Human Beings as Technological Artifacts

At the risk of oversimplifying, let us assume as a working premise that there are basically two types of people: active and passive. This assumption is introduced in order to open up a way of thinking about the relations between people and the technologies that occupy their world. The basic point is that you can go through life becoming who you will eventually be (a) by simply responding to the various impacts and stimulations you receive, or (b) you can attempt to make yourself into the type of person you think you would like to become. To do the former requires no work on your part. To do the latter requires a lot of work, primarily by way of finding out the limits of your capacities and the nature and range of the options open to you, uncovering the prerequisites for achieving the steps you need to take, allowing for error and the means to correct them, etc. There is an important sense, then, in which the active person attempts to design the person he/she wants to become in much the same way we design an artifact, thereby becoming an artifact himself or herself. To elaborate this idea, I begin by introducing some ideas of John Dewey. I then give a sketch of the design process as we find it in use in engineering.