[dmb] Spiritual Machines? Silicon-based Minds? For reasons I can't quite put my finger on, this stuff strikes me as being creepy and ridiculous at the same time. Things like the Borg of Star Trek, Darth Vader's death star in Star Wars, HAL of 2001 and many other works express the idea that we are losing our humanity to technology. There is something artless and heartless about this whole area.
[Krimel] More on the literary allusions later. But artless? Heartless? This is the attitude that defies understanding. Technology has done nothing but enhance art since the invention of paint and the drum. Technology created art. In the past century whole new forms of art evolved and old forms were revitalized; from film to synthesizers. I recently went to a local art festival and was astonished at some of the work. Photographers seemed to have discovered Photoshop since my last visit to and art show. Glass sculptures, ceramics, textiles and traditional painting styles were all enhanced and showed evidence of the adoption of technology both in the mediums of expression and their symbolic representations. [dmb] Help me out here, gents. Tell me what would be the point and purpose of creating cyber sapiens. Other than realizing every poet's worst nightmare, why would we want to sand to think? I mean, the question does not ask if we can, but if we should. I'm very skeptical on both accounts. [Krimel] Keith spoke to this very well but I would add that in ZMM it is not the classically minded who are missing the boat by failing to appreciate beauty and emotion. The problem is the romantics who can't see the art staring them in the face. But if you really can't see the benefits in art, medicine, safety and convenience there are always the Amish. Have you considered a move to Pennsylvania Dutch country? There may be a Mennonite community near you. dmb says: If it is sinister and dangerous and experimental then how wise is it to go with the flow? And I don't think we have to guess about the effects of technology. Nearly two hundred years ago a young women got involved in a writing contest with her poet friends and the result was FRANKENSTEIN, the subtitle of which is "the Modern Prometheus". [Krimel] As I recall in Shelley's story the monster is the most sympathetic of characters. It is in many ways the story of his struggle to understand his place in the world and find meaning in a life he did not ask for. It was a mirror of the man's struggle to confront and question his maker. [dmb] Science will either save us or enslave us. [Krimel] Either way there is no turning back. There never has been. [dmb] Anyway, the various kinds of writers have already presented their nightmare visions of technology. I'm not saying Mary Shelly started it or that the brothers who wrote THE MATRIX trilogy are literally poets. I'm just saying that we can be delusional about the promises of technology. Don't forget that "TO SERVE MAN" was a cook book. [Krimel] Science fiction tales have vacillated from the more or less utopian visions of Roddenberry, Asimov and Heinlein to the post apocalyptic visions of Mad Max, David Brin's The Postman and Planet of the Apes. It also includes the post modernism of cyberpunk. I just watched a DVD on Philosophy and the Matrix which included a host of philosophers including Dennett, Searles and Wilber. The Wachowski brothers are artists and poets in the truest sense of the term. Their expression of philosophy and myth in terms that were technological, entertaining and thought provoking all in the same mix is almost without peer. But it is not surprise to see this, really. Rod Sterling whom you allude to with the "To Serve Man" comment was a pioneer in expressing philosophical ideas to a mass television audience. Roddenberry, Sterling, the Wachowskis, Lucas, Kubrick and Spielberg all embraced art, technology and philosophy. I do not see the "soul" or the "heart" missing from any of their work. [dmb] We have created a technological world for ourselves. We already use it to enhance almost every aspect of life. We depend on the power of technology to the point where we depend on it. I mean, if the technological infrastructure of the West were to suddenly break down we'd probably be counting the dead in the millions. [Krimel] As I have tried to explain many times most of the philosophical, artistic and cultural advancements in the past 2000 years have been response to advances in technology. From Plato's attempts to grapple with the meaning of Greek mathematics to the Reformation fueled by the invention of the printing press. [dmb] I guess I'm thinking of what's already been lost. [Krimel] I actually agree with both this and your worry over what the consequences of all this change might be. I am always torn between visions of utopia and apocalypse. Back in March I posted a link to an article written for Atlantic Magazine in 1897 by the Mac Daddy of the Victorians, Woodrow Wilson on Being Human. http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/nbhmn10.txt In it he too expressed poignantly and prophetically a sense of wonder at what was coming and concern over what would be lost in the coming century. [dmb] Too much data and not enough wisdom. I love Mr. Google as much as the next guy, but the biggest money maker in cyberspace is porn. [Krimel] Do you think we lose wisdom as we acquire data? Ignorance is bliss? Ignorance is the reason porn is a money maker in cyberspace. Only the ignorant would pay for something that is free in such abundance. But porn has been popular with every new advance in technology. [dmb] I never really had a computer at home until this year and nobody could go to grad school without one, but cyberspace mostly serves consumer desires, lust, vanity and is otherwise overflowing with bullshit. [Krimel] Again with the romantic notion of purity standing up to those seeking to steal your soul. Do you let people with cameras near you? I think it is folly to believe that technology is the source of bullshit. Technology may facilitate the production of bullshit as much as it facilitates the production of art but both generate from the same heart of man. In the Egyptian Book of the Dead the God Anubis weighs the hearts of men on a scale against a feather from the god Maat. The scale was high tech in those days and it is unlikely that the pharaohs worried much about over crowding in the afterlife. moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
