categories--are ours hardened?

So, I'm trying to figure out why we're ostensibly on the cutting edge, visionary, the future, etc., but some of our categories seem really static and unexamined. Some examples: Technology. This is perhaps the most bandied about term, and I think it would be good to be very clear and explicit about what we mean. In practice, we mean electrically powered silicon based tools that require vast political and economic infrastructures. I think we could benefit from denaturalizing some of our assumptions about these technologies and seing them situated in those contexts. It also could help us see the non-silicon based technologies that are necessary for their operation. Some of the global effects of these technologies are the need to secure energy supplies because our use of energy is quickly outstripping our supply--this is a lot different from finger pointing at SUVs. It also means treating various countries as toxic waste dumps for the heavy metals from both the production and disposal of computer components. The global infrastructure also guarantees the low cost of electronic gadgets because they are made in places with lax environmental and labor protections and weak social infrastructes. This is not, as Larry Smarr says, because of the cultural differences in these countries insofar as they just don't share our values [!], but as Saskia Sassen reminds us, because of the economic infrustructures including usery (20% or better debt servicing) that allows western nations to dictate the terms of those social infrastructures. Our gadgets do not spring like Athena from the heads of our revered engineers as they repeat the mantra "Moore's law, Moore's law, Moore's law." Global. See Technology. Humanist, humanism, humanities. I have a feeling I have something very different in mind when I say posthuman; and humanism gives me the heeby jeebies. And do we all have the same thing in mind for the humanities? OK, enough for now. But let's not take these for granted.