RE-CENTERING HUMAN AGENCY IN THE AGE OF KNOWLEDGE TECHNOLOGIES AND THE ROLE AND SCOPE OF THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
RE-CENTERING HUMAN AGENCY IN THE AGE OF KNOWLEDGE TECHNOLOGIES AND THE ROLE AND SCOPE OF THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

Summary/Abstract: The current paper explores the increasing impact of technology on the socialfabric (Latour, 1996) and the ways that humanity is or could be adjusting to this growing influence.The very definition of human is being put into question as superintelligent machines begin to take onhuman patterns of behavior and as human interaction is becoming more digitalized. Hamlet's famousreply: "To be or not to be; that is the question" would reflect an indecidable model of thinking thatavoids the dillema of philosophical reasoning in order to answer the question: What is a man? thisshould be translated into a binary logic (1.0) of the virtues that boolean logic gives in analogy withthe existing and evolving endless processing language and possibilities. The constraint of theexplanatory power of the concept of autopoiesis reflects the need for nuanced reasoning elaborated insocio-human sciences during longer periods than those marked by innovation, and which could recallhumanities in the circle of disciplines that constitute the architecture of ontological and systemicdesign, to unlock the cycle of transformation between information, data and wisdom, withouteliminating critical reasoning. Scientists and philosophers are beginning to question the competitionbetween soft and hard sciences and advocate for a symbiotic relationship, that can integrate data andsocial sciences for a more balanced understanding of the world.

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