This post marks the end of the first year of The Technological Citizen, and the end of my Hackworth Fellowship at The Markkula Center for Ethics.  And what a year it has been!

Over the course of the past 9 months, I’ve written and featured over 20 posts, on topics ranging from biotechnology to social networking to artificial intelligence.  These posts have amassed upwards of 500 thoughtful and interesting comments; and since September, approximately 20,000 people have visited the blog.

Throughout the year, posts from The Technological Citizen have been incorporated into the curriculum of eight courses at Santa Clara University in five different departments, including Social and Ethical Issues in Biotechnology (Biology Department); Science, Technology and Society (Philosophy Department); Technology and Communication (Communications Department); Science, Ethics, and Society (English Department), and Difficult Dialogues in Genetics and Medicine, to name a few. Hundreds of students have responded to posts as part of their coursework, and students from the philosophy course Science, Technology and Society wrote “guest posts” as their final papers, from which the previous post on electronic recycling and two upcoming posts were selected.

Over the year, I’ve been able to connect with some amazing people in the fields of technology, ethics and beyond.  Due to the powers of e-mail, contributing writers to the blog have included Paul Bloom, psychologist from Yale University;  Wendell Wallach, ethicist from Yale University; and Colin Allen, from Indiana University.  I’ve also been honored to feature articles by Dr. Lawrence Nelson, bioethicist from Santa Clara University, and Dr. Sean Hatt, psychologist from Santa Clara University’s Graduate School of Psychology.  I am so grateful, too, to Roger Holzberg from Methuselah Foundation for letting me interview him about the foundation’s work in life extension, and to Dr. Wallach and Dr. Allen for featuring my article on The Singularity on their blog, Moral Machines.

Living in the Silicon Valley has afforded me some excellent opportunities throughout the year as well: I’ve attended lectures by Jonathan Zittrain from Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Santa Clara University; Dr. William Hurlbut from Stanford’s Neuroscience Institute on ethical issues raised by biotechnology; Dr. Hank Greely, Dr. David Magnus, and Dr. Christine Wijman at The Center for Law and the Biosciences at Stanford on fMRI technology and Vegitative States; and blogger and writer Jonah Lehrer on neuroscience and decision making.

I also had the opportunity to learn about The Power of Social Technology from Professor Jennifer Aaker at Stanford Business School, when I was invited to serve on a panel evaluating the final presentations of her course on using social media for social good.  Excitingly, excerpts from The Technological Citizen are going to be featured in her forthcoming book, The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective and Powerful Ways To Use Social Media To Drive Social Change, an amazing book coming out next fall on the power of social media.

To top it all off, just recently I attended Wisdom 2.0, a conference bringing together leading thinkers in the fields of mindfullness and neuroscience with tech leaders from Silicon Valley and beyond to discuss how we can integrate our use of technology to lead better, more meaningful lives (very Technological Citizen-y, indeed).  Overall, it’s been rewarding and exciting to write about these topics in an area that is such a hub for technological innovation!

Looking Back

When I started The Technological Citizen, I knew nothing about blogging or web design; I didn’t know how to “embed” videos or post podcasts or even how to post a link. But I felt passionately about ethics and technology, and eager to share ideas, so I figured it out (with some help, of course) and set out to create my first blog.

My primary goal was to begin to spread the notion of “technological citizenship” and empower others to become informed and make thoughtful decisions about shaping our technological future — because it is our individual decisions about how we use technology that aggregate into our technological norms.  To that end, I tried to build a site that reflected a deep engagement and commitment to exploring technological issues, one which I hope modeled the type of intellectual engagement I hoped to inspire in others.

I wanted The Technological Citizen to be a bit different than the blogs I had become accustomed to reading, though.  My feeling is that on the web, so much gets posted, so frequently, that we can read blog posts only to forget about them 5 minutes later when we’re on to the next one.  I also think in our technologically paced world, we mistake sharing information with engaging with that information: it’s one thing to tweet out articles or blog a couple times a week (or a day) about a few thoughts about this or that, and to receive quickly formulated, knee-jerk comments or even just a Facebook “like” button in response; but what is missing from this type of internet discourse is a more in-depth, sustained reflection on the topics we are exchanging.  So much of the content online gets transmitted in bits and pieces, isolated from context, removed from any cohesive whole; is there a way, I wondered, to challenge this model, to create a website that was more about ideas than updates, which valued dialogue more than instant reactions?

So instead of posting constant updates, just linking to other articles and writing a paragraph or two on a topic, I wanted to take time to research, reflect on, and carefully construct my posts,  in hopes of creating an atmosphere of more in-depth reflection.  I wanted to create a forum for ideas that would have some staying power, where posts didn’t have a 24-hour expiration date but could be valuable sources of information, hopefully long after they were posted, and where people took the time to reflect on what they were contributing to the conversation, instead of just pressing “reply” and moving onto the next thing. And my hope was that the extra time it takes to read a long post, watch a video, or listen to a podcast is time readers might engage more fully with the topic, consider its impact, and reflect on it more meaningfully.  In essence, I wanted to try to reframe what a blog could be, and by bringing my own sustained reflection to the blog, elicit that from my readers as well.

The result? I can’t feel anything but deep gratitude towards the 475+ people who have shared their reflections in the comments section of the posts this year, for you all have really helped me to achieve this goal.  Thank you all so much!  On my posts on Cognitive Stimulants, there are over 40 comments; on my post on Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis, there are over 65 comments; and on my post on Personal Genetic Testing, there are over 120 comments.  I am so grateful for all the support and interest I have received for the blog, and for all the enthusiastic readers that have really made this year a success.  I know there is a lot to read online, and I thank everyone who has taken the time to stop by and contribute to The Technological Citizen!

Posts: A Summary

When people ask me where I get ideas on what to write on, I usually say, “Everywhere!” One thing I certainly never suffered from was a lack of things to write about, and my one regret is that I couldn’t have covered more topics.  But looking back, it is fun to see the diversity of the topics that have been featured on the blog so far…

Over the year, I’ve written about everything from Ritalin to Robots; I’ve examined “ubiquitous human computing” and a Singularity-fueled post-human future.  I’ve looked at internet privacy and advertisements for egg-donors and presented views on designer babies, too.

I’ve tried to present issues in a balanced and nuanced way, and in so doing, asked readers to take some time out of their media-multitasking to sit and read posts which are long and sometimes complicated, hoping earnestly to create a blog that flies against the conventions of online reading behaviors, which condition us to expect quick, short bits of information that we can easily skim (but often quickly forget as a result).

I’ve tried to inspire those same readers to think twice about whipping out their cell phones in public places at the expense of talking to those around them (and I also suggested what to do with those cell phones when you’re ready to move on to a newer one).  I hoped to encourage readers to consider spending some time in nature, and to try and appreciate the natural world for its intrinsic value, not just as a resource we can use for our technological gains.

I also took my interest in neuroscience and philosophy and tried to draw some attention to “brain overclaim syndrome”; I’ve even offered up some tips on how to live a longer, healthier life (and cued you in to the benefits and pitfalls of getting your genome tested, also).

And I wrote about how you can use technology to change the world — and highlighted that you can live in a pretty swanky house while you’re at it.

When I look back at all of these articles, I’m so happy to have been able to write about such a broad range of topics.  But my real hope is that the culmination of all these articles achieves something beyond what any individual post could get across — my hope is to have challenged you, in general, to think about technology with a critical, analytic eye; to see technology as not only something that we shape, but something that shapes us; to become aware of it as a powerful and  influential force in all of our lives and to constantly question if the path we are heading down is the path we should be taking.

I also hope to have inspired you to think about both the powers and dangers of each of the technologies that impact our lives, and furthermore, to plant a seed of skepticism that causes you to think twice about the technologies that are advancing around us each day, and say, “Yes, we are able to do this with technology.  But does that mean we should?”  And  lastly, I hope to have provided you with some information or insight you may not have thought about otherwise, so that the next time you’re skimming an internet article, checking your cell phone while having a conversation with someone, or reaching for that Ritalin, you might approach it with a bit more careful reflection.  ”Concern for man himself and his fate,” Einstein said, “must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors.”

I’d Like To Thank…

In the process of looking back on this year, I want to take the opportunity to thank everyone who has read the blog, sent the blog to friends, and left comments on the posts: I appreciate it so very much!

This blog could not have been possible without the thoughtful encouragement and feedback of my advisor Dr. David DeCosse, who has been so supportive and helpful throughout the year, as well as the support of The Markkula Center, including Kirk Hanson and Miriam Schulman, and the generous Hackworth Fellowship.

I’d also like to thank all of the people who have guest posted throughout this year: Dr. Sean Hatt, for his thoughtful piece on cognitive stimulants; Dr. Lawrence Nelson, for his article on PGD, and whose bioethics course got me interested in studying ethics in the first place; Dr. Wendell Wallach and Dr. Paul Bloom from Yale University and Dr. Colin Allen from Indiana University for generously allowing me to feature their thought-provoking material. To the students who have contributed guest posts: Preet Anand, Kaelin Holland, Danny Meyers, Rachel Hammel and Kendra Postell.  Thank you for your interest in the blog, for your willingness to contribute, and for all the discussions you have inspired as a result.  Keep it up!

I’d also like to thank Professor Leilani Miller, who has been so supportive of the blog from the beginning — your support has meant so much to me; Professor Margaret McLean, Professor Aparajita Nanda, and Professor Jeremy Townley, for graciously using this blog in their courses; to all of the amazing students and people who have contributed their comments over the course of the year, thank you for your thoughtful feedback.  Also, to Professor Jennifer Aaker, for all of the wonderful opportunities she has afforded me – thank you so much!

To my family and friends for being so supportive over the course of the year, and for listening to me talking about these topics non-stop(!), thank you.  To Angela Zhu, for all of her help, particularly launching the blog, with helping me design and troubleshoot for the website.

