Browse Theses

As we enter the 21 st century, the rate of technological change is accelerating, and the question of who we think we are is rapidly being overtaken by who we are becoming. Our tools and technologies shape us. The discourse of technologists is consequential to the kinds of social worlds we build. In order to better understand this discourse, this study applies Lakoff and Johnson's conceptual metaphor theory to a specific event, the Human 2.0 Symposium, produced by a branch of an exemplary U.S. engineering school, the MIT Media Lab. The aim is to better understand how technologists working on the cutting-edge of new developments talk about human beings. Feenberg's Critical Theory of Technology, Perez' techno-economic paradigms, and Weber's study of bureaucratic rationality form the basis for a critical reflection on this discourse. Dominant metaphors that surfaced in this study included MAN IS A MACHINE, MIND IS A COMPUTER, and BRAINS R US ( HUMANS ARE THEIR BRAINS ). Notable exceptions to these mechanistic metaphors surfaced in the discourse of the two physicians who presented at this event, Smith and Sacks. Finally, this study examines the values embedded in the conceptual metaphors chosen to describe human beings by those who are shaping the course of what humans are becoming.

Keywords: technology, critical theory, conceptual metaphor, metaphor analysis, robots, MIT Media Lab, posthuman, human 2.0