Technology and Cultural Tectonics: Shifting Values and Meanings

(Palgrave Macmillan) This book explores the challenges and changes to cultural values triggered by technological innovations, such as advances in reproductive technology and artificial intelligence. Hanson argues that while we use these advances to achieve already approved objectives, the new means of doing so often have unintended consequences that raise questions about the most fundamental issues in human life. Far from diminishing the potential of the individual, however, he claims that technology can actually enhance it. Hanson is a professor of anthropology at the University of Kansas.