, even wrote an opinion piece called “Why laptops in class are distracting America’s future workforce” for the Christian Science Monitor. As a student who has greatly benefitted from the use of technology in the classroom, I feel that I must poke a couple of holes in Snyder’s argument.

            The first point in Snyder’s opinion piece that mystifies me is when he writes, “…we are losing the long tradition of people learning from other people.” He makes this statement in regard to the lecture hall format of teaching. Lecture hall lessons embody the pedagogy of bank learning, in which students are seen as empty vessels in which a sole purveyor, the lecturer, must deposit knowledge. Snyder’s statement bears no relevance to the point of his article because the basis of the lecture hall, which he says himself “has been around for more than 2,000 years”, is that a solitary educator passes knowledge onto a mass of students. Technology cannot be to blame for ending a tradition of intellectual interaction when there has really never been a back and forth element to lecture halls.

                                                               This would never be ok.

            Another point of contention in Snyder’s writing is where he claims that, “In seminars, laptops are still more harmful, serving as physical barriers that prevent a group of students from becoming a class.” Seminars are intrinsically a more intimate setting for learning than lecture halls, simply because the smaller number of students means more familiarity and opportunity to speak with the professor and each other. Any student in my Writing I seminar, and even the professor, can attest that though we use computers, we still hold stimulating discussions that showcase the range of personalities present in our number. Though Snyder is technically correct in stating that laptops can be physical barriers, the rest of his statement is not founded. The argument here is illogical— how can it be possible for a class with 15 students and one professor that meets for 75 minutes, twice a week, to not bond and “become a class” when the sole purpose of their meeting is to evoke discussion? Again, technology has been scapegoated for a problem that does not actually have anything to do with it.

                                            Is this what Snyder thinks seminars with laptops are like?

            Professor Timothy Snyder’s article “Why laptops in class are distracting America’s future workforce” is only an opinion piece and not a research article, but his attack on the use of laptops in classes has many gaps that defenders of technology can easily refute. Snyder’s viewpoint reflects that of many professors throughout the country’s university and college system. Technology is bearing the burden of claims that, in reality, have nothing to do with it. It is impossible to state that the use of laptops is killing the communication amongst professors and students in lecture halls when the very basis of a lecture hall is that there is one source of communication from lecturer to listener. It is also impossible to claim that the use of technology in seminars prevents class bonding and interaction, when the foundation of a seminar is discussion- based teaching, with students learning from both their professor and each other. It is time for people to stop using technology as a scapegoat and realize that their arguments do not make sense.

I've Always Wondered What I Look Like on the Inside

           The pressure is mounting. Each move is critical and must be handled delicately, but time is running out. He stares at the image projected on the screen and adjusts his tools accordingly. His reaction time to his on- screen tasks is impeccable. He finishes without mistakes, saving a life in the process. He re-enters the real world, earning claps and pats on the back from the audience who had been holding its collective breath all around him. He feels the rush of success, triumphing over the strange reddish- purple world that he has been focusing on for many hours. The self- congratulation is well deserved… he did, after all, fight off an alien invasion! He shakes his cramped muscles out, puts his tools down, and begins to clean himself off, reveling in the feeling of a laparoscopic surgery well done.

            It is hard to believe that a pastime that some people consider a waste of time could actually be a tool in a lucrative and life- saving profession… right? That is exactly what video gaming is to a new generation laparoscopic surgeons, according to a few studies connecting the two. For those unfamiliar with this type of surgery, laparoscopy is a way for surgeons to avoid making big cuts in order to see the internal work they need to do. A camera within a thin tube, called a laparoscope, is inserted into this small cut, acting as the surgeon’s eyes. The surgeon can see everything that he or she needs to see on an external screen while the internal camera serves as a guide. The multiple benefits to this type of surgery (compared to open surgery), including less pain, minimal scarring, and a quicker recovery time, make the procedure appealing to patients.

                                                                              Oh... That's what that looks like?

            Just as the rapid evolution of technology has spurred changes in language, media coverage, and global communication, it has also altered the medical world. Doctors from Beth Israel Medical Center in New York noticed that younger surgeons spent hours playing video games and began to wonder if there was a link between the hand- eye coordination necessary in laparoscopic surgery and that built by continuous use of video games. Doctors Rosser, Lynch, Haskamp, Yalif, Gentile, and Giammaria constructed an experiment involving the use of laparoscopic surgery drills and performance in video games. The results of the experiment conclude that subjects who play video games score 40% higher in the suturing course than those who do not play video games and that participants who have played more than three hours per week perform significantly (42%) better in drills and suturing than those who play less than three hours per week. Essentially, within the scope of this experiment, the experiences that the subjects have with video gaming translate to their surgical skills. The results of this study indicate that video games can be an exercise for laparoscopic surgeons to work out their reflexes and hand- eye coordination, enabling more successful surgical outcomes.

                                                                                     The visuals are so realistic!

            In another study, subjects were given a pre- test and a post- test in order to directly determine any changes in their surgical procedure as a result of video game exposure. This experiment, run by Doctors Sadandanan, Dryfhout, and Sosnowski and published in the Journal of Gynecologic Surgery derived that the time it took participants to transfer objects, make incisions, and stretch rubber bands was significantly decreased after the subjects had played video games. The conclusion states that video games are advantageous to surgeons because they aid in the performance time, thus enabling a patient to spend less time under anesthesia, which lowers the risk factor.

                                                                                           Run Usain, run!

            In a world where the rate of technological improvement seems to outpace the speed of Usain Bolt during the hundred- meter dash, it should come as no surprise that even sensitive life or death situations can be affected. (What is surprising is that there is not a huge company catering specifically to the needs of the surgeon video game market… yet.) Though many people, parents especially, protest the usually violent content of video games, there is no denying that the actual way in which the games are played fosters a hand- eye coordination which can be beneficial for certain professions, namely laparoscopic surgeons. So if you are a parent, the next time you want to punish your children for spending too much time playing video games keep in mind that one day they could be in an operating room drawing upon their virtual experience to help keep people healthy. Thinking about the paycheck could be great incentive as well.