Ethical concerns of human-being, cyber-being and cybertariat: an educational perspective

Few would deny that machines (along with intelligent machines) are a cultural creation of great significance.

The Human race has shown extraordinary skills in achieving this glory. But this is not the glory of an

unblemished modern humanity. While humankind has been admirably powerful in creatively controlling

external forces, there has not been a similar display of control over the inner forces of selfish desire and the

will to individual power. Education, it its true spirit, is a noble endeavour dedicated to a proper balancing of

the external and the internal forces operative in the human psyche. The currently overwhelming prevalence

of STEM education seems to be more aligned to the 'external' end of this spectrum of human drive, whereas

the disciplines of the Humanities critically address themselves to the imminent problem of imbalance and are

attuned to the pursuit of the 'internal' end. Whether we can hope for a future far better than the past, or fall

into a state of despair by doing worse than our past, crucially depends on the extent to which higher education

in contemporary times is wedded to the virtue of attaining the balance.