And last but certainly not least, I’d like to thank Professor Shannon Vallor, without whom this blog would not exist.  The Technological Citizen is an outgrowth of her profound teaching, guidance, and intellectual influence, and I am deeply indebted to her for all that she has taught me.

What Next?

When I look around, I see that things are changing.  Fast. Genes are being spliced. Brains are being scanned. Tweets are being Tweeted.  The decisions we make as a generation now about how we approach these things — the internet, genetic engineering, neuroscientific pursuits, environmental technology, robotics, and reproductive technologies — these decisions will be crucial in the shape our technological future will take.  And if we get interested, get informed, and get involved, we can better create a future we can be proud of, instead of just mindlessly being along for the ride.

So what happens with The Technological Citizen now?  I will continue writing, albeit less frequently, into the forseeable future.  (Of course, in our technologically saturated world, I will never, ever run out of topics to cover!)  I hope you will continue to read, comment, and share the blog.

In addition to new posts, I will be working on other pages for the blog, like a books page, and a page on philosophy of technology, highlighting some of my favorite philosophers and ethicists.  I will also be updating my articles page with my favorite sources for interesting ideas.  The blog will also continue to be incorporated into the curriculum of courses at Santa Clara University, next year and in years to come.

As year one of the blog comes to an end, I wanted to close my posts with a passage from Wired magazine founder Kevin Kelly’s article, “We Are The Web,” because it expresses a powerful concept I believe to be true:  We are living through a major technological transition, one which will go down as a pivotal, transformational period in history.  And as we live through this time, I think it is important that we not only open our eyes to the technological changes taking place, but that we examine these changes from a place of ethical and philosophical inquiry. The type of wisdom necessary to guide us through these changes is not inherent in the creation and proliferation of technology, but must be called upon through reflection and dialogue.

Technology is a tool: whether we choose to use it for good is up to us.

From “We Are The Web,” by Kevin Kelly:

There is only one time in the history of each planet when its inhabitants first wire up its innumerable parts to make one large Machine. Later that Machine may run faster, but there is only one time when it is born.

You and I are alive at this moment.

We should marvel, but people alive at such times usually don’t. Every few centuries, the steady march of change meets a discontinuity, and history hinges on that moment. We look back on those pivotal eras and wonder what it would have been like to be alive then. Confucius, Zoroaster, Buddha, and the latter Jewish patriarchs lived in the same historical era, an inflection point known as the axial age of religion. Few world religions were born after this time. Similarly, the great personalities converging upon the American Revolution and the geniuses who commingled during the invention of modern science in the 17th century mark additional axial phases in the short history of our civilization.

Three thousand years from now, when keen minds review the past, I believe that our ancient time, here at the cusp of the third millennium, will be seen as another such era. In the years roughly coincidental with the Netscape IPO, humans began animating inert objects with tiny slivers of intelligence, connecting them into a global field, and linking their own minds into a single thing. This will be recognized as the largest, most complex, and most surprising event on the planet. Weaving nerves out of glass and radio waves, our species began wiring up all regions, all processes, all facts and notions into a grand network. From this embryonic neural net was born a collaborative interface for our civilization, a sensing, cognitive device with power that exceeded any previous invention. The Machine provided a new way of thinking (perfect search, total recall) and a new mind for an old species. It was the Beginning.

-Courtney, The Technological Citizen

Want to play a game, and take little a trip down memory lane? Grab a piece of paper, or start a running tally in your head: we’re going to go through all the electronic devices you’ve owned in your lifetime.  Ready? Here goes:

Take a moment and think all the way back to the first cell phone you ever had –perhaps chuckle as you recall how the clunky device compares to the sleek, multitasking gadget you have now– and go through all the cellular phones you’ve had since then. Count them up — how many have there been in total?  Is it 3? 5? 7?  More? Take note.

Now, do the same thing for any music playing device, starting way back at the beginning. Did you once have a cd player, maybe even a tape player?  And then at some point at the turn of the millenium, did you transition over to using the ill-fated mini-disc player, or more likely, did you join the revolution that was the iPod? And as the years went on, did you find yourself having to upgrade, because, well, the new iPods were smaller and sleeker, and then the even newer iPods came with video screens, and then the even newer ones came with touch screens?  And, oh yea, along the way, how many stereos, speakers, and earphones would you say you’ve gone through in tandem? From your first cd or tape player all the way to now, how many electronic bits and pieces have you used to play the songs you love?

What about televisions — and of course, the video players, gaming systems, and satellite boxes that go along with them– how many of those have you had?  Ever had to replace a TV because you were moving, and it was too heavy to bring along? Or maybe you just wanted to upgrade it to say, a new HD screen, or a higher quality Blu-ray video system, because the old version just wouldn’t do?  And what about that laptop or computer you are reading this blog post on right now?  It’s unlikely it’s the first computer you’ve ever owned or used, that is, unless you’re staring at an early 1990s Dell or Macintosh and stubbornly using dial-up internet ; so how many computers have you had before the one you are on right now?  And the one you are on now, do you like it?  How long before you upgrade to a newer one, on to bigger (or smaller) and better things, never to look back at the now defunct product you no longer have use for?

OK – game over. Time to tally it up–all the old cell phones, iPods, TVs, video systems, computers – and place them in a line up in your head.  Now, go ahead and ask yourself: where are all of those items now?

Though some of these items may be gathering dust in a drawer or a box in your garage, unless you’re part of the 20% of people who recycle their electronic waste properly, it’s more than likely that all those electronics that you once owned and loved but cast aside are in a toxic dump, somewhere overseas, leaching toxic chemicals into the ground, air, and water, and contributing to a global epidemic of improperly disposed electronic waste.

Here are the facts: There are over 20-50 million tons of e-waste generated worldwide each year, constituted by cell phones, computers, music devices and also other electronic devices like microwaves and refridgerators. In the United States alone, we throw away over 350,00 cell phones and 130,000 computers a day; that’s over 100 million cell phones per year.  And though some of this waste languishes in landfills stateside, over 60% of this waste is shipped to places like China and Africa, where it is dealt with in facilities that lack the money, machinery, and ability to properly dispose of them.  As a result, these items leak toxic chemicals, including chemicals like mercury, lead, and cadmium, into the environment and bodies to which they are exposed.

Why is it a moral issue – and why should you care?  Improperly disposed e-waste is a global ethical problem of which each individual who uses electronics is a stakeholder.  A look into the town of Guiya, China, where there are “miles and miles of nothing but old electronics,”  provides insight into the issue.  Guiya is an area which houses a major electronic recycling facility, wherein residents – including children– are employed to break down old cell phones, computers, and other electronics into their component parts often by burning them or placing them in nitric hydrochloric acids to remove their precious metals.  But in the process, the destabilized chemicals are released and wreak havoc on those who are exposed. Guiyu is reported as having the highest number of cancer causing toxins in the world; the river which runs through it contains up to 2,400 times the World Health Organization’s acceptable threshold for lead.

Guiya River has over 2,400 times the WHO's limit for Lead

The residents face high rates of risk of miscarriage, respiratory problems and lead poisoning.  And other health effects remain unknown. Oladele Ogunseitan, an environmental health scientist at University of California Irvine interviewed by Jon Mooallem for the New York Times Magazine reports, “In a phone that you can hold in the palm of your hand, you now have more than 200 chemical compounds,” “To try to separate them out and study what health effects may be associated with burning it or sinking it in water — that’s a lifetime of work for a toxicologist.”

This catastrophe is not just taking place overseas. Mooallem writes, “In a study published last year, 34 recent-model cellphones were put through a standard E.P.A. test, simulating conditions inside a landfill. All of them leached hazardous amounts of lead — on average, more than 17 times the federal threshold for what constitutes hazardous waste. Under a stricter state of California test, they also leached four other metals above hazardous levels.”).  Even landfills, which are technically supposed to be more contained and safe, are bastions of risk.

In addition to these significant environmental and health effects, e-waste is just what it sounds like—a waste—of both money, and of resources. Many electronics that are thrown away contain precious minerals like gold and platinum that can be “mined” and then reused or reconstituted into products – but only if they are properly managed after disposal. Companies such as Umicore are in the business of extracting the precious metals in a process known as “aboveground mining.”  And how’s this for a factoid?  In 2005, The United States Geological Survey estimated that in the more than half a billion old phones stored away in people’s drawers, there was more than $300 million worth of gold, palladium, silver, copper, and platinum contained in the precious metals in those cell phones.

Kendra Postell writes about the global issue of e-waste — and what our role is in pursuing it as a moral issue — in her guest post below.  Read it and consider the questions she asks: what is our ethical responsibility to the environment when it comes to our use of technological devices?  How can we best address the problem of e-waste, as we continue to use and develop more and more electronic devices into the future?

Kendra Postell is a Freshman at Santa Clara University pursuing a degree in Philosophy with an emphasis in Pre-Law. She chose to write about this topic because she is interested in the relationship between developed and developing nations and thinks it important to examine the global ramifications of everyday actions.

Technology: A Mixed Bag

Our generation and the past few decades have been defined by an explosion of invention and use of technology. One-hundred years ago being able to talk to someone on the other side of the planet instantly was an impossible feat and today people in some of the most remote parts of the world are communicating with each other wirelessly on cellular or satellite phones. Technology has done many good things for humanity. With the help of modern communication technologies we have created a society in which we can share knowledge and resources with people around the world. With advancements in electrical and civil engineering we have seen lifespan and quality of life for many drastically increase over the past several decades.

Despite all of its usefulness, our modern obsession with technology comes with some negative side effects. A large amount of capital is needed to continually update as new inventions arise, but many poor countries, which are most in need of this development, do not have the financial means to support it. These countries are left starving, with neither electricity nor clan water, and most of their citizens living in staggering poverty. While wealthy countries continue to update, reinvent and redesign these countries fall further and further behind. Often, because of this pattern of several countries advancing far beyond the means of others, the success of powerful countries is achieved at the expense of the poor. This cycle is exemplified especially in our methods of e-waste disposal.

