On technology and meaning

I would like to refer one of the issues brought up by guest speaker Marcelo H Ang Jr on Friday 28th August 2009 regarding the philosophy of life and technology.

Marcelo had brought up a series of questions and interpretations on the earlier half of his presentation. One of which struck me most was the issue of the purpose of life. In his presentation, he made a loose allusion between the meaning of life, perfection, human drives and solving problems. While he mentions that without challenges and strives for perfection life would hold little meaning, he acknowledges that a life strived just for the creation and solving of problems is no different from reaching out to an ever shifting goalpost. Personally, I believe that these words do hold very good sense.

Now, as we strive towards success by come up with solutions to counter yesterday's problems, a fundamental question arises: what does engineering and technology have to do with the meaning of our lives?

Indeed, we can generally agree that much of our world is far from perfection. Asthetically, we see an impaired world as a reflection of our impaired selves; hence from engineering we sought solutions to enhance ourselves. With our advances in technology, we have made our lives more comfortable, and at the same time took a step in the direction of perfection. Glasses help us to see when our eyesight fails; the motor car allows us to travel further than our legs can carry us. We build buildings to protect ourselves from the elements, as well as infrastructure to facilitate development within our society.

But even so, we cannot say that the strife towards technological advancements is the sole purpose of our lives. We know that the purpose of life transcends this one-dimensional issue of merely creating and solving problems. As observed by Marcelo with his analogy of the shifting goalpost, such ideals to achieve perfection by solving problems would only lead to the creation of other problems. Moreover, it is not until we are infinitely successful do we see a purpose in living. If it is so- then it can be argued that life itself is meaningless.

So what can we conclude? It would be impossible to make a hasty philosophical conclusion today on what the true meaning of life is. Similarily, it would be equally unwise to state that our inventions have brought us nowhere. (After all, it is evident that the quality of life has improved over the past few decades with technology.) Perhaps our true purpose in life is to make use of the time that has been bestowed upon us to improve- not only technologically speaking, but also in a metaphysical sense. Technology, being what we do best, then becomes an important channel and medium for that 'holistic' improvement towards perfection.