What is it to be human?
Is there something about being connected?
Is it our connection to the natural world?
Core
Humanity 2.0: defining humanity – Steve Fuller’s TEDx Warwick talk (24:08),http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/podcasts/media/more/tedx?podcastItem=steve_fuller.mp4
Film 3: World builder (9:16) – selected from Coursea
World builder is a short film which explores some of the same themes (simulation, immersion, artifice) as the Toyota advertisement, though in a slightly more nuanced way. What is your interpretation of this film? In what ways does it position ‘the human’ in relation to the technological? What does it say about ways in which human emotion can be manipulated by digital simulation?
Ideas and interpretations
Core
Humanity 2.0: defining humanity – Steve Fuller’s TEDx Warwick talk (24:08),http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/podcasts/media/more/tedx?podcastItem=steve_fuller.mp4
In this lecture, Professor Steve Fuller (University of Warwick) takes us on a rapid ride through the history of how ‘humanity’ has been defined and made. By asking the question ‘have we always, sometimes or never been human?’, he draws our attention to the ways in which ‘humanity’ as a social category has been defined from ancient to medieval to modern times.