Since preschool our generation has been taught that recycling is good for the environment. Programs such as Earth911 provide recycling education resources to students and teachers alike. Though many of our plastic bottles still make it to landfills and, according to Time Magazine’s Bryan Walsh in his article “E-Waste Not” only 20% of Americans properly dispose of their electronic waste, at least we know we have failed when we toss our soda can in the trash or that outdated calculator in the dumpster. We are taught that taking our old electronics to a proper facility is the more honorable alternative and we imagine those electronics end up in a plant similar to the one in my hometown, Roseville, California, described in the New York Times article, ‘Panning E-Waste for Gold’. In recent years, however, we have found that electronic recycling has its dark side.

Because the United States has strict regulations on dealing with pollutants and toxic waste and a high minimum wage “many electronics recyclers ship American e-waste abroad, where it is stripped and burned with little concern for environmental or human health,” notes Walsh. Breaking down and recycling electronics is an expensive undertaking in America, so many companies ship the electronics overseas where laborers are willing to do the dirty work for very little pay. Guiyu, China is one of the most noted recycling cites and because of the country’s poor waste management regulations this city’s people suffer many health complications including increased rates of miscarriage (six times greater according to 60 Minutes) and astonishing levels of lead in children’s bodies, a substance known to cause brain damage and a battery of other severe health complications described here.

We have a situation of “21^st century toxics being managed in a 17^th century environment” says Allen Hershkowitz of the Natural Resources Defense Council, in an interview with 60 Minutes. Circuit boards are dunked in crude acid to extract gold and plastics are burned away leaving behind other valuable metals, not to mention a flood of some of the most toxic fumes known to man.

See a video detailing the health hazards of e-waste in India:

Why do these people expose themselves to such horrible health hazards? Many do not even know of the hazardous effects, as mentioned in the above video, but for those who do it is all a matter of capital. One can afford to feed themselves and their family on the salaries (extremely meager by our standards) these recycling plants provide. “It’s…a choice between poverty and poison” explains, Jim Puckett, also a 60 Minutes interviewee, “and we should never make them make that choice.” Unfortunately, we make them make this choice every day, and with electronics being the fastest growing form of waste in America, the choice has become increasingly financially appealing; the people of Guiyu make a small salary by harvesting and selling metals, and American recycling businesses can simply ship off our worn electronics rather than go through the expensive process of breaking them down domestically.

See the 60 Minutes video below which further explains this smuggling process and the plight of Guiyu, China:
Watch CBS News Videos Online

The Politics Of ‘Going Green’

One of the most appalling aspects of this process is that some American recyclers who participate in selling these electronics to poor countries claim to break them down safely and ethically in the United States. They lie and get all of the advantages of having an ethical, positive image while still reaping the financial rewards of outsourcing the dirty work. As Rajni Kothari says in his essay about development, ‘Environment, Technology, and Ethics,’ “‘Sustainability’ has been adopted as rhetoric, not as an ethical principle which restructures our relationship with the Earth and its creatures in the realm of knowledge and in arenas of action” (Kothari, 431). The idea of ‘going green’ or being ‘eco-friendly’ is really just an add campaign, a way to make buyers feel safe and good about their purchase, while still causing the same environmental ills as before the green movement.

If recycling companies lie to their customers and promise to break down electronics in the U.S. when in reality they ship them to China, how is one supposed to dispose their old cell phones, laptops and televisions? It seems like we are stuck choosing between tossing our old cell phone in the dumpster and poisoning our own environment or “recycling” the technology and poisoning people who had nothing to do with and received no benefit from the use of the cell phone during its working life. I personally have every cell phone I have ever owned in my desk drawer because I have found no good answer to this very question. One reporter, Graham Russell, believes he has found the answer.

www.grxrecycles.com/

“If you’re a company needing to find a safe way to get rid of your old electronic equipment in Colorado, Utah or Nebraska, you have an obvious option. Guaranteed Recycling Experts (GRX – www.grxrecycles.com/) guarantees to completely destroy your e-waste, including any data remaining on hard drives or in printer buffers, and will document for you where the constituent materials end up. GRX encourages you to audit its facility at any time and to talk to its downstream partners to verify how they handle the material GRX sends them. By pursuing a strategy based on the principles of sustainable business management in an industry populated by many unscrupulous operators, GRX has built a competitive advantage in 5 short years that has made it by far the largest e-waste recycler in the Rocky Mountain region.”

And for those whose businesses lie beyond the Rocky Mountain region? Are we just to trust any recycler who promises they have good intentions? My gut says no. Few individuals have the time or resources to check up on recycling agencies themselves, so I feel the only way we can ever really be sure is to establish some sort of certification system similar to the FDA. The situation we face today is actually very similar to that described in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, and I hope, for the sake of our environment and the people in these poor recycling cities that the recycling business evolves as the commercial food industry did. Through exposure of the ills and injustices I hope we win a government agency with some kind of certification process that will assure a certified company follows ethical and legal procedures in disposing of our electronics.

Unfortunately, due to the pattern of recent events it seems the United States is not very receptive to regulation of electronics exports. In fact, as Susan Moran of The New York Times points out, we were the only industrialized country to refuse to sign The Basel Convention, a treaty to prohibit dumping e-waste in other countries, and the only substance that we regulate the export of is lead, which still often flies under the radar and makes its way to the third world.

This situation begs the question: as the leader in production of electronics and subsequent e-wastes do we have a responsibility to stop the export of toxic e-waste to poorer countries, or do we sacrifice the health of these people in the name of Capitalism and a free market?

The increasing severity of the amount of e-waste we produce causes one to question whether we could actually fix anything if we tried. Scrapping yards are not just limited to rural China. Greenpeace notes that the problem is spreading to India with tens of thousands of workers in Delhi and more found in Meerut, Ferozabad, Chennai, Bangalore and Mumbai.  Moran states that we are dumping on “other countries that are in no position to deal with our waste,” but are we even in the position to deal with our own waste?

Considering the Big Picture

The sheer amount of electronics America goes through is an impossible problem, and to suddenly switch to processing all of this waste ourselves would be an incredible feat that we may not have the time, resources or space to achieve. Purely domestic recycling would mean taking complete and utter responsibility for our wasteful and destructive actions. We would be required to see the massive stacks of our old electronics waiting to be broken down and we would risk poisoning our own children and cities with some of the most dangerous substances on earth.

Unfortunately, even if we were to halt the shipments of waste into China and other poor areas of the globe, the problem would not be solved. Guiyu is so polluted that the health issues are sure to be felt for generations after the dangerous “recycling” processes stop, if they ever do. To simply halt the shipment of electronics would probably cause the people of Guiyu more harm than good because to strip them of their access to the small bits of scrap metal would be to strip them of their only real source of income leaving them with no means to support themselves, let alone reverse the medical and environmental harm years of recycling have caused. To cease the smuggling of electronics and nothing more would mean leaving these people to rot, literally, in their toxic environment. So what do we do to remedy the problem? One tech journalist, John Biggs, suggests more easily recyclable electronics, but his suggestion like many others is feeble in the wake of this growing problem.

Americans seem to have a tendency to get themselves into these situations that are difficult to remedy when it comes to technology because as Lewis Mumford mentions in his essay ‘The Highway and the City’, “they are trading a permanent good for a very temporary advantage” (Mumford, 365). In this essay he is referring to our habit of building new roads straight through cities to alleviate traffic for a few years rather than rather than focusing on “the more permanent requirements of regional planning” which would alleviate traffic for decades, even lifetimes (365), but the same pattern is seen in our infatuation with electronics. We continually build, buy and throw away electronics with no thought about how wasteful our habits are or where our worn out cell phones will end up. We consume and replace at an alarming rate and leave the heaps of wasted plastic and metal and toxins for someone else to deal with and the environmental issues to be addressed at some later date. What we need is a revaluation of this lifestyle. We need to think to the future and preemptively prevent issues such as these rather than addressing them as they become severe and often irreversible.

To continue our current rate of electronics disposal means to leave the people of Guiyu, Delhi and countless other rural, poor cities to cancer and birth defects and allow the environmental harms their recycling tactics cause to worsen and spread to other areas. But to save these people and cease the environmental poisoning means to drastically alter our way of life. It would mean not getting to update that cell phone every six months or not buying that bigger television, faster computer or better stereo Americans constantly crave. It would mean challenging our morals and shifting away from a stuff-centered way of life. It might even mean risking health issues of our own to take responsibility for our garbage and break it down domestically. Are we strong enough in our values of freedom and democracy to make these sacrifices? Is human nature on the whole kind enough to pull off this one grand selfless act?

Herein lies what I believe to be one of the most problematic ethical issues of our age. With the slow down in our economy we have come to a crossroads, a chance to revaluate our role as individuals and a country. Do we continue unrestrained progress at the expense of these people in developing countries and cling to distant and unfounded hopes that someday the resulting technology will help their situation? Or do we redesign our world, make sacrifices, and start working towards a better future for everyone?

To find places to e-recycle, click here and scroll to the bottom of the page.

Questions:

What do we owe to the people of Guiyu China and other poor countries whose lives are directly impacted by our actions? Do we have a responsibility to cease electronics shipments and clean these areas up?

What suggestions do you have for cleaning up this electronic mess we have made? Policy changes? Domestic Recycling? Lifestyle changes?

What do you think of this issue in terms of technological determinism? Do we have the power to overcome the maladies caused by technology or are we doomed to continue down a path of environmental destruction?

Works Cited

Basel Convention. UNEP. Web. 12 Mar. 2010. <http://www.basel.int/>.

Biggs, John. “Guiyu, E-waste Capital of China.” Web Log post. CrunchGear. TechCrunch, 04 Apr. 2008. Web. 12 Mar. 2010. <http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/04/04/guiyu-e-waste-capital-of-china/>.

