Reflections on the Pandemic in the Future of the World

Technology and Human Condition after COVID-19

In the modern period, the bidirectional relationship between machine and human self can roughly be understood by dividing it into three periods. The first phase of these three periods corresponds to the process that started after the Enlightenment and came to a head as the Industrial Revolution. The second stage of the process was experienced at the 20th century, when modern urban life has been established, nation states emerged and determined political systems, and capitalism was cherished as the end of history. The last stage of this period includes technology such as artificial intelligence, genetics, robotics, bioengineering, and that is related to the existential situation of people, which has changed and will continue to change the character of everything once again through internet technology, in particular.

It should be stated that the threat of new Coronavirus (COVID-19), which has recently locked social life on a global scale, secluded all humanity into their homes, and isolated the human self, from everything, and evoked a dystopia in all its dimensions, constitutes an important divergence between machinehuman nexus. Since with the technologies developed recently in the context of machine-human relationship, the existing state of the human in the universe has begun to be discussed intensely, and a hybrid universe design with heavily compacted technology in the center has emerged. In this regard, COVID-19 should be recognized as an important sign in machine-human relations, with its dimensions that minimize existing human relations and transfer all areas of individual and social life to technological sphere, which, in return, trigger a process that can be called the end of the world as we know it.

Assoc. Prof. Mehmet Emin Babacan
DOI: 10.53478/TUBA.2020.106