Technology is created to augment the fundamental weaknesses of human beings

"One of the core premises of our research is to understand technology from a deeper human level. We too often get caught up in the technology itself, and may lose sight of the basic human needs or desires technology is serving. With all the tech of artificial intelligence, augmented reality and any number of other buzzwords, I sense that the human angle is again being lost while we chase technological advancements for the sake of the technology rather than the sake of the human.

To frame my perspective, I think it is helpful to use the idea of human augmentation as a basis for our understanding of how technology serves humans and will always do so. The core definition of “augment” is to make something greater by adding to it. Using this video production studio framework  from a historical perspective, we can observe how nearly every human technological invention was designed to augment a fundamental weakness of human beings.

Tools were invented to augment our hands so we can build faster, bigger, more complex things. Cars were invented to augment the limitations of the distance humans can travel. Planes were invented to augment humans lack of ability to fly. The telephone was invented to augment the limitations of human communications. Nearly every example of technological innovation we can think of had something to do with extending or making greater some aspect of a human limitation or weakness
 

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