“Dailymotion – Waste Management Matters, Meet the Global Waste Challenge.” Dailymotion – Online Videos, Music, and Movies. Web. 12 Mar. 2010. <http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xbuf5l_waste-management-matters-meet-the-g_lifestyle>.

“Following The Trail Of Toxic E-Waste.” 60 Minutes- CBS News. 30 Aug. 2009. Web. 15 Mar. 2010. <http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/06/60minutes/main4579229_page2.shtml>.

Hanks, Craig. Technology and Values. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Print.

Moran, Susan. “Panning E-waste for Gold.” The New York Times. The New York Times Company, 17 May 2006. Web. 12 Mar. 2010. <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/17/business/businessspecial2/17ewaste.html?_r=3&pagewanted=1&sq=electronic%20waste&st=cse&scp=1>.

Pelley, Scott. 60 Minutes. The Wasteland. CBS News, 30 Aug. 2009. Web. 12 Mar. 2010. <http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5274959n&tag=related;photovideo>.

Russell, Graham. “Electronic Waste – Sustainability Finally Triumphs over Unscrupulous Practices.” Examiner.com. Clarity Digital Group, 29 Aug. 2009. Web. 15 Mar. 2010. <http://www.examiner.com/x-16776-Denver-Sustainable-Business-Examiner~y2009m8d29-Electronic-waste–sustainability-finally-triumphs-over-unscrupulous-practices>.

“Where Does E-waste End Up?” Greenpeace China. Web. 12 Mar. 2010. <http://www.greenpeace.org/china/en/campaigns/toxics/e-waste/where-does-e-waste-end-up>.

Where Does E-waste End Up? Youtube. Greenpeace International, 22 Feb. 2008. Web. 12 Mar. 2010. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JZey9GJQP0&feature=related>.

Watch The Story of Stuff below.  The Story of Electronics is coming in Fall 2010.

Santa Clara University Recycling Intern Kaelin Holland works at Santa Clara University to promote awareness about this issue — and to encourage people to recycle the items they no longer have use for, including electronics.  In her post below, she discusses the global e-waste epidemic and the moral problems it presents, and then she outlines some ways to make sure we stop it.  She also identifies the best places in Santa Clara and beyond to recycle all of your old electronics.  Make sure to check it out the next time you’re in the market for an upgrade.

Kaelin Holland is a Recycling Intern at Santa Clara University.  She is studying English and Environmental Science and Santa Clara.  For questions on recycling at Santa Clara or on other Sustainability topics, you can reach her at recycling@scu.edu.

Electronic Recycling at Santa Clara University

Saving up for that new iPad? Counting down the days to get a new laptop? Or maybe your cell phone took a voluntary swim in a puddle or toilet and you’re left with no choice but to purchase a new one. All these scenarios are understandable; however, what will you do with your old item? Unless you bring it to a proper recycling system, it could end up with all other E-waste.

E-Waste is a broad umbrella category that covers the ever-growing universal amount of discarded electronic items such as computers, cell phones, printers, hair dryers, and basically anything that uses an electric cord or battery. These items differ from the ordinary landfill waste because of the amount of toxic metals they contain that produce even more environmental hazards than landfill waste. Some of these metals include arsenic, lead, and mercury, brominated flame retardants (BFRs), and polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Frequent exposure to these chemicals can cause severe health issues such as cancer, respiratory illness, and reproductive problems (Visit SVTC for more information). A Greenpeace study argued that E-waste is currently one of the ‘fastest growing types of hazardous waste’ on the planet. The amounts of E-waste are only expected to rise in the future, given the continual increase of new technologies and shorter product lifespans. As companies continue to race with each other to see how can develop the more advanced, ‘gotta have it’ product first, more and more electronics will become unnecessarily obsolete.

Hidden Flows

E-Waste Map from Greenpeace.org

The problem with electronic waste lies not only in the high level of toxicity of these products, but the way in which they are disposed. Greenpeace states that 20-50 million tonnes of E-Waste are generated each year. While this is a gigantic amount to consider, what is left uncounted is a ‘hidden flow’ of E-waste that is exported to developing nations such as China, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Greenpeace suggests that in India, the hidden flows could potentially count for 99% of reported E-waste, or 143,000 tonnes. Due to companies mislabeling their exports as ‘donations’ or ’scrap’, it is impossible to quantify just exactly how much waste is being illegally exported and dumped on these countries.

Health Risks

When impoverished countries receive this waste, they are only equipped with rudimentary recycling technologies to either simply extract valuable raw material or reuse certain components. Those who work in the scrap yards breaking apart and retrieving these items aren’t adequately covered with protective clothing gear or face masks when the chemicals are smelted or released into the air, so their health is immediately at risk. In addition to posing severe health risks to those in the immediate vicinity, the chemicals also pervade the air, soil, and water in the surrounding areas, causing incredible environmental degradation in these communities.

Thinking Ethically

Considering the vast amount of human, air, water, soil, and biota pollution that this hazardous and toxic waste creates, an ethical issue is at hand. It is easy for us in developed countries like America and Europe to develop an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ mentality when it comes to all types of our waste. But unless it is properly recycled, the waste never disappears; it just winds up in a landfill or on the other side of a planet that is still ours. It is important to keep in mind that environmental degradation that is unaccounted for will snowball into all sorts of problems once the ecosystems are destabilized; gradually contaminated health, food, and water supplies are just as harmful as sudden natural disasters or disease epidemics that we would otherwise feel a moral jolt to assist.

Furthermore, in such a highly globalized society that we live in today, it is extremely important to understand the interconnectedness of activities that take place on this earth. For instance, when E-waste chemicals infiltrate every ecological component of regions in China, they will eventually make their way into whatever we import back from them, be it food or manufactured items. When our air, food, water supply, and other necessities for life come directly from our environment, it is all of our responsibilities to think critically about the impacts we are making on the environment each time we toss away an item that could otherwise be reused or recycled. Finally, human interests aside, the pollution that E-waste causes affects not only humans but also all other organisms in those areas. If we feel that we have a moral and ethic responsibility to engage in life sustaining activities for every living thing on this earth, then E-waste pollution and other environmental issues should force us to reflect upon the ways in which we impact our global community.

Three C’s

Sustainability Coordinator Lindsay Cromwell

Santa Clara University’s Sustainability Program works to foster the three C’s: Competence, Conscience, and Compassion. We should develop the competence to learn about these issues and deal with them in an appropriate manner, the conscience to take into account the impact that our daily lifestyles have on the global environment, and the compassion to reach out to those communities currently dealing with the negative effects of our lifestyle. If you would like to learn more about the current effects of E-waste, Santa Clara University offers a number of ways to get more involved. We recommend taking an environmental class here on campus; intro Environmental Studies classes, “The Joy of Garbage”, and “Environmental Technology” especially go into detail about different waste diversion technologies. Also, student organizations such as Green Club and B LEJIT work to increase environmental awareness and environmental justice issues on campus. Finally, you can watch The Story of Stuff online to see the ways in which the extraction, production, and circulation of ‘stuff’ affects our environment and natural resources.

Individual Effort

Check out http://www.scu.edu/sustainability/

For us individuals, what can we do to minimize the amount of E-waste we generate? E-waste minimization can take place in all steps of the product life cycle; first, we can choose our electronics consciously. Buying electronics that are built to have a lower environmental impact (such as the newer MacBooks that not only eliminated the main toxic culprits but also used less material overall) will aid in this reduction. Also, despite the excitement that comes out over a new or updated product, is it really worth it to get new electronics if the ones you already have work just fine? And finally, it also goes without saying if your electronics have seen better days and those days are over, they should be taken to a proper recycler. Fortunately for us on campus, our Facilities department will happily accept all E-waste and universal waste (such as batteries, innk cartiges, compact flourescent light bulbes, and cell phones). If you’re a student living in one of the residence halls, you can leave your large E-Waste under the sign where you take your trash and recyclables, and small items like cell phones, batteries, ink cartridges, and CFL’s can be dropped off at the residence hall service desks.

Conclusion

While it is exciting to develop and experience new technologies, we have an ethical responsibility to minimize hazardous waste production throughout the entire life cycle of an item, from its production to its disposal. Simply being aware of your consumption of electronic goods and taking your items to a proper recycler will help immensely against the illegal dumping of E-Waste to other countries that are forced to sacrifice their health and their environment to dispose of it.

Places to Recycle Your E-Waste

What Stores Accept E-Recycling?

Most large electronics corporations will be happy to responsibly recycle your items. Here are some of the closest stores near Santa Clara:

-Staples will accept cell phones, computer monitors, desktops, laptops, printers, fax machines, electronics, ink cartridges, office machines, toner cartridges, and batteries. Some of the larger brands may require a $10 fee. The closest address to SCU is: 1351 Coleman Ave, Santa Clara, CA 95050. Phone number: (408) 588-9650

-Best Buy will accept cell phones, compact disks, computers, MP3 players, batteries, telephones, game consoles, small appliances, and certain types of televisions. The closest address to SCU is: 3090 Stevens Creek Blvd., San Jose, CA 95128, Phone number: (408) 241-6040

-Goodwill & Salvation Army locations accept computers and other electronics like radios and stereos. Goodwill Donation Station: Stevens Creek & Winchester, San Jose, CA 95121, Phone number: (408) 998-5774. Salvation Army Thrift Store, 702 West Taylor Street, San Jose, CA 95131, Phone number: (408) 943-9943

-Apple also has a program to recycle old Apple products.  Find out more information from their website.

Where to E-Recycle at Santa Clara University?

-Residence Halls: E-Waste (anything with a cord or battery) as well as cell phones, chargers, batteries, ink cartridges, and CFL’s should be brought to the small blue receptacles at the reception desks. For larger items, request a pickup from Facilities by either calling 554-4742 or emailing facilities-csc@scu.edu.

