the idea was that domains strongly shape cognition, and that studying and supporting cognition in real and complex domains is salutary, if not essential, for developing a science of cognition and, of course, for applying it to real problems.

http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/800049.801815

So in this case the technology domain strongly shape humanity because it shapes our cognitive process. However, Hunkin’s more detailed quote seems too strong:

Technology isn’t just something outside ourselves, it’s an innate part of human nature, like sex, sleeping or eating, and that its been a major driving force in evolution. Tool using, along with language and bipedalism, is essentially what makes us human. The complicated theories used to explain why we first stood up are largely unnecessary. Our hands simply became too useful for holding tools to waste them on walking.

I could see how, that if taken in an illustrative context, it could be quite insightful in that Humans are the only species which create more complex technologies (I’m not including chimps stone tooling as technology here) in this case I can see how we could be defined by the technology we produce, or that complex technology is a predictor of humanity.

But Tim Hunkin goes too far when he tries to transplant this into the science of human evolution (which you’d hope is about evidence, not values). For instance, his statement about humans walking on two feet because they use their hands for tools harks back to an old Victorian idea, that human evolution was driven by human ingenuity. It has been known for a long time that this is false; bipedalism evolved long before tool use or brain size. It is always annoying to see someone dismiss an entire field, despite clearly knowing nothing about it.