Saturday, January 27, 2007
1. According to the book, we engage in more activities during a typical day than Karl Marx imagined. Then it states that "Yet in performing all these different activities, the user in essence is always using the same tools and commands: a computer screen and a mouse, a Web brower; a search engine; cut, paste, copy, delete, and find commands." Isn't it unreliable to argue that the user in essence is always involved in the stated activities? It seems more of an assumption, rather than a proved factor.
2. Is it possible to think that the increasing development of technology, including GUI, may result in "dark, decayed, "postmodern" society as in Blade Runner?
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the dark and despairing nature doesn't come from technology, it comes from how humanity uses it (or does so poorly). so to avert a blade-runner world, we need a robust understanding of humanity (anthropology) in relation to an ultimate, cosmic order. this is what the Ancients (greeks and otherwise) sought after. the problem with modernity is that it made the cosmic order its slave and its permission to commit evil, atrocious things (Cortes and other conquerers). so postmodernity refutes modernity for using philosophy wrongly, but posmodernity commits the same error in a different way.
Ultimately, your question is a matter of spirituality, not technology. technology isn't intrinsically bad nor good. we need a moral compass in regards to how we should us it. Notice I didn't say "absolute" moral compass. we're not looking for a hypothetical "absolute truth". we're looking for a practical truth that is both liquid-like, yet also binding (flexible, but not completely malleable to anyone's whimsical wish.)
The reason why bladerunner seems so frightening yet plausible is because, in our world, spirituality is a proprietary thing. it fits your preference, or it doesn't. no big deal, right? we like to think we live in our own little bubbles, and that the one universe we all live in is a multiverse (practically, as in philosophically). but that's not true. if it was, then bladerunner wouldn't be the way it is—everyone would have their slice of technological heaven. but in trying to force their own, personal compositions of "heaven" onto a pre-existing world, no one gets any heaven at all; the image is diluted to a kind of piece-meal, relatively-satisfying civilization, and everyone gets hell. Everyone has their own interests at heart. Only the hero is different. Why is he the hero? And why is it so hard to be one now?
"the interface" might allow for a more practical multi-verse, but i don't even think people would like to live in their own little personal "heavens". we want community. if you want full technocracy, you'll have to make yourself into a machine and program yourself for being content with loneliness. but until that happens, having all the toys doesn't make you happy, much as we might like to think (what's the American Dream, again?).
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