-Faculty Offices: Request a pickup from Facilities by either calling 554-4742 or emailing facilities-csc@scu.edu.

Where to E-Recycle outside the University, including Home Pick-Up?

-U.S. Post Office (in Franklin Square) will accept cell phones, electronics, ink cartridges, and toner cartridges.  Also, you can donate or sell your cell phone to be reused at Recellular.com.

-ECS Refining will accept cell phones, computer monitors, televisions http://www.ecsrefining.com/

-Earthcare Recycling will pick up certain electronics; contact the site for more information.

-College Hunks Hauling Junk is a nationwide company that will send two strapping young college men to come to pick up any ‘junk’ you have and they will recycle, reuse, or donate the items properly.

These locations and the items they accept are certainly not exhaustive; there are plenty of more places to recycle your electronics in the area. For more locations, visit Earth911.com. This site provides recycling centers closest to you for not only electronics but other recyclable items as well.

]]> http://thetechnologicalcitizen.com/?feed=rss2&p=2979 1 http://thetechnologicalcitizen.com/?p=2854 http://thetechnologicalcitizen.com/?p=2854#comments Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:28:56 +0000 admin http://thetechnologicalcitizen.com/?p=2854 Take a second and consider: out of all the articles, videos, and blog posts you see in a week, which ones do you breeze through and forget, and which ones stick with you?

Which ones do you forward onto your friends, and which ones do you relegate to internet oblivion?

Out of the requests you get on Facebook to support a cause or become a “fan,” to the e-mails you get from Barack Obama to watch a short video about healthcare reform, to a link someone sends you to donate to their charity, how many of them do you take the time to engage with deeply, and how many go, in one eye, so to speak, and out the other?

Most of us are inundated with requests online to take notice of social causes: to “Save Darfur” or to “Campaign for Cancer Awareness”.  And yet many of us glaze over and ignore them; or perhaps we join a group but end up taking no real action towards the cause. Indeed, for anyone who has ever created a YouTube video, written a blog, or tried to get someone to join their cause on Facebook, you likely know that simply sending out a request doesn’t always lead to action.

Yet, the power of social technology, when fully engaged, can be nothing short of revolutionary. Micro-loans websites like Kiva.org, which allow people to lend money over the internet to small-business owners in developing countries, have enabled people to change the lives of entrepreneurs in 3^rd world countries at the click of a button.  With over 2 million online registered users, members of my.barackobama.com mobilized and planned over 200,000 events, wrote 400,000 blog posts, and created over 35,000 volunteer groups during campaign season; and through these online avenues, the campaign raised over 500 million dollars from 6.5 million online donations (the majority of which were under $100 each).  And in recent months, The Red Cross has raised over $30 million dollars for Haiti relief through text message donations, allowing people to literally lend a helping hand by using it to send a text.

The same technologies that enable us to “poke” our friends or “retweet” an interesting article are the ones that can connect and mobilize us to bring about change in profound ways.  This week I had the exciting opportunity to be on a panel evaluating the final presentations of students taking “The Power of Social Technology,” a course at Stanford Business School taught by Professor Jennifer Aaker devoted to looking at how to promote social good by harnessing the power of social networking technologies.

Professor Aaker’s course was inspired by the phenomenal story of Sameer Bhatia, a Stanford grad who was diagnosed with Leukemia at the age of 32.  Sameer needed a bone marrow transplant, and he needed to find a genetically matched bone marrow donor, fast; but out of 6.8 million people registered at the National Marrow Donor Program, only 1% were South Asians, and the chance for a genetic match was exceedingly low; indeed, Sameer had less than a 1 in 20,000 chance of finding a match from the national donor registry.

Sameer’s friend Vinay had also been diagnosed with Leukemia the year before.  Both men needed donors and had only weeks to find them.  So what did Sameer and Vinay and their family and friends do? They joined forces, took action, and used social media – Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter – to spread their story.  Through videos, Facebook ads and groups, and viral messages, Sameer and Vinay’s team reached out across the US and within a matter of weeks, succeeded in registering over 24,000 people of South Asian descent as donors. As a result, Sameer found a direct match, and Vinay a close match, in the time frame they needed, and both underwent transplants shortly thereafter. (Read more about Sameer and Vinay’s incredible story here).

HelpSameer.org

Sadly, despite finding successful donors, both Sameer and Vinay passed away from complications from their diseases; however, their legacies live on strong, through family and friends, as well as the over 250 lives that have been saved as a result of the donors that Team Sameer and Vinay managed to get registered. Their story is one with a powerful, enduring impact: it shows how the technologies we have at fingertips can enable us to share stories, mobilize support, and take action and change lives in ways that have never before been possible.  With a collective will fueled by deep friendship and love, Sameer, Vinay, and their friends and families achieved a monumental task that has continued to have positive ripple effects reaching far beyond their original goal.

Professor Aaker, taking inspiration from Sameer’s story, charges her students with a similar mission: in just 5 short weeks of the course, identify a cause, brainstorm how to represent it, and then, make it go viral.

The student groups chose a wide range of topics, from helping students from East Palo Alto get on the track to go to college, to creating a food traceability network to help people know where there food comes, to creating a website where students can ask each other questions and share notes (see all the group projects here).  There were three group videos that stood out to me the most:

1. Group “Project Baby Warmth: Embrace” promoted a simple product with a simple story: spend $25 and you can support the life of low-weight babies in poor conditions by providing them with a sleeping bag that keeps them warm – and alive:
2. “Women 4 Women” seeks to bring the crafts from artisans in the third world to a market in the US, where one can buy a one-of-a-kind item (instead of say, a carbon copy from Pottery Barn) and in turn, support the livelihood of a woman abroad:>
3. “The Bubbles Project” aims to bring people together, on and offline, to “inspire, create, and connect” through community based art projects: The Bubbles Project from Raja Haddad on Vimeo.

So what makes an online cause successful? The most successful groups, in my opinion, were those that brought together all the elements to engage a viewer – the audio, visual, and stylistic components, as well as the storytelling and individual connection that makes you feel invested in the cause.  The videos with the most impact each seemed to touch upon these elements:

Get Attention, Then, Tell A Story

• What makes a video go viral?  It’s pretty simple: people watch your video, and like it enough to send it to friends.  But achieving this, as anyone who has created a video knows, is far more difficult.  In the sea of content on the web, how do you stand out?  How do you keep someone interested and watching? Those initial moments that open the video are critical in engaging the viewer; and keeping the pace up is important so that they don’t lose interest.  The most effective videos were those where style informed substance; where visuals and songs elevated the message; where you forgot you were watching a video but were simply inspired by a story.  This “attention-grabbing” component is critical: because no matter how important your cause, or how moving your story, no cause can be promoted if people don’t take the time to learn about it.

Identify Concrete, “Actionable” Goals

• Creating a viral movement is more than just getting people to watch your video; it’s about inspiring people to contribute to a cause.  How do you get someone to not only view your video, but to have it stay with them in a meaningful way?  How do you create a goal that is measureable and achievable? Focused and actionable goals were an important element of these projects; and certainly, of any movement for social good.  It can be hard to look at a large issue like poverty or lack of education and feel like you can have any impact; but when you remember that you have the power to affect one life in one, measurable way, the illusion of helplessness dissipates and you feel inspired to make a difference.

Turn Awareness Into Action

• Making someone aware of a cause is half the battle; getting them to take real action to do something about it is really the ultimate goal.  And though the internet has the capacity to engage a worldwide audience in social good, it also can breed internet apathy.  Membership in an online group does not equate with true commitment; we all know it’s one thing to join a Facbeook group for a cause, but it’s quite another to turn that group membership into real-world action. How do you get people to translate their online membership to actually donate their money or time? The groups that succeeded were those that were able to pair their online movements with real life actions, so that the cause didn’t simply evaporate and dissolve into the internet ether.

So from a viewer’s perspective, what came across about using technology for change?  It was clear from the group presentations that promoting causes and goals is inherently social, and to be successful, there needs to be that feeling of participation, of networking, of growth, of ripple effects, all of which are a combination of tangible and intangible forces coming together to create a movement that people feel they are a part of.  Indeed, the teams that really excelled were the ones that were able to represent their enthusiasm and spirit for their message in an engaging and thoughtful way; in a way that tells a powerful story; and in a way that generates that ‘kinetic energy’ that drives social causes — leaving you with that feeling you get after seeing a video that causes you to continue to reflect on it long after you are away from your computer.

I left Professor Aaker’s class with that feeling: and with the feeling that the power to use social technology for good,  to create, motivate, and perpetuate social movements, is a profound power indeed.

It’s truly remarkable to see how quickly and effectively technology can be used to bring people together, whether it’s to register bone marrow donors, or to send a quick text to help Haiti.  With over 175 million people logging onto Facebook each day alone, and over 600 “tweets” going out on the web each second, it’s incredible to consider the impact we could have if, both local and global, if we continue to identify and harness these networks for social change.

So the next time you get forwarded information about a cause, remember: every movement starts with one person — one person, and maybe one click of “play” on that YouTube Video.

To learn more about The Power of Social Technology and watch all the group’s videos, click here.

• To learn more about social innovation, and how to harness social media for impact, follow Professor Jennifer Aaker on Twitter.
• To learn more about Sameer and Vinay’s story, go to http://www.helpsameer.org/strategy/, and to read about how to harness social media to help save the life of an individual, see the cases found here.
• To watch one of my favorite “viral videos” for social change, “The Girl Effect”, click here.

**Portions of this blog post, along with my own original contributions, will appear in Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith’s upcoming book, The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways To Use Social Media to Drive Social Change. Read more at TheDragonflyEffect.com.

In the times of social networking, the Internet, and personal information everywhere being made public, there is no question that we are experiencing a loss of privacy left and right.  One might say that the last bastion of privacy – our own thoughts – is all we have to hold onto (although some people, driven by the age of Twitter, have taken to publishing all of those, too).

