How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
They could never guess that their minds were being probed, their bodies mapped, their reactions studied, their potentials evaluated. (2.18)
The man-apes are being evaluated by the aliens…or rather by alien technologies. So robots are checking and then manipulating people. The man-apes (our ancestors, supposedly) are actually quasi-alien cyborgs.
Quote #2
The tools they had been programmed to use were simple enough, yet they could change this world and make the man-apes its masters. (4.1)
A technology fiddles with the man-apes and gets them to use different technologies. Modernization is technology through and through.
Quote #3
Poole and Bowman had often humorously referred to themselves as caretakers or janitors aboard a ship that could really run itself. They would have been astonished, and more than a little indignant, to discover how much truth that jest contained. (16.17)
Here's a hint of technophobia. One concern about technology, in Clarke's time and still today, is that it will end up destroying jobs, or making certain jobs irrelevant. That's what's happened here; Poole and Bowman have been made irrelevant. The man-apes have been replaced by their bone-saws.