--Borges & Bush: does an inadequate job of explaining who these two are and why I ought to care about them, because I've got no clue what they've to do with anything, other than they seem to be sci-fi writers
--"All creativity can be understood as taking in the world as a problem."
--They're pretty much saying that engineers & scientists etc. take in the world and try to solve their problems systematically; are they implying that this isn't art? That they are only there to destroy (re the arrow metaphor)? That systematic thinking is therefore destructive?
--I really dislike and resent the idea that print as a whole is a dying medium, but this guy seems really gung-ho about it. Then why bother writing a book?
--...yeah, I just really dislike this guy. He says that technophobes are not completely irrational, but you can tell from his tone that he still thinks they are.
--Maybe my main issues with this guy are that, from his tone, he seems to think that anyone who disagrees with him is wrong and clearly an idiot and also that computers are more... transcendental, somehow and not just a tool. Because that is what I think technology is. The computer is equivalent to the wheel, in my mind, and a tool is only as good as what you use it for. Fire's a miraculous thing, but burning down a house... not so much. Computers are great for data processing, photo editing, spreading information, but I think artificial intelligence and "cyborgs" are a terrible, horrible, god-awful idea. Technology is a TOOL, and nothing else.
I understand your comment that "technology is a TOOL, and nothing else" but only to an extent. You talked about the uses of technology at their extremes--> using a computer like a pencil to merely write a letter, and then as an entity that fuses with human identity. In these parameters the divide is clear, but in actuality we are progressing from pencil to person in a nearly undetectable fashion. Are glasses, pacemakers and automated phone operators all horrible ideas? Whether or not they are, they are technologies that are now inseparable from quotidian society. What you might find even more disturbing is the fact that the next generation wont find A.I. and "cyborgs" horrifying at all. Then what?
ReplyDelete