But a segment on 60 Minutes last year brought to light that even these private thoughts are up for grabs, with brain scanning technologies “making it possible for the first time in human history to peer directly into the brain to read out the physical make up of our thoughts, some would say, to read out minds.”  Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI for short) enables us to scan and see the metabolic activity inside the brain, allowing researchers to begin to identify where thoughts occur, and what they might look like, by measuring changes in blood flow and oxygenation in the brain and linking it with certain mental states.  The implications – for the law, for our notions of privacy, for our conceptions of free will– are profound.  “We all take as a given that we’ll never really know for sure, that the content of our thoughts is our own.  Private, secret, unknowable by anyone else,” Lesley Stahl, 60 Minutes correspondent says.  “Until now, that is.”

“Reading Your Mind,” this segment on 60 Minutes which aired last March, walks us through just how these brain scans are being used for “thought identification,” and raises some interesting questions about how these new technologies might be used in the future. Below, I’ll bring up some thoughts it raised for me:

Watch CBS News Videos Online

How does it work?

To summarize some of the video, Marcel Just’s work shows the capability of fMRI technology to identify the areas in the brain associated with thinking about certain objects; for example, you could show a subject a series of pictures – a screwdriver, an igloo — and have the subject think about those objects; then, when you present a pair of objects and ask the subject to think about one of them, the computer can identify which object you were thinking of by tracking which areas of the brain light up.

When you think about an object like a screwdriver, similar parts of the brain are likely to fire — the parts implicated in holding a tool, the parts associated with what you use a screwdriver for, the parts implicated in twisting an object, and so on.  By piecing these bits of data together, the computer (and thus, the researcher) can identify which object you were thinking about by seeing which neurons fire, and where.

These studies are indeed remarkable.  Though the thoughts they can identify are exceedingly basic – showing that a person is picking “screwdriver” from the options of “screwdriver” and “igloo” is a far cry from reading a complex emotion like anger, motive, or jealousy–it certainly opens the door for some interesting issues to consider in the field of “reading minds.” Some implications of this technology are still theoretical, and depend on how advanced our technologies get; yet some are much more immediate and able to be implemented now, or at least in the very near future.

So what are the current implications of this work? One of the parts of the segment I found the most fascinating is considering the implications of thought recognition in the court of law.  In his article “The Brain on Stand,” Jeffrey Rosen elaborated on some potential applications as well:

-One of the ways this technology could be used is to identify “recognition” patterns that might implicate someone in committing a crime.  For example, if you can prove that a person is familiar with the scene of a crime or with a murder weapon by tracking which parts of their brain fire when they are exposed to these things – because the area of the brain that lights up with “recognition” is different than the area that lights up in a novel situation — you might be able to prove that they were involved with the crime. For example, as mentioned in the video, you might be able to tell if someone has been in an Al Qaeda training camp before, perhaps by exposing them to photos of the camps and seeing what happens in their brains; or perhaps you could show them a list of names and see if his or her brain “lights up” with recogntion.  In fact, a case of this very technique was reported in India, when a woman was convicted and sentenced after an EEG allegedly showed she was familiar with the circumstances around the poisoning of her ex-fiancé.

-Another application of this technology is that it could be used in a line-up scenario, allowing a witness to scan the potential criminals and have the brain scan identify if he or she recognizes anyone, and use the brain recognition patterns to identify the criminal — even if the witness can’t consciously remember who the criminal is or what they look like. Rosen explains, “The brain stores memories both explicitly and implicitly.  Assemble a standard police line up and a person may not be able to explicitly remember who was the attacker in question; but perhaps the brain “recognizes” the face on some implicit level, and lights up when looking at one of the attackers and none of the others.  This method literally reads a person’s mind, gathering information that the victim may not have even been able to explicitly recall on his or her own.”

-Another potential use? Advanced versions of lie detection are a big area being pursued.  “Current lie detectors use biological cues to assess if someone is lying: pupil dilation, stress signals, and the like,” Rosen explains.  “The future of lie detection, some think, will be peering into the brain.  It might light up differently in the brain if you committed the action than if you watched it happen.” Indeed, two companies outlined in the video, Cephos and No Lie MRI, have already capitalized on this trend. And who would stop at criminal defense? “ I have two teenage daughters,” Paul Root Wolpe, the ethicist from Emory interviewed in the video jokes. “I come home one day and my car is dented and both of them say they didn’t do it.  Am I going to be able to drag them off to the local lie detection agency and get them put in a scanner?”

All of these techniques, Rosen says, could also lead to pre-emptive screening – if you could look into someone’s brain and see that they have “reduced glucose metabolisms, faulty amygdalas, disinhibition in the prefrontal cortex,” Rosen says, you might be able to better predict criminal behavior.  “You could require counseling, surveillance, G.P.S. transmitters or warning the neighbors,” Henry Greely adds, in Rosen’s article. “None of these are necessarily benign, but they beat the heck out of preventative detention…Even with today’s knowledge, I think we can tell whether someone has a strong emotional reaction to seeing things, and I can certainly imagine a friend-versus-foe scanner. If you put everyone who reacts badly to an American flag in a concentration camp or Guantánamo, that would be bad, but in an occupation situation, to mark someone down for further surveillance, that might be appropriate.”

Sound a little too much like Big Brother yet?  “I always tell my students there is no science fiction anymore,” Wolpe said. “All the science fiction I read in high school, we’re doing.”

Further Implications

Brain scans may be used in a variety of ways in the court of law; but more deeply, they raise some very important questions about the fundamental ways we understand ourselves. Will these brain scanning technologies enable us to see into the brain and predict, explain, and determine everyone’s behavior? If we are able to determine that we are just the biology of our brains–and not in control, in a sense, of what we do– then does that mean we don’t possess free will?  If we are just the biological substrates of our thoughts, are we really, in any meaningful philosophical sense, responsible for our actions?

In their article “For the Law, Neuroscience Changes Nothing and Everything,” Joshua Greene and Jonathan Cohen from Princeton University take the view that as neuroscience uncovers more and more about the inner workings of the mind, these technologies will provide us with a biological explanation for all human behavior, and that our conceptions of ourselves will be redefined as a result:

“At some time in the future,” they write, “we may have extremely high-resolution scanners that can simultaneously track the neural activity and connectivity of every neuron in a human brain, along with computers and software that can analyze and organize these data.  Imagine, for example, watching a film of your brain choosing between soup and salad.  The analysis software highlights the neurons pushing for soup in red and the neurons pushing for salad in blue.  You zoom in and slow down the film, allowing yourself to trace the cause-and-effect relationships between individual neurons – the mind’s clockwork revealed in arbitrary detail.  You find the tipping-point moment at which the blue neurons in your prefrontal cortex out-fire the red neurons, seizing control of your pre-motor cortex and causing you to say, “I will have the salad, please.”

Greene and Cohen continue:

At some further point this sort of brainware may be very widespread, with a high-resolution brain scanner in every classroom.  People may grow up completely used to the idea that every decision is a thoroughly mechanical process, the outcome of which is completely determined by the results of prior mechanical processes. What will such people think as they sit in their jury boxes?  Suppose a man has killed his wife in a jealous rage.  Will jurors of the future wonder whether the defendant acted in that moment of his own free will?  Will they wonder if it was really him who killed his wife rather than his uncontrollable anger?  Will they ask whether he could have done otherwise? Whether he really deserves to be punished, or if he is just a victim of unfortunate circumstances?

We submit that these questions, which seem so important today, will lose their grip in an age when the mechanical nature of human decision-making is fully appreciated.  The law will continue to punish misdeeds, as it must for practical reasons, but the idea of distinguishing the truly, deeply guilty from those who are merely victims of neuronal circumstance will, we submit, seem pointless.”

Indeed, with advancement in our understanding of neurobiology, and our ability to explain certain thoughts and behaviors based on activity in the brain, some predict a new type of defense argument emerges: “It wasn’t me, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. My brain made me do it” — in which a person is no more responsible for his or her actions than a car with faulty brakes is for an accident, says Stanford neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky.  And from this deterministic perspective, Cohen and Greene extrapolate a much broader philosophical shift:

“Free will, as we ordinarily understand it, is an illusion.”

Now, Greene and Cohen’s argument may appear to take neuroreductionism to its extreme – but an extreme that many neuroscientists, rationalists, and “science-can-explain-everything-ists” make the jump too as well.  What would this mean for our society, and for how we view ourselves?  It might mean that people could blame their behaviors on faulty brain wiring; that we could predict bad behavior from bad brains; that a person isn’t any more responsible for their actions than they are for having a defective heart or malfunctioning kidneys.  This, of course, would radically change the way we treat criminal behavior and the type of punishment we put forth, which as Cohen and Greene argue, would have to shift from a retributivist (punishing someone because they deserve it, from the point of view of justice) to a consequentialist one (punishing someone to prevent them from committing more crimes, from the point of view of utilitarian tradition):

“We maintain that advances in neuroscience are likely to change the way people think about human action and criminal responsibility by vividly illustrating lessons that some people appreciated long ago.  Free will, as we ordinarily understand it is an illusion generated by our cognitive architecture…  At this time, the law deals firmly but mercifully with individuals whose behavior is obviously the product of forces that are ultimately beyond their control.”

Another Perspective

Still, many challenge this presumption, saying Cohen and Greene’s argument, along with any other that presumes that behavior is caused soley by a mere brain state, confuses causation.  Emotions and decisions are not necessarily caused by the brain, resulting in behavior that “is obviously the product of forces ultimately beyond their control,” but rather may be created and then manifested in the brain; in other words, if the area of my brain lights up because of a decision I make, it is because I made that decision, not because my brain made it for me.  Rosen offers an example: “If you are told your mother has died,” he explains, “your dismayed comprehension of the fact, which is a subjective mental event, will cause an objective physiological change in your brain.”

