Curating: Google Alerts

When I first started using Google Alerts to curate and manage content, I was focusing on ideas such as the DIY movement and self-learning. I wasn't really sure why I wanted to research these, but there was something drawing me to them. After a couple days of receiving the alerts for content related to these topics, I honestly was overwhelmed by how much is out there relating to these. I'm not exactly sure how this overwhelming feeling led me to the following realization, but they just connected somehow for me. Or I guess you could just say that I decided to focus on a completely different idea. Either way. But anyway, I found that in all of the content that I found, I was drawn to the ones that had to do with defining our humanity. Learning, creating, improving, etc. on our own accord is something that is innately human, but we also need a way to express our newly found experiences. That's where technology comes in. Without the use of the internet, self-directed learning would take a lot more discipline, and the DIY movement would be practically non-existent. So I added a new alert for "humans and technology" and the results are fascinating! I thought I was going to be overwhelmed again by all of the content, but the results are actually quite narrowed. Here are some examples of what I found:

Robot car that drives itself
Robots that can collaborate with humans
Scientists are actually creating a bionic man--completely from technology!
The desire to extend human life through technology
Looking at how dependent on technology humans are
Technology that can be part of our wardrobe (Which actually fits right in with the book I'm reading!)
I think this one is my favorite: Allowing prosthetic limbs to be incorporated into the actual nervous system
and creating a computer that functions like a human brain.

This relationship between humans and technology is fascinating to me! It is remixing our culture, creating something completely new for us to study, as I talked about in my "Changes in the Humanities" post at the beginning of the semester. We want to be human, but we use technology to expand, share, and get new ideas. In this way, technology is just one of the facets of humanity, but I also think that sometimes it goes too far when it seems like it is overtaking humanity. One such example is this video of androids built in Japan (and I actually was legitimately scared a little bit by this!)  But what do you think? Is technology and science going to far? Not far enough?