Similarly, if someone commits murder out of rage, it may not be the brain that caused the rage, but rather a person who experienced rage and decided then to act on it.  In his article, “Does Neuroscience Refute Free Will?”  the blog writer Lucretius elaborates,

“To say that we are victims of neuronal circumstances is to say that we are victims of ourselves.  The underlying assumption is that we have no control over “neuronal circumstances,” just as we have no control over “external circumstances.” But this assumption (a newly bottled behaviorist assumption) entirely contradicts our knowledge that the brain is a self-organizing and self-regulating biological system, not merely a step in the transformation of some external stimulus to behavioral output.”  In other words, they assume we are not in charge of our own brains; that “our brains commit crimes,” But “we remain innocent.” This division is unfounded.  Our choices may elicit neuronal firing, not the other way around.”

Indeed, this jump to say that brain scans, because they show thoughts taking place then explain where those thoughts comes from, could be viewed as unfounded.  Brain scans and associated technologies, Matthew Crawford says, in his article “The Limits of Neuro-Talk,” don’t provide the evidence of how a thought is taking place, just that it is taking place: “With such signs (as fMRIs), we do not have a picture of a mechanism. We have a sign that there is a mechanism.” In other words, we are seeing that the brains works in a given way, not how or why.  Declarations of the denial of free will, when considered under this paradigm, naturally feel a bit overzealous.

But for a neuroreductionist who assumes that the brain is a force beyond on our own control, that we are pawns and our brains the players, the notion of free will is indeed an illusion.  But is this perspective reliable?  Are we really not in control of our thoughts and actions, and simply automatons acting out the neuronal messages of our brains?

Many recent findings in neuroscience would challenge this view, showing in fact that the brain is highly capable of being under one’s own control and amenable to conscious influence–that people’s conscious decisions have an effect on the way the brain functions and wires itself.  Indeed, the discovery that the brain has neuroplasticity – that it can be rewired based on experience, and that new neural pathways can be formed and old ones deconditioned based on one’s choices and practices — puts a big thorn in this “everything is determined” perspective.  In his book, “The Brain That Changes Itself,” Norman Doidge shows how much influence people have over their own brain patterns, citing research in which people overcome what were once thought to be unchangeable biological constraints — traumatic brain injuries, mental illness — by literally changing the structure and function of the neural networks in their own brains.  He chronicles stories of stroke victims regaining use of their limbs by using conditioning techniques to rewire their brains so that they can learn to control their limbs with new areas that weren’t subjected to neuronal death, people who overcome learning disabilities and even people who are missing entire portions of their brain as a result of injury or disease who are able to build new neural networks that allow them to function.  And all these examples beg the question: if we can control the outcome of our brains — if our brains are plastic, and amenable to biological restructuring based on conscious effort — then how could it be said that we don’t have responsibility for the actions we decide to take?  If we can control our brains, then aren’t we exercising a measure of free will?

To be sure, “neuroplasticity” is not a panacea for all brain impairments, and does mean that all activity of the brain can be shifted with conscious attention.  There’s no denying that certain brain pathologies — a damaged amygdala, or a tumor pressing on a part of one’s brain — can lead to irrational, unpredictable, and sometimes violent behavior, and that a person in this position may not be responsible for their actions in a strict sense, in the same way that someone who is criminally insane elicits different treatment by the law.  But does this mean that we should make the leap that Cohen and Greene make — that all behavior can be attributed to a similar uncontrollable brain activity?  I think to say that everyone who acts out of anger is free of blame because their amygdala is overactive seems to be confusing terms.  Many people feel anger and their amygdalas are activated accordingly, and still they don’t commit acts of violence or crime.  And Stephen J. Morse, professor of law and psychiatry at UPenn adds, “Even if (one’s) amygdala made him more angry and volatile, since when are anger and volatility excusing conditions?  Some people are angry because they had bad mommies and daddies and others because their amygdalas are mucked  up.  The question is: When should anger be an excusing condition?”  ”Brains do not commit crimes,” Morse says, making an interesting distinction. “People commit crimes.”

And still, one wonders why, even if we do identify the brain is “at fault” for causing criminal action, does it somehow justify behavior?   One view is that whether it was the brain or a person’s upbringing or the Twinkies that they ate in excess — it doesn’t even matter when it comes to responsibility for one’s actions. Morse says,

“So what if there’s biological causation? Causation can’t be an excuse for someone who believes that responsibility is possible. Since all behavior is caused, this would mean all behavior has to be excused.”

And the question remains, Do these pictures into the brain provide a biological excuse for behavior, or merely just a biological explanation for it?

How much do we really know?

The questions of free will and consciousness are deep philosophical debates that have been taking place for millennia, and will likely not soon be resolved. But with new technologies, whether they be a telescope or a brain scan, often come new views, perspectives, and philosophies about the world.  Trying to place what these technological findings tell us about the physical world into our philosophical frameworks is indeed a fascinating undertaking.

Are we in control of our own thoughts, actions, and lives, or is there some force that determines everything for us, regardless of our motives?  Is every action we take biologically predetermined, or do we have a say in which paths we go down? These questions are somewhat timeless, and yet  it’s interesting to see how technologies have reframed the debate.  To be sure, determinists believe they are finding strong ground to stand on with advances in neuroscience that everything to be explained about human beings will be explained through our understanding of the brain.  They see fMRIs as allowing us access into what we currently conceive of as the central part of our being – our brains – and project that these images will likely be the key to answering many questions about why we are the way we are, and why we act the way we do.  And why wouldn’t we, with the ability to see into our own brains, feel like we’ve finally gained access to the true answers of existence?  We once thought the heart to be the center of the human experience, and perhaps considered someone like Shakespeare most likely to articulate our human purpose.  Now, we live in the age of the brain, where we expect technology to show us, as Marcel Just says, ‘the essence of who we are.’

But new technologies often have a way of convincing us that we have finally figured out why things work the way they do, and we seem to cling to each technological development as if it is finally the one that will offer the answers.  An important question I would pose would be: How much can we really learn about a person from these technologies? And what happens if we assume we can know more than we really do?

Limitations to fMRI Technology

Though these scans are certainly amazing technologies that bring about much fruitful research, in general, we seem to currently overstate our ability their ability to reliably identify thoughts and patterns in the brain.  The scans are limited in and of themselves, from a technical standpoint, writes Norman Doidge: “The current generations of brain scans…detect bursts of activity that last one second in thousands of neurons.  But a neuron’s electrical signal often lasts a thousandth of a second, so brain scans miss an extraordinary amount of information,” he writes.  NPR’s Jon Hamilton adds that there a number of often undisclosed deficiencies with these scans, in his article, “False Signals Cause Misleading Brain Scans.” He interviews neuroscientist Chris Baker, who says, “The problem with functional imaging is that the signals we’re trying to get at are quite weak, and there’s a lot of noise.” And Hamilton adds: “The “noise” is in the form of false signals. These can come from the scanning equipment itself, but a lot of it comes from the person being scanned. Every heartbeat affects the flow of blood, which changes the signal. Every tiny head movement blurs the image.”

Bearing out this point, the scans can often pick up on signals that are inaccurate; one study at Dartmouth, to showcase this point, put a dead salmon in an fMRI scan, showed it pictures of emotional situations just like they would have a human subject (for humor’s sake), and recorded the results. Interestingly, the fMRI “picked up on signals” from the dead salmon’s “brain activity” — of course, when there was clearly no activity at all.  “By complete, random chance, we found some voxels that were significant that just happened to be in the fish’s brain,” the researcher Craig Bennett said. “And if I were a ridiculous researcher, I’d say, ‘A dead salmon perceiving humans can tell their emotional state.’”

So what does all  of this mean?  It means that there’s a lot of white noise, static, and unmeasurable (or perhaps even unknowable) activity in the brain that gets overlooked, dismissed, or unprocessed in the duration of a brain scan.  It means that these pretty pictures we see in magazines and articles may not be as easily color coded as we think they are.  It means that while we may be able to find the correlation for “screwdrivers” in the brain, we may be a long way from identifying that someone committed murder, that someone harbors terrorist-ideologies, or that someone “subconsciously” recognizes a burglar or rapist in a line-up.

But more importantly, it raises the question whether these technologies –or any technologies– are really capable of answering all our questions. We seem to have a tendency to like reductionist explanations for things, and to hear that science has proven something to be true and then to shut out other explanations for phenomena.  But this tendency can be a trap, particularly when our science is not as good as we claim it to be. And it also begs the question: are there aspects to being human that science can simply not explain?

Judging from the trend of neuroscience, nothing is off-limits for a scientific explanation — anger, romantic love, and even belief in God have been chalked up to nothing more than neurons firing in certain parts of the brain. (Indeed, every month, dozens of studies are published claiming to have found the areas of the brain responsible for various phenomena — “‘The God Spot’ is found in the brain,’ reads one article, “Watching New Love As It Sears In The Brain” reads another.)  A person falling in love is reduced to surging dopamine in the caudate nucleus, and belief in God is described as excessive firing of neurons in the temporal lobe.  Excessive rage that leads to murder is attributed not to some intangible motive of retribution or anger but to an overactive emotional center in the brain. And we tend to be transfixed by these findings, even if they are, when examined closely, extremely broad generalizations based on a limited amount of data.   We have a tendency to see explanations of things that invoke terminology about the brain as more convincing than other explanations, simply because, as Rosen’s article points out, “we have prettier pictures and it appears more scientific.”  In his article “Brain on Stand,” Rosen writes about our tendency to over-exaggerate our brain findings as being more meaningful than they are, calling it “Brain overclaim syndrome.”

The bright lights and science-looking pictures appeal to our inner rationalists; we believe articles that say things have been proven by brain scans simply because it seems so convincing, so solid, so technologically sound.A fascinating study published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience showed that people are “seductively allured by neuroscientific explanations” for things, excessively more likely to believe data when it is preceded by the words “brain scans indicate,” even when the data or research findings are very obviously faulty or illogical. (In other words, present a person with two sets of data that say exactly the same thing, even if it’s not very believable, and they are much more likely to believe the data “proven” by brain scans.)  Crawford writes, “These findings suggest that we are culturally predisposed to surrender our own judgment in the face of brain scans. More generally, we defer to the mere trappings of “science.” We automatically assume the words “brain scans” assert some measure of influence, even if the findings go against our better judgment.  Essentially, we are seduced by the pretty pictures of brain scans, as we often are by new and exciting technologies.

What does this say about our tendency to see technology as the answer to all our questions, even at the expense of our own better judgments?  From a practical standpoint, what implications does this have for jurors in the courtroom, who are likely to be influenced by these pictures, much like the subjects of the study mentioned above? And more generally, what happens, one wonders, for a future where these technologies may be used to try to prove you are thinking something and you insist you are not, but the brain scans insist you are?  Will we come to trust technology more than we trust ourselves?

And more broadly, the question seems to be this: can we really make the jump from identifying basic item recognition to saying that these machines can read our “essences”?  Will these types of neuroscientific discoveries that help explain biological mechanisms of the brain necessarily lead to a comprehensive picture of consciousness?  Or are we overestimating our own technological capabilities, and our own abilities to use technology to really read something as complex as the mind? And furthermore, what are the risks to thinking we can predict behavior when we can’t? — in this assumption that our technologies will answer questions whose answers might be more complicated than we are giving them credit for?  What would happen if we start condemning someone for their “predispositions”, and not their actual actions?  If we start basing convictions of someone based on “subconscious recognition”?  The potential for harm, and for infringement on civil liberties, seems profound.

But perhaps the more interesting question is to consider why we trust science so much more than anything else.  In his influential essay, “The Question Concerning Technology,” the philosopher Heidegger argued that technology, by revealing the world through a technological framework, will increasingly shut out other ways of seeing the world — ways of understanding the world and ourselves through art, for example, or through the humanities.  Has this transition already taken place? Is it already impossible to see the world, and our place in it, through other ways than the technological and scientific?  By presuming these scans provide more reliable evidence of who a person is than his or her actual actions — by thinking they show the “essence” of who someone is, as Just says — are we concealing other aspects of the human condition that may be accessible only through non-technological avenues?

Jonah Lehrer presents this idea articulately in his article, “The Future of Science is…Art?”  where he writes about the limitations of viewing the world solely through a scientific lens, calling for a need for art to explain the things which science cannot:

“The standard response of science is that…art is too incoherent and imprecise for the scientific process. Beauty isn’t truth… If it can’t be plotted on a line graph or condensed into variables, then it’s not worth taking into account. But isn’t such incoherence an essential aspect of the human mind? Isn’t our inner experience full of gaps and non-sequiturs and inexplicable feelings? In this sense, the messiness of the novel and the abstraction of the painting is actually a mirror. As the poetry critic Randall Jarrell put it, “It is the contradictions in works of art which make them able to represent us—as logical and methodical generalizations cannot—our world and our selves, which are also full of contradictions.”

Great novelists like Virginia Woolf “have constructed elegant models of human consciousness that manage to express the texture of our experience, distilling the details of real life into prose and plot.  That’s why their novels have endured: because they feel true.  And they feel true because they capture a layer of reality that reductionism cannot.”

“The arts are an incredibly rich data set, providing science with a glimpse into its blind spots,” he adds. ”No scientific model of the mind will be wholly complete unless it includes what can’t be reduced.”

Lehrer’s point seems critical: does measuring one’s rising serotonin and dopamine levels in the caudate nucleus, associated in many studies with the feeling of love in the brain, truly capture the feeling a love in any meaningful way?  Don’t the volumes of Neruda’s poetry or a Shakespearean sonnet capture it better? Might a novel, a poem, a painting, even a simple conversation, provide more of a window into someone’s essence than a brain scan?  (“It is quite possible—overwhelmingly probable, one might guess—that we will always learn more about human life and personality from novels than from scientific psychology,” Lehrer quotes Noam Chomsky saying.)  Surely pictures of our brains can provide us with important and interesting information about ourselves, but can they explain everything, eliminating the need for all other modes of understanding?  Is there any room in this view of a person for the concepts of a soul, of a spirit, of a mind that is ethereal, and not purely biological?

So the very basic question underlying this whole debate might be summarized as follows: are we, or are we not, reduceable to scientific premises? Is there room for any other explanations for the human condition than scientific ones? And though a neuro-reductionist would say it’s only a matter of time until everything can be explained through that scan, my question is, is this true only if we accept it to be? Are we assigning technology this power, and  thereby deciding to shut off other ways of seeing human beings?

Conclusion

This issue, to me, has two layers: one is considering the actual implications of these technologies – in the court room, and in society—and the second is what this issue says about our quest to understand who we are, and about what science can explain, and what it can’t.

Cohen and Greene represent a reductionist view of the brain, thinking that we will be able to explain everything about how and why we behave the way we do through neuroscience, and that the law  – and how we hold people accountable for their actions –should be adjusted accordingly.

However, I am less convinced that we are far along the path of finding out where all motives and behaviors exist in the brain.  Instead, I identify with Matthew Crawford’s perspective in his article “The Limits of Neurotalk,” in which he calls for “Respect for the machine” saying “The human brain, everyone agrees, presents complexity that is simply colossal by comparison—by one estimate, the number of possible neuronal pathways is larger than the number of particles in the universe.”

Technology, it seems, always presents itself as the answer to all our questions; however, we may overinflate the ability of our technological tools to explain everything there is to know. Much like genetic determinists, neuro-reductionism is enticing as a way to explain, down to a basic unit, what a human being is and why he or she acts the way she does.  But many geneticists explain that learning more about our own biology has brought awareness not to its simplicity and reducibility, but rather to its immense complexity.  Though we once predicted that we would locate genes for all behavior, we have in fact identified, for the most part, single genes are not wholly predictive: rather, it is the complex interplay of many genes, along with the influence of environmental factors, that determine behavior — and even then it can be a total crapshoot as to how a person develops.  Two twin sisters with precisely the same genome can have vastly different “epigenomes” – one can develop cancer, while the other does not; one can be temperamental and angry, the other placid and calm.  An attempt to “standardize” our predictions of the brain and try to gain understanding based on what the lighting up on one person’s amygdala might mean and what the recognition of something might indicate will likely fail in trying to capture the brain’s immense complexity.  And an attempt to do so, particularly in these early stages of technological capabilities, I would worry, would probably result in more harm than good.

But more importantly, we might challenge the idea that science and technology can offer answers to all of our questions.  Lehrer writes:

“The history of science is supposed to obey a simple equation: Time plus data equals understanding.  One day, we believe, science will solve everything…But the trajectory of science has proven to be a little more complicated.  The more we know about reality – about its quantum mechanics and neural origins – the more palpable its paradoxes become.  As Vladimir Nabokov, the novelist and lepidopterist, once put it, “The greater one’s science, the deeper the sense of mystery.””

…”The fundamental point is that modern science has made little progress towards any unified understanding of everything. Our unknowns have not dramatically receded.  In many instances, the opposite has happened, so that our most fundamental sciences are bracketed by utter mystery.

Then concludes:

The epic questions that modern science must answer cannot be solved by science alone…The struggle for scientific truth is long and hard and never ending. If we want to get an answer to our deepest questions—the questions of who we are and what everything is—we will need to draw from both science and art, so that each completes the other.”

So the issue comes down to this: can we really reduce the brain to its component parts?  A person to his or her biological substrates?  Neuroreductionists would say biology is everything; there is no free will.  We are our biology: “all mental and behavioral activity is the causal product of physical events in the brain.”  As Marcel Just says in the video, “we are biological creatures, you know, our limbs we accept are muscles and bone and our brain is a biological thinking machine.” These scans, therefore, “ reveal the essence of who we are as a person.” Is this true — can science and technology ultimately explain everything there is to know about human beings? And if so, are we only a few technological advancements away from understanding the human condition – why we act the way we do, why we make the decisions we make – and from dispelling the notions of free will altogether?

I, for one, highly doubt it.  I reject the idea that science is the only portal through which to understand the human condition – leaving no room for the arts, or for philosophy, or other modalities of understanding.

As Lehrer points out in his article, “The sciences must recognize that their truths are not the only truths.  No single area of knowledge has a monopoly on knowledge.”

Technology and science seek to explain, to reduce, the human experience, down to the most basic unit of understanding, and often present themselves as the only ways of understanding the world.  But perhaps there are aspects of the human experience science cannot grasp; perhaps we cannot be explained in ‘basic units.’ Perhaps, as poet Wendell Berry says, “We should not mislead ourselves.  There is more to the world, and to our own work in it, than we are going to know.”

Questions

Consider the use of fMRI technologies in the courtroom: should we embrace the use of these scans for use in lie detection? In confirming eye witness testimony? In identifying “thoughts” when the person claims to be thinking or is saying something different?  In using them to “preemptively screen” who might commit criminal behavior? What do you think about more commercial uses for these scans, such as between parents and children, romantic partners, or employers and workers, for the sake of lie detection and thought identification?

What are some of the broader metaphysical implications of these technologies? Do you agree with Cohen and Greene that neuroscience refutes free will?  Will these scans explain everything there is to know about human beings, and reveal our “essences”? Or are there aspects to human beings that cannot be explained through the scientific and technological?  Do agree with Jonah Lehrer that we need art and the humanities to have a comprehensive picture of the human condition?  How do our views of technology influence this debate?

“If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t.” – Emerson Pugh

Moral Machines is a blog on the theory and development of artificial moral agents and computational ethics, maintained by Wendell Wallach from Yale University’s Center for Bioethics and Colin Allen, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University.  Be sure to check it out!